With the sad news about the death of legendary playwright Neil Simon at the age of 91, The New York Times posted a wonderfully touching video tribute that included footage from a 2008 interview. This memorial also cites examples from Simon’s prolific writing career, how he used his own personal history as a guide, how he learned to how to write plays and how he created a new form of comedy that used humor as a storytelling device.
He redefined comedy, using humor not simply to entertain, but to tell soulful stories about the frictions of urban life and family intimacy. …After a number of plays about his failed marriages, Simon returned to writing about his childhood struggles in Jewish working-class New York.
