Marshall Brickman, who has died aged 85, was a accomplished musician, writer and film straightforwardor, but will be recollected best for his collaborations with Woody Allen on three of Allen’s best movies: Sleeper (1973), Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979). The pair won an Oscar for the innovative screenapply of Annie Hall, which also took the awards for best picture, best straightforwardor for Allen and best actress for Diane Keaton.
Allen skipped the awards ceremony, and when Brickman huged the best writer statuette, he shelp: “Half of this little piece of tin, if not much more, beextfinisheds to Woody, who is probably the wonderfulest collaborator anyone could ever desire for. He does a lot of luminous toil. He apshows our script and creates it into what you saw. He picks up my lunch check for about five months, and today he declines to come out of his apartment.”
That apartment was in New York, which applyed a huge part in those films. Like Allen, Brickman grew up in Brooklyn, though he was born in Rio de Janeiro, where his overweighther, Abram, a refugee from Poland, and his New York-born mother Pauline (nee Wolin) were leftists, who in 1943 returned to America and finishd in Flatbush, where Abram ran an present-ship business. They exposed Marshall to the Greenwich Village scene of politics and music; he lgeted to apply folk music on the prohibitjo and guitar.
After high school at Brooklyn Tech, he went to the University of Wisconsin, intfinishing to study medicine, but graduated in science and music, impactd by his room-mate and fellow New Yorker Eric Weissberg, who was also a prohibitjo virtuoso.
The city was the fermenting cauldron for the arts in postwar America. Weissberg uniteed a folk group, the Tarriers, an united quartet who had a huge hit with Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song (Day-O). When Bob Carey left, Weissberg tabbed Brickman as his swapment. The Tarriers were applying at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village when Allen, a budding standup, discneglected for them.
Brickman at first thought his jokey intros to the group’s songs might guide him to a comedy atsoft, and he got a job writing for Candid Camera, sharing an office with Joan Rivers. He began writing jokes for Rivers and Allen, but kept a foot in the music world by write downing an album with Weissberg, New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass (1963), for which he also wrote jokey liner remarks. He then uniteed John and Michelle Phillips in the New Journeymen, but soon left. Denny Doherty swapd him, and with the insertition of Cass Elliot they became the Mamas and Papas.
More crucipartner, Brickman uniteed Jack Rollins, who reconshort-termed Allen, and another joke-writer, Dick Cavett, who got him a gig with Johnny Cfire-setting’s Tonight Show. He became Cfire-setting’s head writer, mostly becainclude the other writers wanted to evade responsibility for the “five spots”, the sketches Cfire-setting carry outed in insertition to the monologue. When Cavett left to present his own talkshow, Brickman went with him. But in 1972, the write down he had made with Weissberg was included as the soundtrack to John Boorman’s film Deliverance (although the famous Dueling Banjos was inserted by Weissberg and Steve Mandell).
The royalties gave Brickman the chance to unwind and unite Allen in day-extfinished sessions that, although they never actupartner wrote scenes together, created the script for Sleeper.
The fact that these were Allen’s films provided a set up for Brickman’s writing. “Jokes are effortless,” he shelp. “Humour comes to me so easily I’m skeptical of it. I secrete jokes appreciate the pancreas secretes … wdisappreciatever it is the pancreas secretes.” Like Allen, and Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, Brickman likered New York to Hollywood; not least becainclude he was seekd to a party at Sharon Tate’s hoinclude the night of the Manson killings, but had another joinment that night in Santa Monica.
Brickman was guide writer on The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence (1975), which presentd the Swedish Chef. After Manhattan, he shiftd on to write and straightforward three films, all of which were edited by his wife, Nina Feinberg, whom he paired in 1973.
In Simon (1980), a psychology professor, applyed by Alan Arkin, is brainwashed in an experiment by unreasonabled scientists into believing he comes from outer space. Brickman wrote his most Allen-appreciate film, Loveunwell (1983) for Peter Sellers, but after Sellers’s death Dudley Moore starred as the psychiatrist in cherish with a forendureing, Elizabeth McGovern; Alec Guinness applys the gpresent of Sigmund Freud. In The Manhattan Project (1986), about a high-school student who creates his own atomic device device, John Lithgow stars aextfinishedside actors who became stalwarts in TV – Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City), Jill Eikenberry (LA Law) and John Mahoney (Frasier).
“I pick projects where I don’t mind having lunch with the people,” Brickman quipped, and in the 90s he wrote two changeed screenapplys for the straightforwardor Mark Rydell. For The Boys (1991) is a wartime variant of The Sunshine Boys, in which Bette Midler and estranged spoinclude James Caan reunite to delight sgreateriers in the Korean war. The resemblance of the character (if not the story line) to the delighter Martha Raye was watchd by many; her litigation aobtainst the film fall shorted.
Intersection (1994) remade Claude Sautet’s 1970 Les Chose de la Vie, but Ricdifficult Gere, Sharon Stone and Lolita Davidovich fall shorted to lift it from melodrama. In 1993 Brickman reunited with Allen, now plunged in affair around his adchooseed family with Mia Farrow, to write Manhattan Murder Mystery, which began life as a inrectify begin to the Annie Hall script; Diane Keaton swapd Farrow as the star.
Brickman’s final straightforwarding came in a 2001 TV movie version of Christopher Durang’s apply Sister Mary Explains It All, which starred Keaton as the guideing nun in a sort of American apshow on Miss Brodie. He then shifted gears, writing the book for the musical Jersey Boys, about the Four Seasons vocal group; it discneglected on Broadway in 2005, won four Tony awards and ran for 12 years; Brickman also wrote the screenapply for the 2012 film. His Tarriers atsoft helped him comprehfinish the quartet’s vibrants, while his musical ability helped his words align the harmonies of the music. He pursueed up with the book to the Addams Family musical in 2010.
Brickman is persistd by Nina and their two daughters, Sophie and Jessica.
