{"id":1475,"date":"2026-05-12T17:51:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/05\/12\/barry-blaustein-writer-for-eddie-murphy-on-saturday-night-live-and-the-coming-to-america-films-dies-at-72\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T17:51:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T17:51:00","slug":"barry-blaustein-writer-for-eddie-murphy-on-saturday-night-live-and-the-coming-to-america-films-dies-at-72","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/05\/12\/barry-blaustein-writer-for-eddie-murphy-on-saturday-night-live-and-the-coming-to-america-films-dies-at-72\/","title":{"rendered":"Barry Blaustein, Writer for Eddie Murphy on \u2018Saturday Night Live\u2019 and the \u2018Coming to America\u2019 Films, Dies at 72"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tBarry Blaustein, the former Saturday Night Live<\/a><\/em> writer whose decades-long collaboration with Eddie Murphy<\/a> included Buckwheat, Gumby and Mr. Robinson sketches and the Coming to America<\/em> and Nutty Professor<\/em> films, has died. He was 72.<\/p>\n

\tBlaustein\u2019s death was announced by Chapman University\u2019s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, where he was a longtime professor. After a rigorous battle with Parkinson\u2019s disease \u2014 he was diagnosed in mid-2016 \u2014 he was told last month that he had stage four pancreatic cancer. <\/p>\n

\t\u201cIt was one of the great pleasures of my life to know Barry,\u201d former THR<\/em> editor and writer Stephen Galloway, now dean of Dodge College, said in a statement. \u201cHe faced his declining health with a level of stoicism I\u2019ve never seen and kept his warmth and humor throughout. Even when he could no longer drive, he kept on teaching. It\u2019s a sign of how beloved he was that a group of faculty created a shuttle service to take him back and forth to Chapman. He\u2019s irreplaceable. We\u2019ll miss him enormously.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\tIn what he called \u201cthe favorite thing he had ever done,\u201d Blaustein wrote, directed, produced and narrated the 1999 documentary Beyond the Mat<\/em>, a look inside the Vince McMahon-led World Wrestling Federation and another circuit, Extreme Championship Wrestling. It was one of the 12 finalists for the Oscar for best documentary.<\/p>\n

\tHe also helmed the features The Ringer<\/em> (2005), featuring Johnny Knoxville, Brian Cox and Katherine Heigl in a comedy revolving around the Special Olympics, and Peep World<\/em> (2010), a dysfunctional family dramedy starring Michael C. Hall, Sarah Silverman, Rainn Wilson and Ben Schwartz. \t<\/p>\n

\tBlaustein, who grew up on Long Island, and David Sheffield, who was raised in Biloxi, Mississippi, were hired for SNL<\/em> before its sixth season kicked off in 1980, and Murphy was new to the show as well. (This was the year producer Jean Doumanian took over for Lorne Michaels, but she lasted just 13 episodes before being fired.)<\/p>\n

\tBlaustein and Sheffield became writing partners, and as they were promoted to head writers and then to supervising producers before they left SNL<\/em> after three seasons in 1983, they clicked with Murphy and wrote exclusively for him, contributing to some of the most memorable work of his career.<\/p>\n

\tWith their help, Murphy hilariously riffed on an iconic cartoon character (\u201cI\u2019m Gumby, dammit!\u201d<\/a>), a popular Little Rascals actor (Buckwheat<\/a>, who they would wind up assassinating<\/a>) and a legendary kids show host (Fred Rogers from Mister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\t\u201cMr. Rogers actually came up to the offices one day,\u201d Blaustein told<\/a> NPR\u2019s Terry Gross in a 2000 interview. \u201cHe basically said, \u2018You\u2019ve had your fun, now stop doing the sketches.\u2019 We were tired of doing them anyway.\u201d So Mr. Robinson<\/a>, he of the inner city, was retired.<\/p>\n

\tThe pair also penned bits that had Murphy playing James Brown (in a Celebrity Hot Tub<\/a>), Stevie Wonder<\/a>, Jesse Jackson and the pitchman Velvet Jones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\tWhen Murphy had an idea for the film that would become Coming to America<\/a><\/em> (1988), he asked Blaustein and Sheffield to write the script, and the John Landis-directed, R-rated movie finished No. 3 at the worldwide box office that year. \t<\/p>\n

\tThe pair then wrote on the Murphy starrers Boomerang<\/em> (1992), the 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor<\/em> and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps<\/em> (2000) before reuniting one more time on Coming 2 America<\/a><\/em> (2021).<\/p>\n

\tBorn on Sept. 10, 1954, Barry Wayne Blaustein grew up in Westbury, New York. Murphy, meanwhile, was from nearby Roosevelt, and he told Blaustein he used to come to his town and steal bicycles. \u201cI had my bike stolen as a kid,\u201d he said, \u201cso I always accused him of having my bike.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBlaustein graduated from W.T. Clarke High School in 1972 and NYU and after a brief stay in Los Angeles landed a writing job in 1979 on The<\/em> Mike Douglas Show<\/em>, a syndicated daytime program he used to watch with his grandmother.<\/p>\n

\tWhen Murphy began on SNL<\/em> in 1980, he was a lower-tier \u201cfeatured\u201d castmember, \u201clike the rookies on the bench who never get into the game,\u201d as Blaustein put it<\/a> in a 2023 interview. \u201cThe [main] cast wasn\u2019t setting the world on fire, so [he and Sheffield] felt, \u2018Why not try writing for this guy?\u2019 And man, the minute he stepped on camera, it was like, \u2018Whoa, he\u2019s got it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\tFor their first movie, Blaustein and Sheffield wrote Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment<\/em> (1985) before hitting it big with Coming to America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\tA year later, they (and former SNL<\/em> producer Bob Tischler) wrote a pilot for a Murphy-produced CBS series called What\u2019s Alan Watching?<\/em> that the critics loved, but it didn\u2019t get picked up.<\/p>\n

\tBlaustein and Sheffield also wrote on the ill-advised 2005 feature remake of The Honeymooners<\/em>, starring Cedric the Entertainer and Mike Epps, and returned to SNL<\/em> some 36 years after they left to write for Murphy when he hosted in 2019 for the show\u2019s most-watched episode since 2008. \t<\/p>\n

\tThey never considered a film sequel to Coming to America<\/em> until they exhausted their efforts to bring it to the stage. By then, Blaustein had been diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\tHe said he didn\u2019t tell Paramount about his illness \u201cbecause I didn\u2019t think they would hire me if they knew,\u201d he said<\/a> in an interview for the Parkinson\u2019s Foundation. \u201cPlus, I\u2019m past an age when they hire [writers]. I finally told Eddie about it, and he was very supportive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tHe added: \u201cYou\u2019ve got to be realistic, but you\u2019ve got to stay upbeat because you can\u2019t let this disease defeat you. It wants you to stay home, it wants you to lie down, to go into your shell. That\u2019s not a way to live a life. You\u2019ve got to fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBlaustein was always a big pro wrestling fan but embarrassed to let people know it \u2014 until his then-wife threw him a surprise 40th birthday party and got legendary grappler Dusty Rhodes to attend. He decided to embark on a documentary.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI knew the behind-the-scenes life was interesting, but how does it affect their families?\u201d he said<\/a> on a 2021 episode of The Gary and Kenny Show<\/em> podcast. \u201cHow does pretending to be a superhero for 15 minutes a day, when you are in control of everything \u2026 what happens the rest of the day?\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBlaustein spent two years getting funding and approval, then took another year traveling around the country with WWE wrestlers \u2014 but without cameras to earn their trust. His Imagine Entertainment doc winds up focusing on three wrestlers at different stages of their careers: Mick Foley, aka \u201cMankind,\u201d Terry Funk and Jake \u201cThe Snake\u201d Roberts. (He would give Funk a role in The Ringer<\/em>.) \t<\/p>\n

\tMcMahon was not happy with the film and threatened to sue to stop it from ever being seen.<\/p>\n

\tBlaustein also directed the 2009 documentary Guys N\u2019 Divas: Battle of the Highschool Musicals<\/em> and over two summers helped create a Russian TV comedy called Fizruk<\/em>, or Gym Teacher<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\tSurvivors include his wife, Debra, whom he married in 2021; his children, Corey and Kasey; and his granddaughter, Daisy.<\/p>\n

\tBlaustein taught screenwriting as a full-time professor at Chapman University since 2012. A memorial service will be held at the school, with details to be announced.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cThere was a student [in his class] who was struggling with her script, and I knew she had talent,\u201d Blaustein said<\/a> in 2015. \u201cThe same day they announced the filming of Coming 2 America<\/em>, that student handed in a version of her script where she finally got it. I was more excited about that than I was about Coming 2 America<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI find teaching students really inspiring, and I hope to make them better writers, because I know they make me a better writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tScott Feinberg contributed to this report<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barry Blaustein, the former Saturday Night Live writer whose decades-long collaboration with Eddie Murphy included Buckwheat, Gumby and Mr. Robinson sketches and the Coming to America and Nutty Professor films, has died. He was 72. Blaustein\u2019s death was announced by Chapman University\u2019s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, where he was a longtime professor. After a rigorous battle with Parkinson\u2019s disease \u2014 he was diagnosed in mid-2016 \u2014 he was told last month that he had stage four pancreatic cancer. \u201cIt was one of the great pleasures of my life to know Barry,\u201d former THR editor and writer Stephen Galloway, now dean of Dodge College, said in a statement. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[946,2,27,60,100,556],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eddie-murphy","category-hollywood","category-movie-news","category-movies","category-obituaries","category-saturday-night-live"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}