Buck Henry left us this week. He was a person of considerable accomplishment, as detailed in a fine New York Times obituary and this terrific long form overview/interview, but for all of us at Mid Century Cinema, he will be remembered as an essential participant in the New Hollywood—and an exemplar of its ethos.
This is a little odd, as Henry, born in 1930 (nearly thirty-five when the Beatles first came to America), could easily have been on the other side of the cultural divide. Or as least not quite so much a part of the moment that would follow. On the surface, there was more than a little Bob Newhart in Buck Henry—button down, soft spoken, mild mannered. Beneath that veneer, however, was a fundamental divergence in their dispositions. Newhart, born just a year earlier, was gently tugging at the many threads of absurdity left dangling by the fifties establishment. Henry’s comedy, in contrast, was radically subversive, and edgy, and occasionally dangerous. This is no knock on Newhart, who was a key figure in the turn-of-the-sixties revolution in American comedy and whose seventies television show was both excellent and uncommonly sophisticated for its time. But Newhart, age-appropriately, leaned more rat pack than rock and roll, with sensibilities more Johnny Carson cool than David Letterman irreverent.
Henry enjoyed a long career; later high points include his brilliant screenplay for Gus Van Sant’s To Die For (1995), co-scripting Barry Levinson’s The Humbling (2014) and numerous, welcome acting turns across those decades. Nevertheless, his period of greatest achievement was in and of the New Hollywood, from 1967 to 1980. He co-created Get Smart with Mel Brooks (and served as the show’s story editor, and wrote the marvelous episode Ship of Spies), and his screenplay for The Graduate would quickly and rightly become a touchstone; soon enough he emerged as “Hollywood’s hottest writer.” A succession of screenplays quickly followed: Candy (not a great movie but seek out the interview with Buck on the Kino-Lorber home video edition); Catch-22 (reuniting with Mike Nichols, and hey, there’s Bob Newhart!); The Owl and the Pussycat (with a great cast led by Barbara Streisand and George Segal); What’s Up Doc (Peter Bogdanovich’s much beloved screwball comedy); and Day of the Dolphin (Nichols again). Henry was also a more than capable supporting actor in more than a dozen roles over these same years – often working with ambitious directors – highlights here include Taking Off (Milos Forman), The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg), Gloria (John Cassavetes), and Heaven Can Wait (which he co-directed with Warren Beatty), and is especially worthy of note because it reminds us of the great Saturday Night Live joke “Buck doesn’t know Warren Beatty.”
Speaking of Saturday Night Live, our official scroll inducting Buck Henry into the New Hollywood Hall of Fame emphasizes three contributions in particular: Get Smart, The Graduate, and his ten, count them, ten times hosting Saturday Night during those sacred first five years. He was even more of an unofficial member of that legendary troupe than Steve Martin, often hosting the final episode of the season. What is again remarkable is that Henry was in his mid-forties at the start of this run, at the center of a show defined by its youth, and youthful sensibilities. But Henry was right there, in the middle of it all, performing in sketches that, as they say, could not be performed today—an American tragedy. (And it’s not just Uncle Roy, by the way, much as we miss him.) There are too many great moments to list here; not surprisingly Henry as John Dean is one of our favorites, but we’ll close with a shout out to “Talk Back with Frank Nolan,” which, in 1975, rather presciently anticipated the dynamics of our current media environment.
Buck Henry in Taking Off (Milos Forman, 1971)