Olympic Games (SOCOG). In 2001, Billy Connolly starred in a film based on Clarke's screenplay The Man Who Sued God (re-written by Don Watson). In 2002 Clarke appeared in a villainous role in the movie Crackerjack and as a comedy club owner in the award-winning telemovie Roy Hollsdotter Live. After a quiet period, he re-emerged in 2004, adapting Melbourne author Shane Maloney's Murray Whelan series for film. This resulted in two films, Stiff and The Brush-Off, both starring David Wenham and Mick Molloy. Clarke directed Stiff himself and made a cameo appearance in The Brush-Off, which was directed by his old friend Sam Neill. Clarke was the author of several books, notably two mock compilations of Australian poetry, and The Tournament, a book describing a fictional tennis tournament involving many philosophical and literary figures of the twentieth century. During the 1980s, Clarke was an influential Board member of Film Victoria. In 2004 he was the recipient of the Byron Kennedy Award, "for his works of sustained excellence and for the inspiration he presents to all of us in his roles as poet, playwright, actor, author, director and producer." Clarke was patron of the Australian Poetry Centre, launched in June 2007, one of the forerunners of the national peak body for poets, Australian Poetry. He was inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame in 2008. The Logie was presented to him by long-time collaborator and friend Bryan Dawe. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2017 his posthumous album, Clarke's Classics, won the award for Best Comedy Release in October of that year. Death and legacy On April 9, 2017, Clarke died of a heart attack while on a bushwalk up Mount Abrupt in the Grampians National Park, in the Australian state of Victoria. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten, and New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English paid tribute to his role as a political satirist, Turnbull saying that "His satire served a noble purpose. It spoke truth to power. It made our democracy richer and stronger. It kept politicians on their toes." Long-time collaborator Bryan Dawe said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, "He'd never forget what was going on in your life," and paid tribute to their partnership; "The trick with John was he had these sparkling eyes. He was a mischief maker and his eyes went looking for mischief. You could see it