{"id":715510,"date":"2026-03-07T11:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T08:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/jeremy-larner-oscar-winning-screenwriter-on-robert-redfords-the-candidate-dies-at-88\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T11:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T08:25:08","slug":"jeremy-larner-oscar-winning-screenwriter-on-robert-redfords-the-candidate-dies-at-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/jeremy-larner-oscar-winning-screenwriter-on-robert-redfords-the-candidate-dies-at-88\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy Larner, Oscar-Winning Screenwriter on Robert Redford\u2019s \u2018The Candidate,\u2019 Dies at 88"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tJeremy Larner, whose experience as a speechwriter for 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy informed his Oscar-winning screenplay for the Robert Redford-starring The Candidate<\/em>, has died. He was 88. <\/p>\n

\n\tLarner had been ill for some time and died Feb. 24 in a nursing facility in Oakland, California, his son Jesse Larner told The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor his only other produced screenplay, Larner adapted his 1964 novel Drive, He Said<\/em>, for the audacious basketball-centric 1971 film of the same name that marked the feature directorial debut of Jack Nicholson.<\/p>\n

\n\tLarner had joined McCarthy on the campaign trail in March 1968, with the Minnesota senator, running on a platform to end the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, attempting to secure the Democratic Party\u2019s nomination for president.<\/p>\n

\n\tMcCarthy app<\/a>eared on his way to victory, but following the withdrawal of President Lyndon Johnson from the race and the assassination of fellow candidate Robert F. Kennedy, the nomination would go to Vice President Hubert Humphrey.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter writing Nobody Knows: Reflections on the McCarthy Campaign of 1968<\/em>, a book that gained traction when it was serialized in Harper\u2019s<\/em> magazine in 1969, Larner was approached by Redford and director Michael Ritchie to write the script for The Candidate<\/em> (1972).<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the Warner Bros. film, Redford stars as idealistic young liberal Bill McKay, a poverty lawyer and son of a wheeling-dealing governor (Melvyn Douglas) who is groomed by a political consultant (Peter Boyle) to run against Republican incumbent Crocker Jarman (Don Porter) for senator in California.<\/p>\n

\n\tMcKay speaks his mind, figuring he has no chance of winning \u2014 until he does, prompting him at the end to ask Boyle\u2019s Marvin Lucas, \u201cWhat do we do now?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tRedford and Ritchie \u201chad a few ideas of what they wanted it to be about, and of the ending as well,\u201d Larner recalled in an extensive 2016 Brooklyn Magazine<\/em> interview<\/a> with Steve Macfarlane about his work on the film. \u201cOne of the reasons they approached me was, I was one of the very few writers who had written speeches for a presidential campaign, and a screenwriter at the time as well.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHere\u2019s what I said the first time I met with [them]: I said, to me, a politician was like a movie star. He could lose himself in a character \u2014 it\u2019s true of many stars, and was even truer then \u2014 who resembles himself, only larger than life, as a symbol of what\u2019s beautiful and what\u2019s true. I was aware, of course, that Redford was that kind of a symbol. As I said this, I thought to myself: \u2018You are now definitely losing the job.\u2019<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Melvyn Douglas and Robert Redford in 1972\u2019s \u2018The Candidate.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Everett Collection<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is where my experience with McCarthy came into it: I would write a speech, hear McCarthy deliver my words as part of his stump speech, and see the response he got from it. He\u2019d say things that enabled people to cheer themselves by cheering him.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI thought a campaign was like drifting downriver on a raft, where everything is beautiful: then you begin to hear the roar of the falls up ahead, but it\u2019s too late. You go over the falls, you lose yourself, you become eternally confused by the difference between yourself and who your public thinks you are. And it\u2019s a disarming, dissociative experience. And Redford played that very well: the better McKay gets at campaigning, the more he loses himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJeremy David Larner was born on March 20, 1937, and raised in Indianapolis, where he won the city\u2019s high school tennis championship while attending Shortridge High. His father, Martin, was president of the Jewish Community Center Association.<\/p>\n

\n\tLarner graduated from Brandeis University in 1958, where his classmates included soon-to-be activist Abbie Hoffman, then attended the University of California at Berkeley for graduate work on a Woodrow Wilson fellowship.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe moved to New York when he was 22 and stayed throughout the 1960s, working as a freelance journalist for such publications as Life<\/em> \u2014 for whom he covered the 1968 Mexico City Olympics \u2014 The New Republic<\/em> and Harper<\/em>\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\n\tLarner also authored two novels and three nonfiction books during this period, including Poverty: Views From the Left<\/em>; Drive, He Said<\/em>; The Addict in the Street<\/em>; and the LSD-centric The Answer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the McCarthy campaign, Larner penned a radio commercial for Paul Newman that played in Indiana, and he ghost-wrote a magazine article for the actor talking about why he was impressed with the senator.<\/p>\n

\n\tLarner\u2019s Drive, He Said<\/em> novel revolved around two Ohio University roommates, one an alienated basketball star (played by William Tepper in the film) and the other a revolutionary (Michael Margotta). Its title is taken from a quote from the Robert Creeley poem I Know a Man<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1968, Nicholson phoned Larner and said, \u201cJer, I\u2019m gonna be a star, and they\u2019re gonna let me direct a picture. I want you to come out and write it,\u201d he told<\/a> Los Angeles Magazine<\/em> in 1996. So Larner left Boston \u2014 he was working at Harvard at the time \u2014 to come to L.A.<\/p>\n

\n\tLarner said he wrote the first draft of Drive, He Said<\/em> and then rewrote Nicholson\u2019s rewrite. (Also contributing to the script: Terrence Malick and Robert Towne, both uncredited.)<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: William Tepper and director Jack Nicholson on the set of 1971\u2019s \u2018Drive, He Said.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Everett Collection<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tBy the time production had wrapped on the R-rated film \u2014\u00a0it was dismissed at Cannes and played mere weeks in theaters before being pulled \u2014 Nicholson was indeed a star with Easy Rider<\/em> in his pocket, and Larner had returned to Harvard before The Candidate<\/em> opportunity arose.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI came down to New York,\u201d he told Macfarlane. \u201cRedford and Ritchie saw 10 different writers with experience on political movies<\/a>, or with experience as speechwriters. I figured I would not get the job, especially because I had kind of long hair and a beard at the time [Laughs<\/em>]. But I figured I was free to say what I wanted to say, and to my surprise they called me back.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c<\/strong>Then they came up to Cambridge \u2026 and we worked mostly in my kitchen \u2014 I think we went out to dinner a couple times. We worked out the nature of the story, and I told them stories of my experience with McCarthy, some of which I put directly in the script. For example, the moment when somebody hands McKay a Coke and a hot dog, so his hands are occupied, and then slugs him in the face \u2014 that really happened to McCarthy!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor additional research, Larner spent a week with Democratic Sen. John V. Tunney, who had recently been elected a California senator. One of Tunney\u2019s lines \u2014 \u201cI have a confession to make: I ate all the shrimp\u201d \u2014 made it into his script.<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven a month to write the screenplay, Larner said it took him two weeks, working from noon to 3 a.m. very day to come up with 180 pages. Then, he was on set of the $1.1 million picture every day, rewriting constantly.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m a little surprised the ending worked out OK \u2014 more than OK, he said. \u201cThat line, \u2018What do we do now?,\u2019 is probably not something a real politician would say. They think they know what they\u2019re doing as a rule, even when they don\u2019t!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Oscar night in 1973, Larner in his acceptance speech<\/a> thanked \u201cthe political figures of our time who\u2019ve given me terrific inspiration. I think as long as they continue to do the things they do and to use the words that they use, words like \u2018honor,\u2019 there\u2019ll be better pictures and sharper pictures even than The Candidate<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLarner went on to write about a dozen screenplays but never had another onscreen writing credit. \u201cI was much better paid for them and I thought some of them were far better than The Candidate<\/em>, but I could never get any of them made,\u201d he said. Those included several drafts of North Dallas Forty<\/em> (1979) and an adaptation of Joseph Conrad\u2019s Victory<\/em> for Sydney Pollack.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI thought I was the exception to the rule in terms of writers having clout, but writers don\u2019t have any clout unless they get to be Paddy Chayefsky,\u201d he said. He did pen environmental speeches for Redford, speak on college campuses and write Chicken on Church & Other Poems<\/em>, published in 2006.<\/p>\n

\n\tSurvivors include his sons, Jesse and Zachary, and his brother, Daniel. He was married to Brandeis classmate Susan Berlin from 1960 until their 1968 divorce.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his interview with Macfarlane, Larner said that during the making of The Candidate<\/em>, many people working on the film didn\u2019t understand his script, and he noted he was \u201cconstantly explaining myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt made sense to Redford and Ritchie, I always thought, but then again I was always reminding them of where the scenes fit together, and it was a constant concern of theirs to make sure the scenes did,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut the idea for the movie predated the script. When Redford and Ritchie approached me, McKay would be the son of a former governor, trapped into an uncomfortable position, and surprised when he wins. Kind of like me winning the Oscar.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeremy Larner, whose experience as a speechwriter for 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy informed his Oscar-winning screenplay for the Robert Redford-starring The Candidate, has died. He was 88. Larner had been ill for some time and died Feb. 24 in a nursing facility in Oakland, California, his son Jesse Larner told The Hollywood Reporter. For…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":715511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/jeremy_larner.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[5200,70002,76407],"class_list":["post-715510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-obituaries","tag-paul-newman","tag-robert-redford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}