Caught the news of his passing this Sunday on our way home from the movies. He’d been out of the spotlight for so long, I forgot he was even alive. Shame on me given his body of work I devoured as a pre-teen via HBO. Thanks to early years of the entertainment behemoth I saw Simon’s prime material: The Goodbye Girl, Murder by Death, The Cheap Detective, Seems Like Old Times and The Prisoner of Second Avenue. Network TV showed The Sunshine Boys and the one everybody knows, The Odd Couple. Through these movies I gained a better understanding of certain comedy tropes, namely his Film Noir parodies and life in New York.
Neil was much like his contemporaries: Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Carl Reiner. He started out doing the usual dreck in the Borscht Belt and early TV, then branched out to write stuff you wouldn’t expect from a former television writer.
Thanks for the jokes Neil. I personally love Murder by Death the most since it’s a who’s who (by other names) of the most popular detectives from film and novels.