David Zelag Goodman, screenwriter best known for ’70s films, dies at 81

Published 5:00 am Thursday, September 29, 2011

LOS ANGELES — David Zelag Goodman, a screenwriter best known for such 1970s films as the controversial psychological thriller “Straw Dogs” and “Lovers and Other Strangers,” a comedy that earned him an Oscar nomination, has died. He was 81.

Goodman died Monday at an assisted-living facility in Oakland, Calif., of progressive supranuclear palsy, a brain disorder, said his daughter, Kevis Goodman.

“He was a man for all seasons,” said his close friend Zev Braun, a film and television producer. “He went from biblical scholar (as a young man) to playwright to television and motion pictures and did some of the best of the ‘70s movies. That was when he was really on fire, so to speak.”

During his movie-writing heyday in the ‘70s, Goodman shared an Oscar nomination with Joseph Bologna and Renee Taylor for co-writing the screenplay for “Lovers and Other Strangers,” a 1970 comedy based on Bologna and Taylor’s play.

Goodman teamed with director Sam Peckinpah to co-write the screenplay for “Straw Dogs,” the Peckinpah-directed 1971 film starring Dustin Hoffman as a mild-mannered American mathematician living with his British wife (Susan George) in an English country village, a location that proves to be less than tranquil for the couple.

The film, which generated controversy for its violence, was described by Charles Champlin, then the Los Angeles Times’ film critic, as “an overpowering piece of storytelling, certain to remind every viewer of the wells of primal emotion lurking within himself, beneath the fragile veneer of civilized control.”

Goodman’s other film credits as a co-writer include “Monte Walsh,” a 1970 Western starring Lee Marvin, and “Eyes of Laura Mars,” a 1978 thriller starring Faye Dunaway.

He also wrote the screenplays for “Farewell, My Lovely,” a 1975 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe; and “Logan’s Run,” the 1976 science-fiction film starring Michael York.