MARDIK MARTIN

(16 September 1934 - 11 September 2019)

The Hollywood screenwriter Mardik Martin, who has died from a stroke at the age of 85, was chiefly known for his work with director Martin Scorsese. Born in Iran, but raised in Iraq, Martin was an American of Armenian descent. He left Iraq to go to New York where he met fellow student Martin Scorsese at New York University. He graduated with a Master’s degree in screenwriting in 1968 and then taught at NYU for five years. He and Scorsese began making films together, the first a student short in 1964 called It’s Not Just You, Murray! Martin then did treatments for Scorsese’s documentaries Italianamerican, The Last Waltz and American Boy. Season of the Witch was the film that ultimately became Mean Streets. Together they worked on New York, New York which Martin wrote with Earl Mac Rauch and Raging Bull which he wrote with Paul Schrader. Martin also wrote Valentino with director Ken Russell, worked as a Hollywood script doctor and appeared as an actor in Scorsese’s New York, New York, Raging Bull and The King of Comedy. He also wrote an autobiographical documentary Mardik: Baghdad to Hollywood in 2008. His final work in 2014 was as co-writer on Fatih Akin’s The Cut, a film about the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915. From 2014 he taught at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Mardik Martin was the winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arpa International Film Festival in Hollywood in 2007.

MICHAEL DARVELL