NEW YORK — The Oscar-winning screenwriter Marshall Brickman, whose wide-ranging profession spanned a few of Woody Allen‘s best films, the Broadway musical “Jersey Boys” and a number of Johnny Carson’s most beloved sketches, has died. He was 85.
Brickman died Friday in Manhattan, his daughter Sophie Brickman instructed The New York Instances. No reason behind demise was cited.
Brickman was finest recognized for his in depth collaboration with Allen, starting with the 1973 movie “Sleeper.” Collectively, they co-wrote “Annie Hall” (1977), “Manhattan” (1979) and “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993). The loosely structured script for “Annie Hall,” specifically, has been hailed as one of many wittiest comedies. It gained Brickman and Allen an Oscar for finest authentic screenplay.
In his acceptance speech (Allen skipped the ceremony), Brickman referenced one of many movie’s many oft-quoted strains, saying: “I’ve been out here a week, and I still have guilt when I make a right turn on a red light.”
“If the film is worth anything,” Brickman instructed Vainness Honest in 2017, “it gives a very particular specific image of what it was like to be alive in New York at that time in that particular social-economic stratum.”
Brickman and Allen had met within the early Sixties, when Allen was breaking via as a humorist. Brickman was introduced on to put in writing jokes for him. On the time, he had been taking part in banjo for the folks group the Tarriers. In one of many many twists of Brickman’s profession, it was an album he and his faculty roommate Eric Weissberg recorded that later made the soundtrack to 1972’s “Deliverance,” together with “Dueling Banjos.”
Brickman, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was the son of Jewish socialists Abram (who fled Poland throughout WWII) and Pauline (Wolin) Brickman, who was from New York. They later moved to the Flatbush part of Brooklyn, the place Brickman grew up. His begin in present enterprise, after graduating from the College of Wisconsin with levels in science and music, got here with the Terriers. He changed Alan Arkin within the group.
“One of the reasons I was asked to join was because they needed somebody to front the group and talk while everybody was tuning up,” Brickman instructed the Writers Guild in 2011. “And so I started to develop little jokes and routines and stuff like that.”
By the late ‘60s, Brickman was head writer for Carson’s “The Tonight Show.” There, one in every of his most enduring contributions had been the Carnac the Magnificent sketches, throughout which Carson performed a “mystic from the East” who may divine solutions to unseen questions. Brickman’s different TV stints included “Candid Camera,” “The Dick Cavett Show” and “The Muppet Show.”
When Brickman and Allen started writing collectively, they discovered a pure chemistry, with Brickman taking part in a supporting position to Allen’s semi-autobiographical materials.
“We didn’t write scenes together. I think that’s the death for any collaboration,” Brickman instructed the Writers Guild. “I don’t think there’s any such thing really as an equal collaboration. I think that in any collaboration, one person, one personality, one point of view has to dominate.”
Brickman wrote and directed the 1980 movie “Simon,” starring Arkin as a psychology professor brainwashed into believing he’s from outer house. He additionally directed 1983’s “Lovesick,” with Alec Guinness because the ghost of Sigmund Freud, and 1986’s “The Manhattan Project,” a couple of excessive schooler who builds a nuclear weapon for a college mission.
With Rick Elice penning the music, Brickman wrote the Broadway musical “Jersey Boys,” concerning the Sixties rock group The 4 Seasons. It ran on Broadway for 12 years starting in 2005. He and Elice additionally wrote the 2010 musical “The Addams Family.”
Brickman is survived by his spouse, Nina, daughters Sophie and Jessica, and 5 grandchildren.
