OH, WHAT A ‘LIFE’
ALBERT BROOKS PUTS HIS BRAIN ON SCREEN FOR ALL TO SEE. ONE SPOT HAS BEEN REACTIVATED
FILMMAKER Albert Brooks crafted portraits of contemporary life that are somehow ironic and earnest, affectionate and misanthropic, stretching their knowing authenticity to skeptical absurdity.
A Hollywood kid, Brooks’ life and career cover an astonishing span of show business history. His father, Harry Einstein, was a popular radio comedian known as Parkyakarkus in the 1930s and ’40s. Dad died immediately after performing at the Friars Club induction of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in 1958, when Brooks was only 11. Brooks began performing on television variety shows in the late 1960s and had a successful stand-up comedy career in the 1970s. After making a series of short films for the first season of “Saturday Night Live,” he released his debut feature in 1979 with “Real Life.”
What came next was a poignant and pointed series of films — “Modern Romance” in 1981, “Lost in America” in 1985, “Defending Your Life” in 1991 and “Mother” in 1996 — snapshots of comfortably insulated, white middleclass American life, full of foibles, anxiety, ambition and discontent. “The Muse” (1999) and “Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World” (2005) continued his streak of idiosyncratic, deeply personal comedic films.
It’s notable that in his first and, for now, last films he played characters named Albert Brooks, exaggerated show business creatures who reveal outsize ego and insecurity.
As an actor, Brooks debuted in “Taxi Driver” and appeared in “Private Benjamin,” “Out of Sight,” “Drive,” “This Is 40” and “A Most Violent Year.” His performance as a jealous and principled TV news reporter in “Broadcast News” earned him a nomination for a supporting actor Oscar in 1988. His voice is featured in “Finding Nemo,” “Finding Dory,” “The Simpsons” and “The Secret Life of Pets.”
Brooks often collaborated on his scripts with Monica Johnson, who died in 2010, but “Defending Your Life” was one he wrote on his own.
In that film, which opened on March 22, 1991, and is newly available in a 30th anniversary restored disc from the Criterion Collection, Brooks imagines the afterlife as a bureaucratic waystation. People watch scenes from their life with a defense lawyer and prosecutor to decide whether their soul should move to the next evolutionary step or be sent back to try again. During his trial, Brooks’ Daniel Miller meets Julia (Meryl Streep), who seems on the path to a very different afterlife.
Brooks recently got on the phone to talk about the film and his career.
When someone mentions “Defending Your Life,” what comes to mind?
It depends on how they say it. “Do you know where I can find ...?” That’s a question. “Why the hell did you make ... ?” That’s another question. I don’t have pat feelings.
I’ve heard you say that “Defending Your Life” is
the movie people talk to you about the most. Why do you think that is?
I think it’s the subject of fear and death. When you get into those topics, you’re going to get much more emotion. If you talk about literally anything to do with dying and what that may mean, that’s something everybody thinks about.
Where did your idea of the afterlife come from? Did you do much research into different theologies or religions?
I was aware, certainly, of the way the Buddhists thought. I was aware of the religion that I was brought up in. I grew up in a religion that doesn’t really deal with hell. I can’t say that anything makes huge amounts of sense, but if one idea that you would have about death is that it’s literally nothing, that’s a hard sell. “And what would the movie be?” “Well, the screen goes dark and that’s it.” “OK. Well, let us think about it.”
And then I looked at the way the world works and it occurred to me that it would make sense that if the Earth were part of the universe, that the universe could work that way too. So that gave me the idea of a businesslike environment, just a giant corporation. And that’s sort of what the character of Rip Torn explains about the universe, that we’re just parts of a giant machine.
And if that part’s defective, we gotta go back and fix it up. And so I think that one of the big ideas of the movie was that this wasn’t the final resting place, that humans can do better somewhere else, where there’s more thought, more intelligence.
Do your characters represent your own concerns and anxieties?
Any movie that I wrote, that’s a bigger part of me. So, yes, I have thought that I’ve wasted a lot of my life being afraid when I shouldn’t have. And in “Mother,” there was a lot of my mother and the relationship that baby boomers had with their mothers. And so that would differentiate between an acting role. I mean, Cyril Wecht, who was the head of the hospital in “Concussion,” I didn’t write that.
But when you start writing, I at least write from something that’s meaningful to me. “Modern Romance,” there were aspects of that relationship that I went through that were terrible, but I thought it would make a good movie. Actually, “Lost in America” was mostly about the people in life that make these huge decisions that go bad in two weeks. That’s what fascinated me about life-changing decisions: “This is the way it’s going to be, we’re packing up.” You only hear about that and you assume it’s OK. I thought, what about all the others that get to Wyoming and go, “Jesus Christ, is this a mistake.”
“Defending Your Life” had a lot of versions.In one of the first versions Daniel was sent back. The last scene was a pasture with a horse and you knew it was him. That was one idea, but damn if it didn’t work its way into this very nice love story. The other would have been funny, but this was the movie it was meant to be.
Your films as a writerdirector really reflect their moment. They are very funny yet they each have deeper themes going on. Do you see comedy as the spoonful of sugar that lets you explore the bigger ideas?
The real answer is that I think I never even thought of it as comedy. I was naturally funny as a kid. I could make people laugh. When you’re trying to sell a movie, the studios, they perk up when they hear a comedy, so they’re called comedies. But when I’m working on them, I’m doing what you just said. I’m trying to tell a story that to me is real.
So I just look at the movies as individual stories. That’s most important. You could make it hysterically funny, but you have to tell the story. You learn that in previews. You’ll hear laughter so loud you can’t stand it, then at the end you’re getting these comments: “I don’t like what happened — I’m confused. Why did the person not get the promotion?” You realize, “Gee, all that laughter is not even adding up to a compliment.” What they’re watching is a story. If they liked the story and go with the characters, they’re not measuring laughs, but if it’s raucous but they’re not buying it, I’m in trouble at the end.
Tell me how you cast Meryl Streep. This was her pivot to comedy and there’s a relaxed quality to her performance that she hadn’t shown as much before.
I was friends with Carrie Fisher, and I came to her house once and Meryl Streep was there. She was just the easiestgoing person you would want to meet. It was like, “Wow, I didn’t know you were that person. I, like everybody else, thought you were the movie characters.” We talked about work and everything and she said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m just about ready to start a movie I’m really excited about.” She sort of smiled and said, “Is there a part in it for me?” I laughed and went, “Yeah, right.” And I went home and I thought, “Jesus, this would really work nicely.”
But what would work nicely is the person I spent those two hours with. She understood what I was going for. She literally let her hair down and just was this casual, easygoing person who happened to be, in the story, the perfect person. And she did that effortlessly. It was great for the story. It was great for me. I don’t think I would have thought of that if I didn’t have the experience of seeing it. Because, you know, Meryl Streep, as she racked up more and more performances, if you didn’t get a chance to meet her, you would just have no idea. You would just assume the person you’re seeing is Sophie, because that’s all you would know.
May I ask about your friendship with Carrie Fisher? Especially since her death, her legacy has just grown and grown. How did you meet?
God, I’ve known her for so long and I can’t remember the first time we met. I think the early ’70s. I think people introduced us because she was known to be really funny. So she was someone to be funny with and laugh with and do bits with. She was this magnetic personality. I didn’t remain extremely close as life continued because the lives became too different. Carrie had another kind of life that involved way more socialization than I felt comfortable doing, but I always remained her friend. She had these yearly parties that were the big ones, the only one I went to, that’s where you’d see everyone you ever met. Then a nice thing happened on the other side of our friendship, where I called her and said, “Do you think your mother could play my mother?”
And she said, “She’d be great.” So she went to work on Debbie [Reynolds, Fisher’s mother] and made Debbie feel comfortable about it. And that was a good person for me to cast. It was interesting that I called Carrie. Listen, Carrie was brilliant. She had her problems, as we all know, with substances and other stuff, and she worked through it as best she could, but she was really clever and really fun to talk to. And in the early ’70s, every guy left with a crush. Men were dropping at her feet.
Do you see yourself directing again?
I don’t think about it in those terms. I wrote a novel called “2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America,” and I had been working on that as a limited series. But the truth is, I think the pandemic has stopped it in its tracks. So I would have directed some of those. And if I wrote a screenplay, I would know what kind of movie I could get made now. I understand the landscape. And so if I wrote a movie for the new landscape, I’d be fine directing it. I mostly like to direct movies that I write, because directing by itself isn’t really what I longed to do. What I really liked to do was write, and then the directing serviced the writing.
The first movie I ever wrote, “Real Life,” I went to Carl Reiner, who I knew my whole life. I said, “Do you want to direct this?” He was smart enough to read it and say, “You have to do this. I won’t do this. This is your brain. You direct it.”
And it turns out that’s really what you have to do, because the directing is the casting and it’s how long the scene goes and how subtle something is. It’s all of those choices. And if you’ve written it, you want it handled right. And so you do it out of necessity.