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| Bruce Jay Friedman | |
Bruce Jay Friedman, who wrote darkly humorous novels, screenplays and scripts exploring the fears and insecurities of the white middle-class, died last week at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y., the New York Times reported. He was 90 years old.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Friedman published his first book, Stern, in 1962. His sophomore novel, A Mother's Kisses, became a bestseller in 1964, and both novels feature "New York Jews exploring an America outside the five boroughs." His first play, Scuba Duba, was a "send-up of race relations" that premiered in 1967 and was an Off-Broadway hit.
In the early 1970s he wrote Steambath, another popular Off-Broadway play that was televised in 1973. He published the novels The Dick, about an urban detective, and About Harry Towns, featuring a "cocaine-addled screenwriter," and, in the latter half of the decade he wrote The Lonely Guy's Book of Life, which began as a series of essays and was later adapted for film. Friedman also wrote short stories, and his story "A Change of Plan" became the film The Heartbreak Kid.
From the 1980s on, Friedman focused on movies, writing the screenplay for Stir Crazy, which starred Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and was directed by Sidney Poitier, and the first draft of the script for Splash, a romantic comedy about an affair between a man and a mermaid that starred Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah. He would go on to write more novels, though they never quite reached the same level of popularity or praise as his earlier work.
Reflecting on his career in later years, Friedman wrote: "Stories, quite a few of them, got written and published. If they lacked energy (were less frantic?) I assured myself they were more 'dimensional.' Once I discovered that comforting description, I clung to it like life itself. There were a few books, some plays that still need attention. And quite a few pieces about me in the literary journals, wondering what had happened to me. Where had I gone? I began to feel like the most (fondly) remembered forgotten writer in America."