Michael Herr, American author and screenwriter, Died at 76

  Writers

Michael Herr was born on April 13, 1940, and died on June 23, 2016.

He was an American writer and former war correspondent,

Herr was best known as the author of Dispatches (1977), a memoir of his time as a correspondent for Esquire magazine (1967–1969) during the Vietnam War.

His book was called the best “to have been written about the Vietnam War” by The New York Times Book Review; novelist John le Carré called it “the best book I have ever read on men and war in our time.”

Herr published nothing, from 1971 to 1975.

Following that, Micheal went on the road in 1977with rock & roller Ted Nugent and wrote about the experience in a 1978 cover story for Crawdaddy magazine.

Herr published Dispatches in 1977, upon which his reputation mostly rests.

He contributed to the narration for Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979).

Herr was a co-wrote the screenplay for the film Full Metal Jacket (1987) with director Stanley Kubrick and author Gustav Hasford.

However, Tthe film was based on Hasford’s novel The Short-Timers and the screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award.

He then joined forces with Richard Stanley in writing the original screenplay for the 1996 adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau.

But, Stanley had claimed the subsequent rewrites cost Herr his writing credit, omitting most of the material created by the two writers.

That omission probably worked to his favor, however, since the movie was panned by critics and earned credited writers Stanley and Ron Hutchinson a Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay of 1997.

Micheal Herr wrote a pair of articles for Vanity Fair about Stanley Kubrick, which were later incorporated into the small book – Kubrick (2000) – a very personal biography of the director.

Michael Herr declined to edit the script of Kubrick’s last film Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

Michael Herr passed away at 76 yrs old.