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An unassuming screenwriter and actor, Mr. Henry thought up quirky characters with Mel Brooks and inhabited many more on “Saturday Night Live.” Buck Henry, a writer and actor who exerted an often overlooked but potent influence on television and movie comedy — creating the loopy prime-time spy spoof “Get Smart” with Mel Brooks, writing the script for Mike Nichols’s landmark social satire “The Graduate” and teaming up with John Belushi in the famous samurai sketches on “Saturday Night Live” — died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 89. A friend, Dianne V. Lawrence, said Mr. Henry’s wife, Irene Ramp,...

Buck Henry, an actor, director, comedian and writer who was nominated for two Academy Awards, died on Wednesday at the age of 89, Deadline reported . Henry died from a heart attack at Cedars-Sinai Health Center in Los Angeles, Deadline reported, citing a family member.

Hoffman agrees that The Graduate’s success is a salutary reminder to the film industry of today that it takes bold creative decisions to bust apart conventional wisdom and make films that reflect real people’s lives. However, he’s sceptical about the movies’ ability to tackle racism. “I don’t think that’s ever going to go away,” he says. “I think there’s always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can’t feel that they have any hero qualities unless there’s someone beneath them.” He laughs. Does that account for the rise of...

.... ...The song helped. Years and years ago, at his home in Montauk, Paul Simon showed me his draft sheets for the lyrics. He was late delivering the three new pieces he'd promised (Dave Grusin wrote the orchestral score) so he told Mike Nichols he'd had an idea for a song that was a remembrance of things past - about Joe DiMaggio and whatnot. "But I don't know if the song's called 'Mrs Roosevelt' or 'Mrs Robinson'," he said. "We're making a movie here," snapped Nichols. "It's 'Mrs Robinson'." .... Their cleverest scene together is the one in which Benjamin...

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A Malaysian man slapped his wife on their wedding night and stormed out of their home after she received a text message from an unknown admirer who professed his undying love for her. "Though you are married, I still love you," was the message that flashed on the screen of the 19-year-old woman's mobile phone just as the couple were about to enter their room at 2 a.m. Sunday, official news agency Bernama reported. Her husband, 25, refused to believe the woman's statement that she did not know who the sender was, hit her, tossed away...

TWENTY seconds. That, give or take a few seconds, is how long the beauteous movie star Kathleen Turner stands stark naked in "The Graduate," the weary new comedy that opened last night at the Plymouth Theater. This dimly lighted moment of exposure generated heavy-breathing headlines in London when Ms. Turner appeared there two years ago in the same play (inspired by the 1967 film of the same title), and it is presumably one big reason the show's New York incarnation has a $5.3 million advance ticket sale. (It doesn't hurt that the production features Jason Biggs and Alicia Silverstone, the...