Much to his chagrin, John Dunning was born into the movie business. But once he came to accept his career fate, he developed a great passion for making movies, and ultimately became Canada's pre-eminent B-movie producer, with a knack for developing young talent.

In You’re Not Dead until You’re Forgotten, Dunning, in forthright and charming fashion, recounts his rough-and-tumble upbringing in the Montreal suburb of Verdun in the 1930s, his modest start in the film industry behind the candy counter of his family's movie theatre, and later, his ventures into film distribution and production. In the 1960s Dunning, along with financial wizard André Link, founded Cinepix, which eventually merged into the Lionsgate Entertainment film colossus. Specializing in such exploitation genres as raucous comedy, groundbreaking Québécois "maple syrup porn" and horror films, Cinepix churned out cult classics like Valérie, Shivers, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, and Meatballs. Dunning's detailed recollections of making these movies provide a rare, candid, and witty take on how the film industry really works. Driven to succeed in the face of arbitrary censors, parochial Canadian critics, and controlling government funding agencies, Dunning and Link developed a formula for producing controversial, moneymaking movies, and helped launch the careers of such luminaries-to-be as David Cronenberg, Ivan Reitman, and Don Carmody.

Cronenberg has called John Dunning "the unacknowledged godfather of an entire generation of Canadian filmmakers." Illustrated with personal photos and film stills, You’re Not Dead Until You’re Forgotten finally gives this pioneer Canadian filmmaker his long-overdue spotlight.

John Dunning (1927-2011) was a film producer who was inducted into the Canadian Film and Television Hall of Fame in 2007.Bill Brownstein is a columnist with the Montreal Gazette and author of books including Schwartz's Hebrew Delicatessen, Montreal 24, Sex Carnival, and Down the Tube.

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Bill Brownstein is a columnist with the Montreal Gazette, and the author of Schwartz’s Hebrew Delicatessen: The Story. He made two documentary films, Bill Lee: A Profile of a Pitcher, about former Montreal Expos pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee and Skating on Thin Ice, about the nomadic life of two journeymen hockey players in the NHL. He is the author of Sex Carnival, a whimsical peek into the wide world of sex, and Down The Tube, an account of the week he spent watching TV. He is also co-author and co-editor of The Great Canadian Character Anthology, and a lover of smoked meat.

Bill Brownstein's profile page