Peter Shaffer screenplay for "Equus", he was nominated for the 1977 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar but the award went to Alvin Sargent, who wrote the screenplay for "Julia". For writing the screenplay for "Amadeus", Shaffer received both the 1984 Best Screenplay Golden Globe and the 1984 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. Shaffer was homosexual but did not write explicitly about it. His boyfriend Robert Leonard died in 1990. Shaffer died on June 6, 2016, at the age of ninety while on a trip to the south-west of Ireland. He co-wrote three detective novels with his brother Anthony Shaffer under the pseudonym "Peter Antony".
Paul Shaffer Hagen, Robert Plant, Peter Criss, Scandal, Brian Wilson, "Late Show" regular Warren Zevon, jazz trumpeter Lew Soloff, jazz saxophonist Lou Marini and bluegrass legend Earl Scruggs. In 1982, he co-wrote "It's Raining Men," with Paul Jabara. It was No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play charts, a No. 2 hit in the UK for The Weather Girls in 1984 and a UK No. 1 remake for Geri Halliwell in 2001. Shaffer and The World's Most Dangerous Band performed the Chuck Berry song "Roll over Beethoven" for the 1992 film "Beethoven". In 2017, Shaffer reunited with his band,