Barry Michael Cooper, a writer and producer who worked on several classic New York films, has died at the age of 66.
Cooper died Tuesday in Baltimore. His friend and fellow filmmaker Nelson George confirmed the death on his Substack. A cause of death has yet to be revealed.
The screenwriter is best known for his work on Harlem-based films “New Jack City,” “Sugar Hill” and “Above the Rim.”
He started his career as a journalist in the 1980s and made his screenwriting debut on the 1991 hit “New Jack City.”
The Harlem native wrote eye-opening chronicles of Harlem’s culture of fashion, music, literature and fashion as a journalist for The Village Voice and Spin Magazine before his screenwriting took off. He published pieces like “Teddy Riley’s New Jack Swing: Harlem Gangsters Raise a Genius,” and “Crack, a Tiffany Drug at Woolworth Prices”— hard-hitting pieces that gave readers a glimpse into the intricate world of Harlem and the effects of the crack epidemic.
Cooper’s 1987 piece “New Jack City Eats Its Young” served as inspiration for the Wesley Snipes-led “New Jack City” film.
“If there was no “New Jack,” there would be no “Boyz n the Hood,” there would be no “Menace II Society,” because it let the public know, and more importantly let the suits in the studios know, that these movies make money,” Cooper said in a 2007 interview with Stop Smiling. “I think it set it off.”
His last project was the 2017 television adaptation of Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It,” on which he worked as a producer and wrote three episodes.
Cooper is survived by his son Matthew.
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