Oscar-winning screenwriter Marshall Brickman, whose extensive career has spanned some of the Woody Allen Best movies, Broadway musical “Jersey Boys” and a number of Johnny Carson’s most beloved sketches have died. He was 85.
Brickman died Friday in Manhattan, his daughter, Sophie Brickman said The New York Times. The cause of death was not given.
Brickman was best known for his extensive collaborations with Allen, beginning with the 1973 film Sleep. Together they wrote Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979) and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993). Annie Hall’s loosely constructed script, in particular, was recognized as one of the wittiest comedies. It earned Brickman and Allen an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
In his acceptance speech (Allen missed the ceremony), Brickman referenced one of the film’s oft-quoted lines, saying, “I’ve been here a week and I still feel guilty when I turn right at a red light. .”
“If a Movie Is Worth Anything,” Brickman said Vanity Fair in 2017, “it gives a very specific concrete image of what it was like to live in New York at that time in that particular socioeconomic stratum.”
Brickman and Allen met in the early 1960s when Allen was making his way as a stand-up comedian. Brickman was brought in to write jokes for him. At the time he was playing banjo in the Tarriers folk band. In one of Brickman’s many career twists, it was an album he and his college roommate Eric Weisberg recorded that would later become the soundtrack to 1972’s Deliverance, including “Dueling Banjos.”
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Brickman was the son of Jewish socialists Abram (who fled Poland during World War II) and Pauline (Wolin) Brickman, who was originally from New York. They later moved to the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Brickman grew up. His start in show business, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin with degrees in science and music, came with the Tarriers. He replaced Alan Arkin in a group.
“One of the reasons I was asked to join was because they needed someone to get in front of the group and talk while everyone was getting set up,” Brickman told the writers. Guild in 2011 “And so I started developing little jokes and routines and things like that.”
By the end of the 60s, Brickman was the head writer for Carson’s The Tonight Show. There, one of his most enduring contributions was the Karnak the Magnificent sketches, in which Carson played a “mystic from the East” who could divine the answers to unseen questions. Brickman’s other television roles included Candid Camera, The Dick Cavett Show and The Muppet Show.
When Brickman and Allen began writing together, they found a natural chemistry, and Brickman played a supporting role in Allen’s semi-autobiographical material.
“We didn’t write the scenes together. I think that’s the death knell for any collaboration,” Brickman told the Writers Guild. “I don’t think there is such a thing as equal cooperation. I believe that in any cooperation, one person, one person, one point of view should dominate.”
Brickman wrote and directed the 1980 film Simon, in which Arkin played a psychology professor brainwashed into believing he was from outer space. He also directed the 1983 film Longing for Love, starring Alec Guinness as the ghost of Sigmund Freud, and the 1986 film The Manhattan Project, about a high school student who creates a nuclear weapon for a school project.
The music was composed by Rick Ellis and Brickman wrote the Broadway musical Jersey Boys about the 1960s rock group The Four Seasons. It ran on Broadway for 12 years, starting in 2005. He and Ellis also wrote the 2010 musical The Addams Family.
Brickman is survived by his wife Nina, daughters Sophie and Jessica, and five grandchildren.
