Barry Blaustein Dies at 71; Eddie Murphy Was His Muse

Gift link. Excerpt:

> Barry Blaustein, a comedy writer who had a long collaboration with the comedian Eddie Murphy, helping to develop Buckwheat, Gumby, Mister Robinson and other characters on “Saturday Night Live” and working on the screenplays for movies like “Coming to America” and “The Nutty Professor,” died on May 12 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 71.

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> “I don’t know why other people didn’t write for him,” Mr. Blaustein said in “Live From New York: An Uncensored History of ‘Saturday Night Live’” (2002), by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. “They’d go, ‘You write for him a lot,’ and we’d say, ‘Yeah, well, he’s the best guy there, why not write for him?’”