Defending Albert Brooks

Monday is about movies. And sometimes TV. Today, The Genius: Albert Brooks. New documentary alert.

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life is a new Showtime documentary. In New Zealand, it’s available via Neon. I stopped what I was doing on Friday night and made it the appointment viewing. I’d been waiting for this doc to arrive. And I was not disappointed.

I have no idea where and when I first properly clocked Albert Brooks. He was in Broadcast News, and I liked that film - so that was possibly my introduction. He has done a lot of guest voices on The Simpsons and I know I saw his name in the credits. Of course he’s a voice in Finding Nemo, but at some point, many years ago, I sat down and watched whatever I could find featuring Brooks on YouTube.

He was a comedian in the 1970s, one of the superstar comics, like Steve Martin, like Richard Pryor, though he was different again.

He made short films on the first season of Saturday Night Live - but more than that, he gave them the format. He was such a big star, they were going to get him to host a regular skit show, it was his idea to have a guest host each week. Now, over 40 years later, the “digital shorts” are a highlight of SNL, usually the viral meme hit of the week. That started, in 1975, with Albert Brooks’ surreal mockumentary shorts, one part Woody Allen, one part Monty Python, one important part something else altogether.

Brooks using a spelling toy on Johnny Carson. Brooks explaining mime as he does it. Brooks botching ventriloquism. Brooks ruining nature documentaries. He became the character of Albert Brooks, a stuck-up, full of himself filmmaker and/or comic superstar. His comedy was meta-af.

But maybe you know Albert Brooks as the forearm slicing villian in 2011’s dark thriller, Drive. Or from his role in This Is 40. He does pop up in things from time to time still. He was a “Covid Hoarder” in the most recent season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The new documentary nicely skims through all of this, framed by a discussion with his friend and fellow comic-turned-filmmaker, Rob Reiner. They’ve been buddies since school. They both had showbiz dads, they both went from comedy careers in front of the camera to work behind the lens. Reiner directed some of the best films of the 1980s and 1990s - and he is the director of Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.

Albert Brooks is the director of some of the very best comedies of the 1980s and 1990s. Idiosyncratic gems. When I first saw them, they blew my mind. Real Life (1979) comments on the very earliest reality TV and essentially invents the mockumentary, ahead of Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap. But it’s 1981’s Modern Romance that knocks me out the most. The greatest rom-com ever? I think so. Then there’s 1985’s Lost In America, in which Brooks and Julie Hagerty play a couple who quit their jobs and buy a mobile home, off to discover America. Only problem is they lose their life savings gambling in Las Vegas on the first stop. It’s almost as if Albert Brooks is the comedy-version of Martin Scorsese, poking at America’s dark heart.

The documentary takes its title from Brooks’ 1991 masterpiece, Defending Your Life, where in the afterlife he must defend every decision he made in order to get into heaven. Again, it’s a somewhat Woody Allen-esque pitch, but better handled. (And you don’t have to feel creepy defending your love of it; huge bonus!)

There’s also 1996’s Mother, 1999’s The Muse and 2005’s Looking For Comedy In The Muslim World - and then there are his appearances in films that he didn’t write and direct. Including, of course, his role as Russ Cargill in The Simpsons Movie.

Brooks wrote a novel - the very funny 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America and now raises a family with his wife. And hides out, not seeking attention until he has some work to promote.

His career is amazing. Filled with highlights, and his comedy is inimitable. His voice so distinct and influential, so unlikely to ever be replicated.

I watched the new doco, knowing every beat of it already. The touchpoints, and where it was going to go. And yet, I loved it. I wasn’t bored, I didn’t figure I knew it all already. It gave me more reasons to love Brooks and his work. All it made me want to do was share that love of Brooks’ work, and dig in for a big rewatch too. Those movies he made so special, so funny, so filled with a unique kind of wisdom.

I’ve been a listener of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, for the best part of a decade. Only this year I’ve given it away, deciding I can’t keep up, I’ve done my time, I no longer need to hear each episode regardless. But I was well aware that Maron’s “white whale” was Albert Brooks. He had reached out to him several times, all but begging for an interview. The declines of an invite were always polite. And one time, brilliantly, Brooks tapped him on the shoulder at the wake for fellow comic, Garry Shandling, and whispered, “Did you bring the mics? Shall we do the podcast now?” Which is a joke so wonderful, that Maron has shared it perhaps never quite acknowledging the irony, the deep dig that Brooks was making. A cat toying with the already dead mouse.

Anyway, I was thrilled that, as part of the press round for this new film, Brooks granted Maron a chat. He got his wish. And it was worth listening to as well. Again, there’s a deep irony there that he only agreed to talk after he’d already been filmed sharing everything he needed to. But I don’t think he was maliciously mocking Maron. He still gave a great interview and charming chat.

I’m so filled with admiration when I consider the idiosyncratic work of Albert Brooks. A true comic genius.

And I’ve been wanting to write something saying basically that for some time now. But this documentary gives the perfect context.

If you haven’t yet seen it, dive in. You won’t be disappointed.