Writer-Director Charles Shyer has left Earth. He was 83. He could have just been known as the writer of “The Odd Couple” series, “Smokey and the Bandit,” and “Goin’ South,” but Hollywood had other plans for him.
Shyer ended up building a career out of mainstream feel-good relationship movies, around two decades’ worth of them — “Private Benjamin,” “Irreconcilable Differences,” “Baby Boom,” “Father of the Bride,” “Father of the Bride Part II,” “The Parent Trap” (which ex-wife Nancy Meyers directed — Shyer co-wrote and produced).
Shyer should also be semi-credited for unintentionally pulling the Coens out of a bad case of writers’ block in 1988, and assisting in the making of two stone cold masterpieces in their filmography.
It was only after watching “Baby Boom,” which starred Diane Keaton as a “super-yuppie” who inherits a baby from a distant relative, that sparked something inside the Coens. They felt “rejuvenated,” whistling the “Baby Boom” theme as they left the theatre and going on to finish their script for “Miller’s Crossing.” A few weeks later, they started writing their Palme d’Or winning “Barton Fink.” We somehow have Shyer to thank for that.