Mardik Martin, the co-screenwriter behind Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, New York, New York and Raging Bull, has died. He was 84, The Hollywood Reporter reported.

Martin died Wednesday at his home in Studio City of a stroke, the WGA West said. His friend and screenwriter Howard Rodman also shared the news in a Facebook post.

Of Armenian descent, Martin was born in Iran on September 16, 1934, but raised in Iraq.

He left for America at age 18 and studied at NYU in the early 1960s, when he met fellow student Scorsese.

“We spent a lot of time together aside from writing,” Martin told the Los Angeles Times of his college friendship with Scorsese.

Aside from his work with Scorsese, Martin co-wrote the screenplay to the late Ken Russell’s 1977 film Valentino.

He spent much of his later life teaching screenwriting with stints at universities.

Martin’s final film work was co-writing the screenplay to Turkish German director Fatih Akin’s 2014 film The Cut, which explored the legacy of the Armenian Genocide, a subject close to his heart.

In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, the Armenian Film Society said: “Mardik Martin was an incredible voice in film and made significant contributions to cinema as a screenwriter, most notably through his collaboration with Martin Scorsese. Their work together resulted in some of cinema’s most essential films. Mardik Martin was a towering figure in the Armenian community, as well as the history of film—and he will truly be missed.”