The writer who found laughs in male neurosis
Bruce Jay Friedman helped craft what many now consider to be the voice of American Jewish comedy: zany yet angst-ridden, self-knowing yet often oblivious. The author of more than a dozen books, eight plays, and a handful of Hollywood screenplays— including the hits Stir Crazy (1980) and Splash (1984)—Friedman drew laughs from the fears and fantasies of his neurotic male protagonists. His 1962 novel, Stern, sees an urban transplant wrestle with the psychic terrors of suburbia; in 1964’s best-selling A Mother’s Kisses, a Brooklyn teen escapes to a Kansas agricultural college only to have his smothering mother follow him there. In the short story “A Change of Plan”—adapted by Neil Simon for the 1972 movie The Heartbreak Kid— a honeymooning newlywed leaves his wife for a woman he meets at a hotel pool. It was built on a real-life encounter, said Friedman. “That’s how a story will happen. You have a fragment of an experience and ask yourself, ‘What if?’” Friedman was born in the Bronx to a father who worked in the garment industry and a homemaker mother who had “a feisty patter,” said The New York Times. When the teenage Friedman con
Bruce Jay Friedman
tracted gangrene in his left arm and a surgeon suggested the limb be amputated, his mom shot back: “I have a better idea. I’ll saw off your head.” After receiving a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and spending two years in the Air Force, he took a job in Manhattan editing “somewhat cheesy” adventure magazines with titles like Male and True Action. “Among the dozens of freelance writers he hired was Mario Puzo, who became a lifelong friend.” Puzo once asked Friedman what he thought of the title of a novel he was working on: The Godfather. “Sounds domestic,” said Friedman. “I’d give it another try.” His first novel, Stern, was “a literary success, if not a best-seller,” said The Washington Post. A Mother’s Kisses fared better, and in 1968 The
New York Times Magazine declared Friedman the year’s “Hottest Writer.” As he became “a favorite Hollywood wordsmith” in the 1980s, Friedman saw his literary reputation decline, said the Associated Press. He often felt torn between writing screenplays for big paychecks and the loftier calling of novel writing. But eventually he found peace, summing up his philosophy as “Take the money, scribble a bit, and enjoy the room service.”