Jeremy Larner, the famous screenwriter of the classic political satire The Candidate with Robert Redford, died on February 24, 2026, in a nursing home in Oakland, California. He was 88 years old and had been sick for a long time. He had lymphoma in January and Parkinson’s disease since 2013.
Larner’s big break came in the 1972 Warner Bros. movie The Candidate, which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Redford plays Bill McKay, an idealistic lawyer who runs for the Senate against a veteran incumbent (Don Porter) and has to deal with political compromise. He famously asks campaign manager Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle), “What do we do now?” His real-life work as a speechwriter for Senator Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign gave the script real satire, based on McCarthy’s anti-war challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Before moving to Hollywood, Larner worked at Harvard as a journalist and novelist. He worked with Jack Nicholson on the 1971 movie “Drive, He Said,” making changes that were not credited to him along with Terrence Malick and Robert Towne. The movie got mixed reviews at Cannes. Larner said in a 2016 interview that none of the more than a dozen screenplays he wrote after The Candidate, including drafts for North Dallas Forty, were as successful.
Larner thanked “the political figures of our time” for inspiration in his Oscar speech in 1973. He said that if powerful language continued, movies would get better. Redford and director Michael Ritchie chose him over others because he had a unique view of the campaign from the inside, and they often brainstormed in his kitchen. The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times were among the news outlets that Jesse Larner, his son, confirmed the news to.
