David Zelag Goodman

Who was David Zelag Goodman?

David Zelag Goodman was a playwright and screenwriter for both TV and film. His most prolific period was from the 1960s to the early 1980s. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Lovers and Other Strangers, though he did not win. He co-wrote, with Sam Peckinpah, the screenplay for 1971's controversial Straw Dogs. He died less than two weeks after the remake was released. Other films that he wrote or co-wrote included Logan's Run, Monte Walsh, and Farewell My Lovely. He also wrote a number of the episodes of the Untouchables in the early 1960s.

Born in Manhattan, he majored in English at Queens College, then studied at Yale Drama School in 1958. At age 24, his play, High Named Today, which was to have starred Jane Wyatt on Broadway, ended up running briefly Off Broadway in February 1954. He was often sought as a "script doctor" because he could quickly identify screenplay flaws, as when Sherry Lansing brought him in to work on the thriller Fatal Attraction. According to his friend, the film and television producer Zev Braun, Goodman said to Lansing of the Glenn Close character: "You can't let her off the hook. You should kill her. Let's drown her!"