The Manhattan Project

Marshall Brickman (born August 25, 1941) is an American screenwriter, best known for his collaborations with Woody Allen. He is also known for playing the banjo with Eric Weissberg in the 1960s, and for a series of comical parodies published in The New Yorker.

Brickman was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to American parents Pauline (née Wolin) and Abram Brickman. His family was Jewish. After attending the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he became a member of Folk act The Tarriers in 1962, recruited by former classmate Eric Weissberg. Upon the disbanding of The Tarriers in 1965, Brickman joined The New Journeymen with John Phillips and Michelle Phillips, who later had success with The Mamas & the Papas. He left The New Journeymen to pursue a career as a writer, initially writing for television in the 1960s, including Candid Camera, The Tonight Show, and The Dick Cavett Show. It was during this time that he met Allen, with whom he would collaborate on several 1970s film scripts, including Sleeper, Annie Hall (which won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award), and Manhattan.

Brickman directed several of his own scripts in the 1980s, including Simon, Lovesick, and The Manhattan Project, as well as Sister Mary Explains It All, a TV adaptation of the play by Christopher Durang. He reunited with Allen in 1993 to write Manhattan Murder Mystery.

With partner Rick Elice, he wrote the book for the Broadway musical Jersey Boys. The two collaborated again in 2009 to write the book for the musical The Addams Family.

Brickman’s “Who’s Who in the Cast,” a parody of a Playbill cast list, was published in the July 26, 1976, issue of The New Yorker, and drew so much attention that it was republished in the special theatre issue of May 31, 1993. Other notable pieces for The New Yorker include “The New York Review of Gossip” (May 19, 1975) and “The Recipes of Chairman Mao” (August 27, 1973). —Wikipedia