Marshall Brickman, who collaborated with Woody Allen on three of his most famous films, died Friday in Manhattan. He was 85. Brickman’s daughter confirmed his death to the New York Times.
Brickman and Allen were the duo behind “Sleeper” (1973) “Annie Hall” (1977) and “Manhattan” (1979).
The writer lived a storied life. The Guardian reported in 2021 that he was born in Brazil but raised in New York. An avid fan of folk music, he traveled to Moscow as a teen, where he won a gold medal in an international banjo playing contest.
A few years later, he was back home in New York when a young singer named Bob Dylan spent a few nights at his apartment just before he signed with Columbia Records. As Brickman told the outlet, “He showed up in a suit and tie and said he was going to go to New York and become bigger than Elvis.”
In 2019 he told the Banjo Newsletter that his entire family was “‘musical’ in the manner of all left-wing, middle-class Jewish households” and that his mother and sister played the piano while his father was a singer. Despite that, his father didn’t want him to study music when he entered the University of Wisconsin.
“Having graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School, and still under the thumb of my father, who dreamed of me with a doctorate in science or medicine, I entered UW as a potential physics major. Two years later, I decided that college shouldn’t interfere with my education, and I changed my major to music, which made my father lie down in the driveway and urge my mother to drive the car over him,” Brickman said.
Brickman was in a band of his own, the Tarriers, which he’d joined while a college student in Wisconsin. He told the Banjo Newsletter the group was “perhaps the first integrated modern folk group” and never played below Washington D.C. to make sure all members were safe. They were managed by Jack Rollins, who was also a manager for “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” writer Dick Cavett. After Cavett moved on to stand-up, he brought Brickman on as a writer and changed the direction of his career.
He spent most of the 1960s in New York, but traveled to California to record with “The Tonight Show” four times a year. It was on one such trip that he was invited to a party by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas – an invitation he declined because “I’m a Jew from New York and I didn’t like to feel out of control.” The next day he found out the party was the same one attended by Sharon Tate and five others on the day they were killed by Charles Manson and his cult.
Rollins again proved to be a pivotal person in Brickman’s professional life when he introduced the writer to a new comic under his purview: Woody Allen. “I would stand at the back of The Bitter End and listen to this guy who was getting no laughs,” Brickman told the Guardian. “He was using material that was totally fresh and weird. It was like discovering a great author you never knew existed.”
The pair began to write together and soon began their first movie, “Sleeper.” But it was their second that really took off. “With ‘Annie Hall,’ we were trying to show off, trying to prove how clever we were. It’s a slice of what life was like at a particular time and place, but it can’t give you any clues as to how to write a movie. There were endless re-shoots and the first cut was two hours 40 minutes,” he admitted.
Both “Annie Hall” and their third project “Manhattan” won heaps of awards. The accolades given to “Annie Hall” included the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Actress, and the BAFTA for Best Director. “Manhattan” won the BAFTA Award for Best Film, among others. “After we won the Oscar, I became bankable. The spill light off the Oscar lasts a long time,” Brickman said in the Guardian’s interview.
Brickman was also a staunch defender of Allen. “Sometimes, there will be a piece in one of the papers and they’ll put Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby and Woody Allen in the same sentence. I think that’s terrible. I think that this cancel culture has ruined too many lives already,” he said.
Marshall Brickman was born on Aug. 25, 1939, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to American parents. The family moved back to the United States in 1943. He is survived by his wife, Nina Feinberg, and two daughters.
