PORT TOWNSEND — When Buck Henry wrote his first screenplay in the 1960s, no blue language was allowed, and writers were forced to be subtle when they were salacious.
“We used language more creatively,” said the writer and actor, who will be the Port Townsend Film Festival’s special guest this year during the event’s three days of movie screenings Sept. 23-25.
“These days, they use a lot of dirty language, and some of it can be pretty funny, but I can’t write like that,” Henry said Tuesday. “It’s too easy to write the toilet jokes over and over.”
The 80-year-old writer of such films as “The Graduate” and “Heaven Can Wait” also finds bad grammar pervasive and painful.
“If you watch shows like ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘Big Brother,’ they are making grammatical errors that are so horrible that it hurts your ears to listen to them speak,” he said.
“I blame it on what they hear on TV.”
Which means Henry, who has made much of his six-decade reputation on the small screen, is now biting the hand that feeds him.
Henry, announced today as the special guest at the 12th annual Port Townsend Film Festival, is the perfect festival guest, said Janette Force, executive director.
He is someone with a long, impressive resume who has not received the attention he deserves, she said.
Henry — born “Buck” Henry Zuckerman on Dec. 9, 1930, in New York City — has had parallel careers as a screenwriter and an actor, overlapping in some cases but always walking down the same path.
“I write scripts for my friends and people like me who are middle-class, college-educated white guys,” he said.
“I’m not writing for people my own age, since all of them are dead,” he said, adding that he has “never left my late 30s with the subject material.”
“I had always dreamed of travel and dating certain women, and that’s when those things started happening to me, and my imagination began to catch up with the things that were possible for me to do,” he said.
As it turns out, the audience for his films isn’t so narrow.
He wrote two of the defining films of the 1960s — “The Graduate” and “Catch 22” — two films starring Barbra Streisand — “The Owl and the Pussycat” and “What’s Up, Doc?” — and such diverse films as “Heaven Can Wait” and “To Die For.”
As a writer, Henry works alone, taking orders from the director but pretty much ignoring everyone else.
“I’ll listen to anyone’s ideas,” he said.
“But then I’ll just do what I want.”
He wrote the two Streisand films with her voice in mind, but in all his other films, the actors had yet to be cast when he was writing.
His acting credits include “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” “Defending Your Life” and “Grumpy Old Men,” all in memorable supporting roles.
Henry now limits his television diet to reality shows, “watching” while he is reading the newspaper, but it is on TV where he has made the largest mark.
In the 1960s, he was the co-writer with Mel Brooks for “Get Smart,” a trailblazing spy spoof.
“For ‘Get Smart,’ we created little self-contained movies, which was a different approach back then since most TV shows were more like plays,” Henry said.
“We had a stronger narrative feel.”
In the 1970s, he co-hosted “NBC’s Saturday Night” — later renamed “Saturday Night Live” — 10 times with the original cast, working as a comic foil to such actors as John Belushi and Steve Martin.
“I had no interest in being on that show after the original cast was gone,” he said.
Over the past 30 years, he has played guest roles on a variety of television series, including “Falcon Crest,” “Murphy Brown,” “Will and Grace” and “30 Rock.”
His most recent guest role is as Betty White’s boyfriend on the new sitcom “Hot in Cleveland.”
“They called me and asked me if I wanted to be Betty White’s boyfriend, and I said, ‘Sure, in life and in art,’” he said.
“All the actors on that show are so good that I hardly have to do anything.”
Henry has never visited Port Townsend and said he is looking forward to the experience.
He plans to arrive in Port Townsend from Los Angeles on Sept. 23.
During the festival, Henry will make several public appearances and will screen one of his favorite films in which he appeared, 1971’s “Taking Off.”
The screening will take place the evening of Sept. 24 at the Uptown Theatre, 1120 Lawrence St., and will be followed with a discussion of the film in which Henry will participate.
Tickets to the festival’s movie screenings are on sale now on the website, www.ptfilmfest.com.
For more information,visit the website or phone 360-379-1333.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
