Barry Blaustein, the former “Saturday Night Live” writer behind the beloved Eddie Murphy films “Coming to America” and the acclaimed documentary “Beyond the Mat,” died Tuesday. He was 71 years old.
Blaustein's death was confirmed by Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, where he had been a screenwriting professor since 2012. Blaustein battled Parkinson's disease for the past decade and, according to the Hollywood Reporter, was told last month that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
“Barry understood better than anyone what made comedy work,” Stephen Galloway, dean of Dodge College, told The Times in an emailed statement. “I knew it included darkness as well as light. And yet it was light that filled his final years. Even when he suffered from Parkinson's, he showed a positivity that always surprised me. He will be remembered as a wonderful writer, but as an even more wonderful human being.”
Blaustein, along with his longtime writing partner David Sheffield, wrote classic comedies, including the 1988 film “Coming to America” and its 2021 sequel, “Coming 2 America,” 1992’s “Boomerang,” as well as the 1996 film “The Nutty Professor” and its 2000 sequel, “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.”
Blaustein also directed the 2010 film “Peep World,” which he said was shot in 21 days for about $1 million, and 2005’s “The Ringer,” starring Johnny Knoxville and Katherine Heigl.
Although his claim to fame contributed to numerous comedy projects over the decades, it was the 1999 documentary “Beyond the Mat,” a behind-the-scenes chronicle of three famous professional wrestlers, that was Blaustein's favorite.
According to The Times, Imagine Entertainment partners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer and then-president Michael Rosenberg agreed to produce “Beyond the Mat” because they valued their long-standing relationship with Blaustein.
Grazer told The Times in 1999 that the comedy writer had “built up so much goodwill with Imagine and was so passionate about the subject” that the company decided to back the project “because of the relationship with an artist we value.”
“This wasn't the first time Barry asked me to direct,” Grazer said, referring to the documentary. “And I've always said no. I knew Barry as a pure sketch comedy writer, so when I saw this, I was blown away. I had no idea he had that emotional storytelling side.”
The Times called “Beyond the Mat” one of the best films of the year and it was one of 12 finalists for Academy Award consideration.
Born September 10, 1954, Barry Wayne Blaustein grew up on Long Island, New York. He graduated from WT Clarke High School and earned a bachelor of arts degree from New York University before interning at NBC News in New York.
Although he didn't know he wanted to be a writer from the beginning, Blaustein told the TTFT podcast in 2021 that he always knew he wanted to be in show business. In the late '70s, he got a job in Hollywood, but it wasn't a direct path to the top. “All the typewriters were stolen; you couldn't work for a shadier person,” he said on the podcast.
Paying his dues finally paid off when Blaustein's boss sent him to lunch with a producer who asked the young man if he could write. He said yes, because he learned to always say yes if you wanted to work in show business. The next thing he knew, he was a writer on “The Mike Douglas Show,” a syndicated daytime show that featured guests such as James Caan, Sonny Bono, Lucille Ball, David Letterman and Bob Hope.
“So I worked on that show, and every job I had somehow led to another job,” he told TTFT.
In 1980, Blaustein moved on to “Saturday Night Live,” where he was hired for the sixth season of the sketch show. There he met the man who would become his writing partner, Sheffield, as well as Murphy. Together, they produced the most famous parts of Murphy's show, including Gumby, Buckwheat, and Mr. Robinson.
The three had a potent chemistry that would last for decades, and Blaustein joked that his more than 40-year partnership with Sheffield and Murphy was the “longest marriage in show business history.”
In 1987, the three, plus Arsenio Hall, teamed up for “Coming to America,” in which Murphy played a wealthy African prince who comes to the United States to escape an arranged marriage and find his true love. Murphy presented the project to the writing duo with about 20 pages of handwritten ideas.
“I didn't realize, maybe it's because I'm blind or something, but I didn't realize how sociologically important the movie would be,” Blaustein told the TTFT podcast. “The movie was highly appreciated, it's in the Smithsonian, and it was the biggest thrill when I went to the Museum of African American History, and it's there in two different places in the museum. And I thought, 'My God, what a compliment.'”
After a steady career writing, producing and directing various projects, Blaustein took a career turn in 2012. She had recently divorced after 28 years of marriage, her relationship with Hollywood was going poorly, and she needed a change of pace. He joined Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, one of the top film schools in the country, and dedicated himself to teaching budding screenwriters.
“He was a great writer,” screenwriter and alumna Brianna Brown said in an emailed statement to The Times. “But he was the absolute best teacher. What I have learned from him has been creatively monumental. What I have learned from him outside of the classroom has been transformative. These things I deeply appreciate. Needless to say, his presence quickly became a life-changing part of who I am. I am proud to have fragments of these things, fragments of the writer who was deeply ingrained in me…his talent, confidence and humility.
“Beyond his teachings, the person he was has truly shaped me. The way I was welcomed into his family. The way he showed his love. The way I always felt it unconditionally… those special parts of him… that will live through me in everything I teach and everything I write. He taught me how to live a dream worth living.”
Around 2017, Blaustein was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The veteran writer said that when he received the diagnosis, the first thing he thought of was an exchange he had had with Muhammad Ali, who publicly battled the disease for decades before his death in 2016.
“Don King was on 'Saturday Night Live' and invited me to go to the fights in Las Vegas,” he said. “There was a dinner the night before and he said, ‘Sit at this table.’ I was with Muhammad Ali, who was in the depths of his Parkinson's, and I was talking to him and trying to make a conversation, and I couldn't understand what he was saying.”
Blaustein admitted that he thought, “How am I going to get out of this?”
“And when I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, I thought, 'Oh my God, who's going to want to talk to me?' Because I didn't want to talk to Muhammad Ali, and Muhammad Ali is one of the greatest people who ever lived.”
Blaustein said the condition changed his life, telling the TFTT podcast that he wrote the 2021 sequel, “Coming 2 America,” while battling the disease. “I'm very proud to have written the movie, having Parkinson's, of course, I didn't tell the studio, but now they know.”
Blaustein traveled the country speaking on behalf of the Parkinson's Foundation. “You can't let the disease defeat you, it wants you to stay home, it wants you to go into your shell,” he said on a Parkinson's Foundation podcast in 2022. “That's no way to live a life, you have to fight it.”
Blaustein interspersed his wisdom with some humor: “I have handicapped parking, which is great, 'I don't feel like going to your sister's house, I have Parkinson's.'” He said he had even used it to upgrade at the airport.
Blaustein is survived by his wife, Debra, whom he married in 2021; his children, Corey and Kasey; and his granddaughter, Daisy.
A memorial service will be held at Chapman University.
