Robert Klane, a comic novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker with a taste for gleeful vulgarity who wrote the screenplay for “Weekend at Bernie's,” the 1989 cult film about two young insurance company employees who create the illusion that their murdered boss is still alive, died on Aug. 29 at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif. His son Jon said the cause was kidney failure. Mr. Klane wrote “Weekend at Bernie’s” more than two decades into a career that began with the publication of two humorous novels: “The Horse Is Dead: A Tasteless Novel” (1968) and “Where’s Poppa?” (1970). He adapted “Where’s Poppa?” into the screenplay for a twisted comedy about a single lawyer (played by George Segal) who dreams of scaring to death or institutionalizing his aged, maddening mother (Ruth Gordon). Ted Kotcheff, who directed “Weekend at Bernie’s,” wrote in his 2017 memoir, “Director’s Cut: My Life in Film,” that Mr. Klane had been inspired to write it by his time as an advertising copywriter in the 1960s, when the top executives at one of the agencies where he worked invited employees to their beach houses on Long Island.

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Persons: Robert Klane, Jon, Klane, George Segal, maddening, Ruth Gordon, Ted Kotcheff, ” Locations: Woodland Hills, Calif, Long