BJF

Bruce Jay Friedman has died.  He was a comic writer with a dark side who wrote novels, short stories, plays and movies.

I find his work as a playwright most interesting.  In particular, two plays he wrote fairly early in his career, Scuba Duba (1967) and Steam Bath (1970).  Neither are performed much any more--I wonder how they'd play today?

Scuba Duba, an off-Broadway hit featuring Jerry Orbach, Judd Hirsch and Cleavon Little, dealt with race in a pretty raw way.  In fact, in William Goldman's book on the 1967 Broadway season, he discusses how a man in the audience started shouting at the actors during the performance he saw, and that (if I recall correctly) there was some violence afterwards.

Steam Bath is about, yes, a steam bath, except it represents the afterlife, and the Almighty is the Puerto Rican attendant. The original cast included Tony Perkins and Hector Elizondo.  It's probably Friedman's most-seen play simply because it was done on PBS.  He didn't write too many plays after Steam Bath which is too bad, since I think he had a special talent in the medium.

I haven't read any of Friedman's novels all the way through, so I can't say much about them, though I did like some of his short fiction, and found the non-fiction The Lonely Guy's Book Of Life as well as The Slight Older Guy fascinating. The former was turned into a movie (meaning the screenwriters had to create a plot)--The Lonely Guy (1984) starring Steve Martin and Charles Grodin. It's not great, but worth checking out, especially for Grodin.

Which brings us to Friedman's work in movie and TV, which is less notable simply because he didn't do a lot and much of it was rewritten by others.  For instance, 1972's The Heathbreak Kid (starring Charles Grodin) is a fine piece of work, but while it's based on a Friedman story, I would guess it's Neil Simon's screenplay and Elaine May's direction that make it what it is.

Then there's Stir Crazy (1980), starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, which was a huge hit, but is also a mess.  I'm not sure how much you can credit/blame Friedman's screenplay.  He also gets a story and screenplay credit on the fine comedy Splash (1984), but I'm pretty sure the final version of the screenplay is mostly due to the other credited writers, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel.

If nothing else, Friedman had a voice that was his own.  A writer (and reader) can't ask for more.