Buck Henry Lands a Writing Job to Die For

As conventional Hollywood wisdom will tell you, success in the movie business is cyclical. You’re hot, you go into a slump, and then you’re hot again. Actors, by far, most often experience this bounce-back syndrome. (e.g., Richard Gere). Directors, occasionally (Robert Altman’s comeback with “The Player”). But it rarely happens with screenwriters. Which lends a distinction to the literary comeback of Buck Henry, whose output as a screenwriter made him famous in the ‘60s and ‘70s (he co-wrote such landmark comedies as “The Graduate” and “Catch-22,” and co-directed “Heaven Can Wait”), but seemed by most yardsticks to run out of steam in the mid-’80s.

At 63, Henry has returned to the front lines with the mordantly comic script of “To Die For,” which will go before the cameras next spring under director Gus Van Sant (“Drugstore Cowboy”) and producer Laura Ziskin (“Pretty Woman”) for Columbia Pictures.

“It’s a darkly funny piece about a sociopath, about desensitized values,” says Ziskin. “It was last summer when we got it. My partner, Leslie Morgan, and I, we figured--maybe it was just a hunch--that we should get Buck. It’s his type of humor.”

Adapted from Joyce Maynard’s novel of the same name and, according to Henry, “loosely based” on the real-life case of convicted murderer Pamela Smart, “To Die For” is about a young wife who seduces her high school-age lover and his friends into killing her husband. It has become a hot project especially among such actresses as Meg Ryan, Nicole Kidman, Patricia Arquette and Bridget Fonda, who, sources say, are finalists for the wife role.

Writing a much-in-demand project can have a rejuvenating effect on any career, particularly when a writer has been dogged by persistent rumors about his creative demise, or what Henry dryly refers to as “my decade of abject failure.”

“I have a funny relationship with this town,” Henry observes. “People will come up to me and say, I used to watch you on ‘Saturday Night Live’--what have you done lately? Another guy will say, ‘I saw you in ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’--what happened to you after that?’ ”

Ironically, Henry has been more visible over the last couple of years than ever before. He had a brief, memorable scene last year in “The Player” pitching “The Graduate, Part 2” to actor Tim Robbins. He’ll be appearing in three new films, including Altman’s “Short Cuts” (as a suburban fisherman), Van Sant’s “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” (as a doctor), and opposite Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in Warner Bros.’ “Grumpy Old Men” (as an IRS agent).

Henry has also been dabbling in journalism, banging out pieces for Playboy and Interview magazines in recent months.

But as a screenwriter, Henry--who along with Calder Willingham received a best screenplay adaptation Oscar nomination for “The Graduate” in 1967--went through a long dry spell. His last produced script was the Goldie Hawn comedy “Protocol” in 1984. Four years earlier, there was another less-than-successful comedy in which he also co-starred, “First Family.” In 1973, he wrote “The Day Of The Dolphin” for his “Graduate” director Mike Nichols. And his two efforts since “Protocol,” one called “Babe West” for director Karel Reisz and “Jailbird” for producer Just Betzer, never went anywhere.

“I’ve never been out of work,” Henry argues. “I’ve written for 20 TV projects in the last few years, and I’ve spent a lot of time with several scripts for several directors”--none of whom he would identify. “I’m interested only in the films, in the thing itself. To talk about the fish that got away . . . well, I don’t think it’s anybody’s business.”

Henry “has been offered a lot of other things,” claims his agent, William Morris’s John Burnham, “but he turns a lot of them--99% of them--down.” Has his client been through a creatively fallow period? “I think he went through that and now he’s come through it,” says Burnham. “People dry up and they come back again. That’s life, that’s Hollywood.”

“Talent doesn’t go away,” adds Ziskin.

Is there anything about writing that he’s wary of these days? “You’ve assembled more tricks when you’re older but I’m more reluctant to use them,” Henry says. “Because you get a natural terror of the easy way and a fear of repetition.”

And after “To Die For”? “I’m vaguely thinking about a couple of things,” Henry says. “An adaptation and an original. But I’m open to any absurd offer.”