Bo Goldman, a Hollywood screenwriter who took home Oscars for his work on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) and “Melvin and Howard” (1980), died on July 25 in Helendale, CA. He was 90.

Film director Martin Brest, for whom Mr. Goldman worked on two films, “Scent of a Woman” (1992) and “Meet Joe Black” (1998), recalled that Mr. Goldman was known as “the screenwriter’s screenwriter,” but that he called him “the man with the X-ray ears, because he had a pitch-perfect recall of the nuances of a comment that someone made to someone 50 years prior.” He could reproduce the tone of the comment, Mr. Brest said, “because the tone told the whole story.”

Mr. Brest said Mr. Goldman was able to create memorable characters through small details. “His remembrance of nuances, things that people don’t know they’re revealing but that reveal volumes — that was his art form,” he said.