Oscar-winning screenwriter Marshall Brickman, whose wide-ranging career has spanned some of the Woody Allen best movies, broadway musical “Jersey Boys” and a few of Johnny Carson’s favorite sketches, has died. He was 85 years old.
Brickman died Friday in Manhattan, his daughter Sophie Brickman he told The New York Times. The cause of death was not given.
Brickman was best known for his extensive collaboration with Allen, beginning with the 1973 film Sleeper. Together they wrote “Annie Hall” (1977), “Manhattan” (1979) and “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993). The loosely structured script for “Annie Hall” in particular has been hailed as one of the wittiest comedies. It won Brickman and Allen an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
In his acceptance speech (Allen skipped the ceremony), Brickman addressed 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 the movie is worth anything,” Brickman he told Vanity Fair 2017, “gives a very specific specific picture 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 for the folk group Tarriers. In one of the many twists and turns of Brickman’s career, an album he and college roommate Eric Weissberg recorded later became the soundtrack for 1972’s Deliverance, featuring “Dueling Banjos.”
Brickman, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was the son of Jewish socialists Abram (who fled Poland during World War II) and Pauline (Wolin) Brickman, who was from New York. They later moved to the Flatbush section 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 the group.
“One of the reasons they asked me to come on board was because they needed someone to lead the group and talk while everyone tunes in,” Brickman told Writers Guild 2011. “And so I started developing little jokes and routines and things like that.”
By the late ’60s, Brickman was the head writer for Carson’s “The Tonight Show.” There, one of his longest-running contributions was the Carnac Magnificent skits, during which Carson played a “mystic from the East” who could divine the answers to unseen questions. Brickman’s other television appearances included “Candid Camera,” “The Dick Cavett Show” and “The Muppet Show.”
When Brickman and Allen began writing together, they found a natural chemistry, with Brickman playing 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 think there is no such thing as equal cooperation. I think that in every collaboration one person, one personality, one point of view must dominate.”
Brickman wrote and directed the 1980 film “Simon,” in which Arkin plays a psychology professor brainwashed into believing he’s from outer space. He also directed 1983’s “Lovesick,” with Alec Guinness as the ghost of Sigmund Freud, and 1986’s “Manhattan Project,” about a high school student who builds a nuclear weapon for a school project.
Along with Rick Elice who wrote the music, Brickman wrote the Broadway musical “Jersey Boys,” about the 1960s rock group The Four Seasons. It ran on Broadway for 12 years beginning in 2005. He and Elice also wrote the 2010 musical “The Addams Family.”
Brickman is survived by his wife Nina, daughters Sophie and Jessica, and five grandchildren.
