Jeremy Larner, ‘The Candidate’ Screenwriter and Oscar Winner, Dies at 88

Jeremy Larner, the political speechwriter-turned-Oscar-winning screenwriter of “The Candidate,” died last week. He was 88.

His son, Jesse, confirmed the news of his passing to the New York Times, sharing that the author and journalist died Feb. 24 at a nursing facility in Oakland, Calif. While Larner was previously diagnosed with lymphoma back in January, as well as Parkinson’s disease in 2013, a cause of death was not immediately known.

Movie fans will also know Larner for his second (and last) film credit, 1971’s “Drive, He Said” starring Jack Nicholson, which was based off his 1964 debut novel of the same name (that notably won the Delta Prize).

Yet, before his foray into Hollywood, Larner found himself on the campaign trail with 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy as he attempted to nab the Democratic Party’s nomination. This campaign year was fraught with drama, however, as it saw President Lyndon B. Johnson pull out of the race and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Ultimately, the nomination went to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who lost to Richard Nixon.

In the aftermath of the campaign, Larner penned “Nobody Knows: Reflections on the McCarthy Campaign of 1968,” which gained notoriety thanks to it being serialized in Harper’s magazine in the spring of 1969. It was during this time that Robert Redford and director Michael Ritchie approached Larner about penning the script for “The Candidate.” He later won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar at the 45th Academy Awards for his work on the movie.

“I thought a campaign was like drifting downriver on a raft, where everything is beautiful: then you begin to hear the roar of the falls up ahead, but it’s too late,” Larner told Brooklyn Magazine in 2016. “You go over the falls, you lose yourself, you become eternally confused by the difference between yourself and who your public thinks you are. And it’s a disarming, dissociative experience. And Redford played that very well: the better McKay gets at campaigning, the more he loses himself.”

Born on March 20, 1937 in New York, Larner later moved to Indianapolis, where he spent his formative years before relocating to the East Coast to attend Brandeis University in 1958. At 22, he moved to New York, where he worked as a journalist at Life, The New Republic and Harper’s.

In addition to “Drive, He Said,”Larner also wrote “Poverty: Views From the Left,” “The Addict in the Street” and “The Answer.”

He is survived by his sons, Jesse and Zachary, and his brother, Daniel.

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