RIP Charles Shyer

 

Charles Shyer, Writer-Director on ‘Baby Boom’ and the ‘Father of the Bride’ Remakes, Dies at 83

He co-wrote 'Smokey and the Bandit' before sharing an Oscar nom with then-wife and frequent collaborator Nancy Meyers for 'Private Benjamin.'

The Hollywood Reporter

By Chris Koseluk

December 28, 2024

 

Charles Shyer, the director and Oscar-nominated writer who teamed with then-wife Nancy Meyers on such audience-pleasing, feel-good comedies as Private Benjamin, Irreconcilable Differences, Baby Boom and Father of the Bride, has died. He was 83.

Shyer died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a brief illness, his daughter Hallie Meyers-Shyer, writer and director of the 2017 Reese Witherspoon comedy Home Again, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The son of veteran assistant director Melville Shyer, one of the founders of the DGA, Shyer started out writing for sitcoms like The Odd Couple and The Partridge Family with then-partner Alan Mandel before they broke into the movies with the box office smash Smokey and the Bandit (1977), starring Burt Reynolds and Sally Field.

Shyer’s career skyrocketed when he joined forces with Meyers and Harvey Miller to pen the screenplay for Private Benjamin (1980), directed by Howard Zieff and featuring Goldie Hawn in her first big-screen starring role. The comedy, about a naive Jewish American princess who enlists in the U.S. Army after becoming a widow on her wedding night, earned the trio an Oscar nomination for original screenplay. (Bo Goldman won for Melvin and Howard.)

Meyers and Shyer married in 1980 and, for the next two decades, they established themselves as one of the most successful husband-and-wife creative teams in films. Their relationship comedies uncannily tapped into the pulse of popular American culture.

Irreconcilable Differences (1984), which marked Shyer’s big-screen directing debut, poked fun at the country’s hyper-litigious tendencies with a tale of a 9-year-old (Drew Barrymore) who files suit to divorce her parents (Shelley Long, Ryan O’Neal) because of their constant bickering.

Baby Boom (1987), also helmed by Shyer, played off the concept that a woman can have a career and a family too by exploring what happens when a high-powered New York management consultant (Diane Keaton) suddenly finds herself taking care of an infant after the death of a long-lost cousin.

Meyers and Shyer enjoyed their biggest success by poking fun at weddings and the havoc they can bring with Father of the Bride (1991). A spirited remake of the 1950 classic, it starred Steve Martin as a hapless dad who must come to grips with the fact that his little girl (Kimberly Williams) is all grown up and about to marry.

“Steve Martin contacted us. He had seen Baby Boom and really liked it. And there was a script already written that he didn’t love,” Shyer told Alex Ferrari on a 2021 episode of the Indie Film Hustle podcast.

“We loved Steve so much. And he was in New York. I had never seen the original Father of the Bride. I didn’t even know it existed. It wouldn’t be my kind of movie, necessarily. But we said, ‘Yes. Let’s go meet Steve.’ So we got on the airplane, and I hadn’t read the script yet. Right? I just knew I wanted to direct Steve. I read the script. And I wanted to jump out of the airplane.”

But the lure of working with Martin was too good to resist. Knowing they could rewrite the screenplay to play to his comedic strengths, Shyer and Meyers signed on and watched the original, featuring Spencer Tracy as the dad and Elizabeth Taylor as the bride.

“The material has been successfully refurbished with new jokes and new attitudes, but the earlier film’s most memorable moments have been preserved,” Janet Maslin wrote of Father of the Bride in her review for The New York Times.

Like the original, Father of the Bride gave birth to a sequel. Taking a cue from Father’s Little Dividend (1951), Shyer and Meyers mined laughs from Martin’s George Banks dealing with becoming a grandfather in Father of the Bride Part II (1995).

Between the two movies, the couple contributed to the script of the ensemble comedy Once Upon a Crime… (1992) and mounted a tribute to the screwball comedies of the 1930s with the Julia Roberts-Nick Nolte starrer I Love Trouble (1994).

Meyers and Shyer divorced in 1999. Their last official collaboration was the screenplay for The Parent Trap (1998), featuring Lindsay Lohan in her movie debut. The remake of the 1961 Disney comedy also marked Meyers’ debut as a director. (Shyer, though, told The Hollywood Reporter that Meyers helped him on his 2022 Netflix film, The Noel Diary.)

He also helmed I Love Trouble; directed The Affair of the Necklace (2001), starring Hilary Swank; and co-wrote and directed a 2004 remake of Alfie, featuring Jude Law.

Charles Richard Shyer was born in Los Angeles on Oct. 11, 1941, to Lois and Melville Shyer. A jack-of-all-trades, his dad learned from the likes of D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett, served as head of production for Chesterfield Pictures and was a founding member of Progressive Pictures, one of the first independent film companies.

During his 50-plus years in Hollywood, the elder Shyer also directed a handful of films, including The Murder in the Museum (1934) and Mad Youth (1939), and played a key role in establishing the DGA in 1936.

His son, after graduating from UCLA, was one of the first people to enter the DGA apprentice program.

“I used to go onto the set with him when I was a kid all the time,” Shyer recalled. “I was kind of a natural. If he’d been a dry cleaner, I probably would have gone into the dry cleaning business. But I went into the movie business.”

SHYER, Charles (Charles Richard Shyer)

Born: 10/11/1941, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

Died: 12/27/2024, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

 

Charles Shyer’s western – screenwriter:

Goin’ South - 1978