"[5] He returned to New York City in the mid 1960s where he met and befriended the artists Claes Oldenburg, Robert Frank, and Philip Glass, all of whom he collaborated with at some point.
Quake, published in 1974, takes place in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where mankind's worst impulses are acted out in one long, unbroken narrative.
It has been suggested that Slow Fade was influenced by Wurlitzer's time with director Sam Peckinpah on the set of Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, for which he wrote the screenplay.
At some point, Monte Hellman, who had been directing films for Roger Corman read Wurlitzer's novel Nog and approached him about writing the screenplay for Two-Lane Blacktop.
He wrote the libretto for Philip Glass's opera In the Penal Colony, and has also written four television scripts for 100 Centre Street, directed by Sidney Lumet.