Albert Brooks, ‘This Is 40’ Star, On Oscar Snubs, Working In LA & The Danger Of Twitter
“Chris, it’s Albert Brooks. How are you?”
That’s how this 41-minute, 58-second conversation with Albert Brooks began. The actor-writer-director-novelist-comedian-tweeter-husband-father is one of Hollywood’s best conversationalists, something recent appearances on “Late Night With David Letterman” and in the pages of Vanity Fair are quick to remind anyone who has forgotten.
The last two years have been exciting for both Brooks and his fans. In 2011, he appeared in “Drive” as a violent gangster, an against-type turn that gave Brooks the chance to stab a guy in the eye with a fork. After Brooks took home a slew of critical awards, many assumed he would receive an Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category for his troubles. (He was previously nominated in 1988 for “Broadcast News.”) That didn’t happen, however, making Brooks the latest in a long-line actors who experienced awards-season unfairness first hand.
“It was an honor to be snubbed,” Brooks jokes now about the experience.
The lack of Oscar recognition aside, “Drive” seems to have rejuvenated Brooks — who also published his first novel, “2030,” last year. He was cast as Paul Rudd’s onscreen dad in “This Is 40,” Judd Apatow’s “sort-of sequel” to “Knocked Up.” In that film, out in theaters Friday, Brooks co-stars as Los Angeles resident dealing with family, relationships and what happens when parents get old. Brooks touched on that topic, his problem with social media, the lack of surprises in today’s society and even “The Hobbit” (yes) in the chat below.
Do you like doing this stuff?
You know, I sort of like it because it gives me an excuse to go on these shows. [Ed. note: In the last few weeks, Brooks has appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman,” “The Tonight Show,” “The View” and “Good Morning America.”] I like to do the shows — otherwise, I would never do anything. Like Letterman says, “Why don’t you just come and do the show?” “Because I live 3,000 miles away!” “You can come to New York.” “Well, I know, but that involves going to LAX.” To get on a plane just to do a bit? It’s crazy. So, to do some of these, it forces me to sort of deal — I feel like I’m going to do these “Tonight Show” bits.
What’s the trick to doing so well on Letterman? He seems like an imposing type for less experienced talk-show guests.
You’ve got to remember, I started before Dave Letterman started. So I think maybe if I was 19 it would be imposing, but we’re of the same ilk. None of this was ever really imposing, even when I was very young and doing Steve Allen. Basically, if you make people laugh — and if they like what you do — then it’s sort of a tennis match. It’s even. I had so many years of doing variety shows before I ever went to the Johnny Carson show that I didn’t have the fear people who made their first appearance on television, when they did the old “Tonight Show” had. Which was if Johnny didn’t like you, you were done. I had an established presence before I even went there. I didn’t have that fear. But if you were just starting out, you’d want to make sure you’re liked.
How has that aspect of the business has changed in the last few decades?
There are so many shows on. When you did it in the heyday of “The Tonight Show,” which was the only game in town, that was 14 million people. It wasn’t just that; it was people you’d see the next day. It was a very show-business, comedy-centric audience. Anyone in Los Angeles you ran into would have seen the show. Now, because there are so many shows, you sort of have to let people know you’re on it and they can DVR it. There’s no immediate presence. I was thinking about this yesterday. I would imagine the only thing that is probably the same are major sporting events. Because if you’re in the playoffs or the Super Bowl, you get the same reaction the next day that you would have 20 years ago. That and horrific news events are really the remaining viewing that has to be done in real time.
I feel like we should talk about the movie as well.
Go ahead, I’m not in a hurry.
You haven’t made a lot of movies in the last 10 years. What was it about “This Is 40” that made you say yes.
Well. I guess the main thing is I’ve known Judd for a long time. Judd produces 14 movies and he only directs a few, and I was more interested in working with him as opposed to being offered something that was one of the 15 other productions. I think he wanted to do that too, but he also wanted to come with a part that he thought I could appreciate. I had written in my novel about what I believe will happen in the generations. In my story, there was great hostility from the younger people toward the older people. But part of what I was writing was what Judd was thinking here, which is the way that parents become the children. I liked that aspect. I liked the in vitro [subplot]; I liked the accidental family; I liked having to mooch off your kid. That to me sounded like something I could dig my teeth into a little bit.
Judd also shoots in Los Angeles, and I swear to God that’s a consideration. Because my kids are still at the age where I want to see them. You know, when I did that movie with Michael Douglas in Canada [“The In-Laws”], my kids were very little so we all could move there for the summer. One could go to a Canadian nursery school. Now they’re established in their school; they’re teenagers. You don’t want to pull them out and put them on location. And yet, you still want to see them. So shooting in Los Angeles is a dream. Had “This Is 40” shot in Yugoslavia, I don’t know if I would have taken it.
What about New York?
New York, I probably would have taken it. So many of these movies I do get offered, they go to these places where they get their tax money back and that’s getting further and further away. The Balkans and these Eastern European countries are desperate for business. They’re happy to recreate anything. “We can recreate Times Square, no problem!” So you go over to Soviet Georgia and it’s supposed to be Greenwich Village.
I think Woody Allen is shooting there next.
If he chooses Eastern Europe as his palette, he’s got another six movies. “Midnight in Siberia.”
How did you work with Judd? Did you give him input on what you wanted in the role?
I give input in the role, yes. Absolutely. I don’t do that on roles that aren’t mine, unless I’m asked for an opinion. But I was in [this] from the beginning. I wanted information that wasn’t in the script. I wanted more background information. We had a rehearsal period, which was hugely beneficial. That’s the time to screw around. Judd tapes everything. Every time you’re with him, someone is filming it. He has his entire life documented. There’s always a guy with a camera. So any idea you have [is saved]. Actually, it was good because you could make things better and that would appear in the next version of the script. You got to constantly improve it. On days before I worked, I would email seven lines that I thought of. I just wanted them down on paper somewhere, so I would think of it. I’m expected to, and I would want to, add input. Otherwise there’s no reason to show up and just do it. I’m sure that’s what they want, that’s why they hire you.
Especially for a Judd Apatow movie.
That’s right. But every movie I’ve acted in has been collaborative. That’s what movies are. I understand that there are authors who don’t want words changed, but I don’t know that something like that really exists in movies. Because movies are too unpredictable and no matter how well you write something, when you get to the actual place that you’re going to shoot it, if you’re not open enough to accept that, [you’re in trouble]. “Oh, gee, the kitchen was nothing like I thought it would be when I wrote, ‘He goes to the kitchen.’ I’m using a location and he’s got to go through the cat pantry. If I don’t say something about the cat pantry, what am I doing here?” You have to adapt. That’s what I think.
Do you get offered a lot of movies that you turn down?
Since “Drive” I’ve been offered five things that I didn’t do. Just for different reasons. Some were too far away. One was a little similar to “Drive” in a way that I didn’t think was as effective for me. I’m interested in playing a serious part; I’m interested in playing any kind of part. My roots are in acting. There are a lot of new directors now that are interesting, and people who haven’t directed before. That’s fun. That can be exciting, but you sort of have to look at the risk-reward. A lot of times, if the part doesn’t feel like, “Dammit, I’ll go anywhere to do this,” then you have to ask yourself, “Why am you doing it?” You can do an independent movie. Independent movies now, sometimes, come out in three theaters and that’s it. Movies are an expensive business. You have to be willing to do something that comes out in three theaters. I guess that’s what I’m saying. It’s like, “This thing is so interesting that I don’t care if I’ve got to force you to watch it on TV. I’m going to do it.”
“Drive” was so well-received and you’re great in “This Is 40.” Do you ever worry about keeping up the critical acclaim that you’ve earned as an actor over the last few years?
No, no, no. You can’t think like that. By the way, movies are like sporting events in that you’re as good as the movie you’re in. You can sit in a room for 20 years and go do a movie and you can just kill in it and you move to the head of the line again. By the same token, you can do five movies a year and if they’re dreck, it’s nothing. The idea isn’t just to be onscreen; the idea is to have something to do. At least have a couple of great scenes. I still get “Private Benjamin.” I screwed Goldie Hawn on our wedding night and died; I was in the first 10 minutes. Two days ago, someone said, “Oh my God! I remember that movie!” So, I think the goal is to try and get in a good movie and have something to do. By the same token, you could see a person you’ve never seen before and go, “Oh my God!” and be interested in that person. It’s like when you discover a new person. You can have a person who’s been around for 40 years and go, “Look at that.” I think it’s whether anybody will see the movie and if it works.
I guess what I’m saying is that there’s nothing about time in between. I don’t believe that has much to do with show business. I know there was a theory when I first started that if you don’t stay in front of people they’ll forget who you are. But you could never stay in front of people enough to keep them remembering or you have to be on every night.
I think you see that a lot with actors. They pile on a lot of movies, but a lot of the movies are bad.
By the way! The biggest example of this is Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s like, how many movies in 20 years?
I read an interview with Matthew McConaughey where he said always being in the tabloids and onscreen hurts him, whereas Daniel Day-Lewis makes films so infrequently that people get excited to see his latest.
I’ve been in front of people for so many years. It’s like you don’t forget someone you went to high school with. So, I don’t expect someone who’s been a fan for a long time to come up and say, “I knew you, but I don’t anymore. Why?” All I look for is to have something to do. If I’m going to act in someone’s movie, I want the movie to be interesting and be able to get a couple of solid doubles.
Like “This Is 40.”
Yeah, that’s what it is. It’s a subplot and it’s one that is decent.
Do you want write another screenplay or direct again?
I’ve been writing another book, which I liked. I don’t know. I sort of talked about this with Judd in Vanity Fair. The writing part is great and the filming part is great, but I have to figure out the releasing part a little better. Because, you know, that part of the business has changed so much. I’m not going to do well trying please a studio with an “Iron Man.” So, you know, I would want to make an Albert Brooks movie, and I sort of have to figure out who to make that for and how much money they could give for the budget.
And how to release it.
And how to release it. But, there’s also interesting ways. Look, soon, film is gone. Already there are enough theaters where if I shot a movie on video — and it was decently shot — it could be shown in enough movie theaters that you wouldn’t know the difference. That’s a big difference. To me, it’s interesting if the projection system around the country is really going to be something that could project an iPhone and make it pretty decent. It’s an interesting way to think about the whole budget aspect of film. I think about that a lot. Because I think as long as the subject matter fits that kind of filming, it’s great. It works. You don’t want to make Superman” like that, but you certainly can make a relationship movie in an interesting way, where you just bypass film completely.
I know in the Vanity Fair interview you talked about Twitter. You and Steve Martin are very active, but other people in your age group — Billy Crystal, for instance — aren’t as adept with social media. Why do you think you utilize it so well?
I didn’t know Billy Crystal was on Twitter.
He is. I started following him last year around the Oscars. A lot of times celebrity sign up for five minutes to promote something.
Twitter, to me, works if you’re funny. Twitter doesn’t work as a promotional tool unless you do it very, very, very occasionally. The reason it works is I take the time to do it. Twitter was really fun to do it during the debates, because it was a chance to comment on the debates in real time. But if during the debates I’m going, “Hey, I’ll be at a book store!” That’s not interesting. I wouldn’t follow me. I don’t really like that. I don’t like reading over and over where people are going to be. I’m not interested in that. But I was sort of shying away from Twitter in the last couple of weeks.
Why?
I think there’s a downside to it. The downside to it is that you can get fooled into thinking it’s creative and feel like you’ve had a good day after a good tweet. But it provides no income and no satisfaction. It’s much better to write a really great chapter of a book that’s going to come out. So it’s fun if you’re doing something else and for one minute you do a tweet. I guess that’s great. But you get lured into thinking, “Oh, that was a great tweet! I’m going to go have lunch now and take a nap.” That’s where it gets dangerous.
It’s a supreme time-waster.
It’s like writing someone a postcard and feeling like you’ve done a creative thing.
Putting a stamp on it.
“Ah, what a good day.”
What kind of comedies do you like now? What do you like watching?
Well, I’m in the Academy, so I get every movie. I eventually watch probably 90 percent of them. I don’t know — I’m trying to think of comedies. What comedies have been good …
It doesn’t even have to be a comedy. I’m just wondering what you like to watch.
What I’ve been watching the last two weeks haven’t been comedies. I’ll tell you what I love doing. I love watching a movie that I don’t know anything about. That’s difficult these days. But I’m telling you, it makes the enjoyment level soar because you haven’t read anything. It’s like not wanting to know what the score is. If I’ve gone this far and I get a movie, I don’t go on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t want to know how it was reviewed. I don’t want to know what it’s about. I see who directed it; sometimes I know the person, sometimes I have no idea who it is. I put it and I watch. And it’s an amazing experiment because you get to decide all on your own what you think.
In the film-festival environment you get that experience.
That’s exactly right. That experience in life is getting impossible.
Everyone knows everything about everything at this point.
Opinions hit you before the real thing hits you, all the time, about everything. I can only imagine going out to eat before the Zagat guide. You know? It would so interesting to go, “Is your meal good?” “Yes.” “This is the best pasta I’ve ever had!” Now people go, “Oh, it got one star. Did you read the New York Times? The guy hated the salad.” OK! So to watch a movie and not know anything — to me, it’s exciting. So I try to sort of do that. But I’m like everybody. I read what you guys write. I read everything. I know what most people have said about stuff because I go on the Internet. But I’ve got a bunch of movies here that I don’t know anything about.
What was the last one you watched like that?
“Rust and Bone.” So far, so good. I’m 30 minutes in; I started it earlier. But it’s good. I wanted to watch it with my kids, because I wanted us all to have that experience, but it was subtitled. I knew that was never going to work.
It was over.
I can’t get them to sit with the subtitles.
That took a while for me.
Me too. I don’t recall watching French movies at 14. And now, you know, even black and white is an effort. Wait until 20 years from now, you’ll never get anyone to sit through 2-D.
I don’t know if you’ve read about “The Hobbit.”
I’ve read about the 48-frames controversy. Did you see it?
I did see it.
Did you see it in that form?
I did see it in that form. It’s crazy. It looks so real that it looks fake.
But do you think if you got used to it that it’s all you’d want for the rest of your life?
Maybe? It looks as sharp as your HD TV. But it’s a different experience in the movie theater. The outdoor stuff looks great, but when Martin Freeman is running around his Hobbit house, it looks like you can push on the wall and knock the whole thing down.
You don’t think this is imminently going to catch on.
I don’t.
So what you’re saying is my 128-frame divorce comedy might not do so well.
[Laughs] Maybe table that one.
[Laughs] You know, how much can they go? “Hey, did you see the 800-frame Superman?”
The next thing will be walking around. It will be like a play.
I mean, that’s the goal. The hologram. If they could put the actors in front of you, they would. They just haven’t done it well. I never saw Tupac thing, but people said it was pretty amazing.
You mentioned that you’re a member of the Academy: I was shocked you didn’t get an Oscar nomination last year …
I didn’t?
You didn’t.
Wait a minute. Honey! [Laughs]
Did that burn you? Honestly, I was stunned. I thought they miscounted the votes.
The thing is, you’re entered into a race. You’re like a horse. You don’t have anything to do with it. You just do the movie and then slowly, somebody says, “Come on, you’re going to come to the Kentucky Derby and you’re going to run.” Then you get caught up in it because everybody is saying it. They’re putting the saddle on you! But the company that released “Drive” didn’t choose to play the game — even though the film critics groups were very generous to me. This company, Film District, had changed management and they didn’t do anything. So nothing in “Drive” got it. “Drive” was such an interesting, great movie. There were aspects of it that should have been nominated and it didn’t get anything like that. They didn’t choose to play the game. But, you know, listen: I’m just a human being. My phone rings, “Hey, you got the New York Film Critics! You’re going to get nominated!” “OK, great!” “The guy’s coming over with a tux!” “OK!” [Laughs] I don’t know, I’m just a guy; I just listen. I would say that for two or three days it feels weird because all of a sudden you become the Snubbed King.
You were the poster boy of snubs.
It was an honor to be snubbed.
So you knew that Film District wasn’t playing the game.
It was obvious! Because my agency asked them to, and there was great recognition from, like, 40 different film groups. But, you know, it’s an expensive game and they didn’t choose to play it. So I’m saying to you: Does that make a difference? I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. It’s such a business now. There are so many people that work towards these awards: advertising, publicity. It’s a very big business. I admire Harvey Weinstein because he goes after it and he knows how to do it. He’s got a film that people like and he makes sure that people know it’s good. I think maybe “Drive” was too violent.
It was definitely violent, and the Academy doesn’t always like violent.
But I heard — I’m not going to mention names — one of the big financial people in that company just hated the movie.
In Film District?
Not Film District. There were about four companies that put money into “Drive.” Some of the people who, if they loved it, probably might have said, “Goddammit this is the best thing I’ve ever done. Let’s go for this.” They had the opposite reaction.
And it just sunk.
But having said all that: To me, it’s like an election for a Senator. This seems to be a big business. The trade papers make all their money this time of year. They’re 900 pages thick. I went to the mailbox last year, I got a two-foot stand-up of Kenneth Branagh shaking my hand. [Laughs] This thing opened up it was life-size. I thought he was there.
That’s going to be 128-frames.
Yeah, exactly! I went to dinner with this cardboard cutout. Possibly, if they sent free forks to everybody in the Academy, I might have got nominated.
One last thing before we say goodbye: When you’re at home watching TV and you see one of your movies, do you stop to watch?
No, I don’t.
You don’t like watching yourself?
I really don’t. It’s sort of like, if I’m exercising and something is on, maybe I’ll watch a little. I don’t search it out. I don’t. It’s funny. I would tell you if I did! I just don’t. I guess I sort of like to remember it and I don’t go out of my way to see, “Oh, that wasn’t as funny as I remembered. Dammit.”
It could lead you down a bad path.
Although, although, although: “Lost in America” was on Turner Classic Movies and I watched 40 minutes of it because I wanted to see. I didn’t realize they don’t cut out language and they don’t break for commercials. I was thrilled. So I started to watch it to see. “I think I say ‘fuck’ here. Is it going to be? … It’s in!” So I wanted to see the presentation and it was making me laugh. I don’t think I’ve looked at that movie for eight years. So, that was sort of fun.
“This Is 40” opens on Dec. 21.
![Our Mr. Brooks
Sometimes undersold, always ahead of his time, Albert Brooks has made a festival’s worth of classics—Modern Romance, Lost in America, Defending Your Life, etc. The Oscar-nominated actor-writer-director gets into it with Judd Apatow, who directed Brooks in this month’s This Is 40, on topics great and small: his neuroses, his marriage, his Twitter feed, John Lennon, death, and integrity.
By Judd Apatow
He’s the prototype. He’s the original smart, sensitive Jewish neurotic guy, with huge flaws and a heart of gold. Even after working with him, on This Is 40, I’m still in awe.
His stand-up work alone, some of which you can hear on the albums Comedy Minus One(1973) and A Star Is Bought (1975), guarantees him a place in my personal comedy pantheon. But then he made the mockumentary “The Famous Comedians School,” which is great, and the six innovative comedy shorts for Saturday Night Live, which inspired a lot of what Ben Stiller and I did when we were putting together The Ben Stiller Show. And then came his own films, which are like the Torah to me: Real Life. Modern Romance. Lost in America. Defending Your Life. Mother. The Muse. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. And don’t forget the acting, which is Albert’s secret weapon: Taxi Driver. Broadcast News. Finding Nemo. Drive. This Is 40 (in theaters December 21. Yes, that’s a plug).
I met him in 1994. I had dinner with him and Garry Shandling. It was such a momentous thing to me that when I got home I wrote down everything he said in my journal. I remember I was about to shoot a movie, and I told him I wasn’t getting along with my girlfriend, and he said, “Break up with her. You know it’s over anyway. Break up with her now, so it doesn’t ruin your experience of the movie.” I should have listened.
It took me decades to work up the nerve to write something that was good enough to offer him, and he fulfilled all my dreams in bringing to life a curtain salesman whose business has failed just as his in-vitro-fertilization efforts have succeeded. For our talk, I met Albert at my office, because he wouldn’t let me do it at his house. Probably some bullshit about privacy. We were talking about the Mitt-Obama campaign, which put him in mind of the days in 1988 when he helped out Michael Dukakis in his unsuccessful run for the presidency …
JUDD APATOW: Didn’t you write jokes for Dukakis?
ALBERT BROOKS: Yeah. I was asked to go on the airplane and go to different events. And I actually spoke at a few. I was so disenchanted with him. I thought, I pray he doesn’t win. I mean, there were arguments on the plane, and the guys hated him. “Can I ask him a question?” “Nobody can talk to him now!” So I’m thinking, What if there’s a war?
J.A. Was that the first campaign you got deeply involved in?
A.B. Yeah. I wrote a big joke for him at the Al Smith Dinner, in New York, which is a big political event. George Bush’s slogan was “It’s time to give the country back to the little guy,” and all I was trying to do was to get Dukakis to try to be self-deprecating. I said, “They love that.” So Dukakis is, like, four foot three, and he said, “George Bush says it’s time to give the country back to the little guy. Well, here I am!” And it got written about: Dukakis makes fun of himself. But I think he took it too far, with the tank.
J.A. With the helmet.
A.B. I wasn’t there for that. I would have disapproved of that.
J.A. It has to be terrifying, that everybody’s one bad hat choice away from losing.
A.B. Another thing about that is: no president has been in the army for a long, long time. They’ve all gotten out, which is a little weird.
J.A. Obama is deeply involved in choosing who they’re going to attack with the drones. Every day he wants to know exactly what they’re doing.
A.B. You’d get caught up in that, too, if you had a system like that. If you could wake up and eat breakfast and watch little things fly over the world—I mean, that’s all I would do. I’m sure he’s got a controller. “The president wants to fly 1011.” “O.K.”
J.A. I always think when someone’s elected president they take them into a room and say, “Here’s what really goes on on this planet.”
A.B. Well, that was in my book [2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America]. That’s the two-week period where you go from thinking you can change the world to being scared out of your mind. You get the list of the nine people who run everything. I’m sure that’s the way it is.
J.A. In a weird way, you’ve always been a bit of a futurist.
A.B. I would read that early on. “He’s ahead of his time.” Then I learned that would in no way be a plus in this business. I realized I should at least take it as a compliment, because that’s all it was good for. My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don’t have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you’ll be the richest.
J.A. And so Real Life and even the Saturday Night Live sketches were—
A.B. Well, the first thing I ever did was “The Famous School for Comedians,” for PBS. I had written this fictitious article in Esquire, with a test, and they got like 3,000 real responses, because mockumentary things weren’t really there yet. “Oh, it’s a joke? Why would it be a joke? There’s pictures of the school!” So Bob Shanks, a lovely man, was a producer at The Great American Dream Machine, and he said, “Why don’t you make this into a commercial?” That was the first time I ever picked up a camera and found out that, well, if I aim it here, and this person says that, and I think it’s funny, hey, you think it’s funny, too.
J.A. Then Lorne Michaels wanted you as permanent host for S.N.L., which was just starting.
A.B. Instead of hosting, which I didn’t want to do, I was able to sort of dictate what I wanted to do, because they wanted my name. And so I made six films [for S.N.L.] in five months. That was really a film school.
J.A. Before that, did you have any sense you would go into filmmaking?
A.B. No. But my comedy bits were like scenes. I would bring props and chairs and tape recorders. I was fleshing out 15 characters, with different voices, and it would have been better if I had hired 14 people.
J.A. Was it almost a combination of a modern style of stand-up comedy and the previous style? This idea of doing characters and creating situations, but in a new way?
A.B. Well, my roots were in acting. That’s all I wanted to be. Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn’t cool to say, at a young age, “I want to be a comedian.”
J.A. Did your dad do stand-up?
A.B. My dad played a character on the radio called “Parkyakarkus.” A Greek-dialect comedian. He did Friars’ roasts and wrote material and made people laugh that way. But he wrote his own shows with other writers.
J.A. What was the character like?
A.B. The character was a Greek immigrant who couldn’t speak very well, so there was a lot of dialect humor. He owned a restaurant. And the show was called Meet Me at Parky’s. My dad died right after performing at the Friars’ roast for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I have that tape somewhere. There’s still a lot of good jokes in there. I mean, that was 1958.
J.A. How old were you when that happened?
A.B. Eleven and a half.
J.A. So that’s just an earth-shattering …
A.B. Well, he was so sick before that that I—
J.A. Heart problems or … ?
A.B. Yeah. And he couldn’t walk. He had a spinal operation. Then he could walk slowly, like Frankenstein. And so he gained weight. Nothing about him was healthy. Every time we were alone and he called me, I thought he was dying. So when it happened, it wasn’t like, hey, he was the second-baseman and he woke up and died.
J.A. How did having a sick dad imprint you?
A.B. I think when you’re very, very, very young and you get a sense of the end before the beginning, it imprints you. In all possible ways. You get an early peek into—
J.A. It’s going to end badly.
A.B. That’s right.
J.A. Most of my neuroses stem from my parents’ volcanic divorce. It made me think, Things really can go badly—I got to be on my game. But it wasn’t a life-threatening situation.
A.B. Yeah, this was life-threatening. I didn’t have to worry about divorce. My mother wasn’t going to go anywhere. But I worried about him way before. At six.
J.A. It makes you a worrier.
A.B. A worrier.
J.A. You lived in Beverly Hills?
A.B. Just outside, on Benedict Canyon.
J.A. What did your mom do?
A.B. My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called New Faces of 1937. My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties. She didn’t continue, and my dad, he was working, saved his money, so we—
J.A. You were O.K.
A.B. We were O.K. And then my mom re-married, a lovely man in the shoe business.
J.A. And you went to Beverly Hills High?
A.B. Yeah.
J.A. You always hear this legend of Carl Reiner going on The Tonight Show saying, “The funniest person I know is my son’s friend.” Why did he think you were so funny?
A.B. This bit that I did, he said it was the hardest he’s ever laughed in his whole life. I don’t think it was the greatest bit. It was me pretending to be a terrible escape artist who gasped for air and begged for help.
J.A. Who were you developing it for?
A.B. Well, we all go to the area of strength in school, so we can be liked by girls. And if you’re not going to be a quarterback and you’re not going to be a biology honors student … so I was funny. At Beverly High, there was a parent-student talent show. A big event once a year. Now, Beverly High, a lot of the parents were famous. So you had Tony Curtis, you had Carl Reiner …
J.A. You had competition.
A.B. That’s right. Rod Serling. So I was the host of the evening—and I was this kid. I wrote jokes and made comments. I still remember a joke that I told. One of the kids, for their talent portion, did those batons—you twirl them around and around—and I still remember, because it was an ad-lib. I was like, “Wasn’t she wonderful? Do you know, in practice, a 707 accidentally landed on the football field.” People roared.
J.A. So you weren’t like the class clown that couldn’t get a girlfriend. You were confident.
A.B. Humor-wise, I was confident. I mean, my two best friends were Larry Bishop, who’s Joey Bishop’s son, and Rob Reiner, who is Carl Reiner’s son.
J.A. It was a world of comedy. Did you think at that point you would go into film?
A.B. I never wanted to be a director. When I started, when I wrote the script for Real Life, I didn’t want to direct it. And I went to Carl Reiner. And, really, what directing is is just the dictation of the style. You wind up doing it because—“No, no, no, don’t cast him.” You know? “We’ll put Elliott Gould in the thing.” “Oh, no. He’s wonderful, but don’t put him in that.That’s terrible.”
J.A. That’s exactly why I became a director.
A.B. I mean, Steven Spielberg seems to have wanted to be a director from 13. He put his dog in a certain position and made him eat at four o’clock. He liked to direct it. But, to me, directing is tedious. Especially if you’re acting in it. And I’m inherently lazy. I would stay in the trailer until someone came to get me: “It’s four o’clock. You’re not going to be able to do the horse shot if you don’t—” “Oh, O.K.” So when I act in people’s films, I have this perverse thing of watching it rain, and I’m like, “I think I’ll eat another scone.”
J.A. Do you ever wish you directed more?
A.B. Here’s what I think. I think Woody Allen was the last person to get in under the radar of testing and promoting.
J.A. Because he doesn’t have to do any of it?
A.B. Yes. And I admire that, because the hardest part of the movies I made was the release part. I mean, some of my movies tested well enough where they were confused, and others tested so terribly that it’s like you killed their children. And that whole period where you have to dodge phone calls and figure out what to do. I came just at the time where I had to go on the plane with them. You just had to, or they wouldn’t talk to you again.
J.A. Was it the Real Life screening where the studio executives flew home without you?
A.B. No, Modern Romance. Frank Price was the head of Columbia at the time, and they had seen all these dailies, and I had had screenings. I ran this film 15 times, just for my own good, and the audience was great, and they laughed, and the executives, they’d laugh. So then, what they did is, they surprised an audience. They told them after they came to a movie that they had paid for, which was Seems Like Old Times, that Goldie Hawn-Chevy Chase movie. So we went up to San Francisco, and they surprised them with Modern Romance.
J.A. So they make it a double feature? And they are exhausted by the time your movie starts?
A.B. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was a big party planned at the Fairmont, with hors d’oeuvres and liquor, and everybody left and just flew back, and they didn’t tell me or [my co-writer] Monica Johnson or [my co-star] Kathryn Harrold—and I think [my friend] Paul Slansky came up just for support, and the four of us just spent the night in that ballroom alone, and they tell me I was the funniest I’ve ever been in my life. And then, when I got back to L.A., it was as if I had secretly changed every minute of the movie in a dungeon. They had a box of cards and they said, “You need to read these cards.” This was 1980, so I was still able to say, “I’m not going to read the cards.” So they read them to me. Like Guantánamo.
J.A. I get the same cards.
A.B. So Frank Price said, “You need to add a psychiatrist scene to explain the problem, or you won’t have a second week.” And I didn’t add a psychiatrist scene, and, of course, what he was saying was: If you don’t fix this, we’re doing nothing. And they did nothing. But the nice thing about that experience was that Stanley Kubrick befriended me.
J.A. Really?
A.B. He screened the movie, and I was really—I couldn’t get out of bed. I was just feeling like: This is impossible, this kind of work. How do you do this? A very famous young director at the time said to me, “Why don’t you just do what they want? What’s the matter with you?” And I’m going, “I didn’t make the movie to do what they want. I’m trying to say something.” So Stanley Kubrick said it was the best movie on jealousy he ever saw, and he said, “This movie would make $25 million with the right support.” And I just thought, Jesus Christ, this is great.
J.A. You struck up a friendship with him?
A.B. We wrote back and forth. Then one day I said, “Maybe I should come and visit.” And he went, “No, no, no, no, I don’t really live anywhere.”
J.A. And you never heard from him again. How were your reviews?
A.B. Remember, there were key outlets that could give you a career. Real Life got a rave inTime. By Frank Rich. So I got enough good reviews that I kept having a career.
J.A. You’re always able to make the next movie.
A.B. I can make the next movie tomorrow. The thing that keeps me hesitant is the third act. What I mean is: the first act is writing; the second act is making; the third act is releasing. And if I can just get over that, nothing would stop me.
J.A. Do you ever just think, I’ve done so much—I’m a highly respected person—who gives a fuck about all that?
A.B. Yes, I do.
J.A. At what stage does it become debilitating?
A.B. It’s just a matter of figuring out who to ask for the money, how much money is O.K. if you never see it again, and go fuck around. And I went and wrote a book instead. I wrote a whole book without showing a publisher.
J.A. And did the satisfaction you got out of that make you feel like you had the energy to go make another movie, or … ?
A.B. I’ve started to write another book. Listen, I like acting. I liked acting in your movie. I liked Drive. I like taking these parts, and that’s satisfying. I run into a lot of people who are really nice about “When’s your next movie coming out?” And I think about it. I just have to make sure I’m at that place where the third act wouldn’t bother me.
J.A. Does that get worse as you get older?
A.B. It probably gets better as you get closer to the end. It would be funny to think, Oh, I have terminal cancer, but I’m worried about the cards.
J.A. The thing about This Is 40 is it’s been done since the end of May, and it comes out at Christmas. It’s a seven-month gap, which is like telling a joke and waiting seven months to see if people laugh. It’s water torture.
A.B. There’s no real immediacy in movies. Even in comedy albums, the irony is, if I didn’t bring a comedy album to a friend’s and sit down and listen to it with them, I never heard my comedy albums played. I’ve never heard reactions to them.
J.A. That’s what’s interesting about Twitter. I get tweets every night where someone says, “I’m watching Freaks and Geeks right now.” It’s a great way to connect with people who are watching your work at that very moment. Do you have that experience?
A.B. Yeah, but Twitter is the Devil’s playground.
J.A. It sucked you in. You’re addicted now.
A.B. I don’t know if I’m addicted. It’s a horrible waste of time for the writer of it, the reader of it. We will lose the war to China because of Twitter.
J.A. So why are you still doing it?
A.B. Well, because I always liked the ability to comment on a good story of the day. And it’s the easiest thing when you read the morning newspapers and then you go: Look at this—they’re bombing Europe. And it’s amazing, whenever you do anything political, I’m sure you know.
J.A. The vitriol.
A.B. “I hope you die!” It’s just so funny to me.
J.A. If someone says, “I hope you die,” and I tweet back at them—
A.B. They say, “No, I love you.”
J.A. Yeah. Every time.
A.B. Every time. I know. I love that. And they are so shocked. I had a guy that said, “Go drive your car into the ocean and never come up, you vile piece of shit.” And I said, “All of that from that comment?” And the guy said, “Oh, my God, I didn’t know you’d answer back. I loveModern Romance!”
J.A. So you’re not currently writing a movie? Do you have notebooks? Do you have ideas?
A.B. I have tons of ideas. One of the reasons I didn’t go into it again was I am enjoying acting and there were so many movies I turned down as an actor because I was making my own movies. Every time I see Boogie Nights—you know, I got offered the part that Burt Reynolds got. And I remember going into a screening room and seeing Paul Thomas Anderson. No one knew him yet, and I watched Hard Eight, and I thought, Oh, this is good—this is someone you would like to take a chance with. But I was just getting the money to make The Muse, and if you’re writing and directing and starring in a movie, you can’t stop.
J.A. For years.
A.B. That’s right. I used to read about Charlie Chaplin, who’d keep a crew on for a year while he’d go and stare. Well, those days are gone. To do a movie means another three and a half years of not taking parts. So after Drive, I wanted to see, O.K., what if I was just going to act?
J.A. How have you found it?
A.B. There are parts out there. A lot of independent movies where you have to go to Russia and avoid the taxes. We’re getting colder and colder places, you know? I just got a call from my agent. He says, “Do you have any friends in the Arctic?” That’s why I liked your movie, because it was here. That becomes a big plus. I got kids, younger kids. I don’t want to go to Lithuania for four months.
J.A. You said you were friends with Harry Nilsson?
A.B. I was. He was one of these comedy-freak guys. He would come and see my shows and he was very sweet and a massive drinker. I didn’t drink and I wound up being the driver. And then he introduced me to John Lennon, because they were best friends. I spent a lot of time with Harry Nilsson and John Lennon during those May Pang years, when he was out here. Those guys would get rowdy, but John Lennon was certainly a fun person. And John Lennon, again, was a frustrated comedian. All these guys, comedy to them was the holy grail.
J.A. So three single guys running around.
A.B. Harry wasn’t even single. He was married. She was very forgiving with him leaving and coming back the next month. Look, sometimes it was too much. He was friends with Keith Moon. The Who were staying in Century City, and Harry said, “Come over. Keith is here—we’re having a thing.” Now, listen to this. I had just done a Mike Douglas in the afternoon and flew back from Philadelphia. And I come walking down the hall, and the housekeeper says, “Oh, you were on Mike Douglas—you were wonderful.” “Thank you so much.” I go in the room, and in about 20 minutes Keith Moon threw the television out the window. It was 16 stories up. And now the room is destroyed, and I’m going: I was recognized—I got to get out of here! How can I get out of the Century Plaza without being seen? Because I know in court she’s going to go, “The guy on The Mike Douglas Show!” You know? And I’m sitting there with Keith trying to be a Jewish mother: “Don’t throw the TV. If you want to get your frustration out, go run around the block, because the TVs, they don’t want them thrown out the window.”
J.A. What’s it like leading up to the TV going out the window.
A.B. A lot of craziness. Before a TV went out the window, a coffee table was turned over. Nobody went right to the TV. It was sort of like what’s left.
J.A. Is it done with anger or is it done with joy?
A.B. No, it’s done because that was the measure of their power.
J.A. Like smashing the guitar on the stage.
A.B. I was on the road with these groups for a long time, and there were so many like that. I opened for Richie Havens, and someone in his band was fucking around in my hotel room and rubbed scrambled eggs on that cottage-cheese ceiling, where it sticks into the little holes. They all went to bed, and I’m up for hours with a washcloth, trying to get the ceiling clean, because I’m worried I’m going to jail. I wasn’t getting paid a lot. I wasn’t going to pay for the ceiling.
J.A. So how old are you when you’re hanging out with John Lennon? Are you, like, 23?
A.B. Let’s see. My album had just come out, which was ’73. Twenty-five.
J.A. And did you grow up so much around show business that it didn’t blow your mind?
A.B. It’s a great question, because nothing blew my mind in show business, and he was the only person—the first time I met him, Harry said, “Get in that car there,” and I got in the backseat, and there was John Lennon, and the one thing I prided myself on in my comedy, you know, I’m not a person that was ever on. I was funny. I knew when to stop. I wasn’t that manic on, and I was on with him, and I didn’t know how to get out of it. I didn’t know what to do. And he said—that still remains the greatest thing to me—he leaned over and said, “I’ve known you for a thousand years.” And I just never felt bad again. That was a cool thing to say.
J.A. That’s right in the post-Beatles moment.
A.B. He was going through a lot. He was separated from Yoko, but I remember my album,Comedy Minus One, had just come out and was in Tower Records. So he and Harry and I went in. He bought them all. He bought three boxes of them. Then he drove down Sunset and hurled them out like Frisbees. And again I’m going, “Don’t do that. You’ll get a littering fine.”Boom. He’s just throwing them out on the street. So it’s good and bad. I mean, it helped myBillboard number, but now they are all over Sunset.
J.A. Was that inspiring creatively?
A.B. It was interesting to know what they think of comedy. They love comedy so much. It’s a language they don’t speak as eloquently. As much as you listen to the Beatles and say, “How do you write that song?,” they’re going, “How did you say that? Where did that come from?” And John was always the funniest Beatle. He had a sense of humor and he respected it so much.
J.A. They thought you were the cool guy.
A.B. Yeah! He thought I was the cool guy.
J.A. So in those years you were doing stand-up.
A.B. I started on television. I had five years of network television before I ever got up on a stage. The first thing I ever did was in 1967. This guy Bill Keene had a little talk show at noon, and Gary Owens took over for a week. He knew about this dummy bit I used to do, this ventriloquist thing, and I was on Keene at Noon. From that I got an agent and I got threeSteve Allen shows in 1968. I only had one bit. I did that and then I made up two other bits.
J.A. Did you have to show them before?
A.B. No. No. It was a time when people trusted you. They said, “What are you going to do?” “I’m going to do this—it will be four minutes.” Almost nobody laughed, but Steve Allen laughed so hard. And that was the laugh you needed. From that, in ’69, I was offered a spot as a regular on a Dean Martin show. Then, from ’70 to ’73, I must have done 80 variety shows. There were so many. Glen Campbell. Helen Reddy. The Everly Brothers. Johnny Cash.Hollywood Palace. After all of these shows, I did Merv—I did Merv Griffin’s CBS show 14 times. And then, after all these years, I got a call from Neil Diamond. His manager said, “Would Albert want to open for Neil?” And I had never done that.
J.A. You’d never done it live, on the road.
A.B. My first couple of months was taking television bits and trying to make them fit into a live act. Eventually I felt comfortable onstage, but I went back to doing primarily television. In the early 1970s, Dick Cavett was very hot. And I hadn’t done Johnny Carson. I’d done everything but, and I said to my agent, “I’d like to do Dick Cavett. I think that’s a cool show.” And they didn’t want me, and I went to The Tonight Show. By default. And that was one of the lucky breaks I had. I did, like, 40 of those shows. Half of them don’t exist, because it was during those years in the 70s where they erased over the tape. It breaks my heart. I would do a new bit every time for Johnny, and that was a hell of an experience. Just once every five, six weeks. Make something up in the bathroom and go do it on The Tonight Show.
J.A. That’s a lot of bits.
A.B. A lot of bits, but you had Johnny’s confidence, and it didn’t matter if the audience laughed. Johnny laughed, and that’s all that ever mattered. But eventually they laugh. When Johnny laughs, they laugh.
J.A. Did you develop a friendship with him?
A.B. I would pay my respects and go to Las Vegas and see his stand-up, and he wasn’t an easy guy to be a friend with. He came into my dressing room one night before the show out of the blue and he sat me down and said, “You need to be married.” And this is a guy that’s been married three times.
J.A. How old were you when he said that?
A.B. I was 28. And I said, “How come?” And he said, “This is too hard to do alone.” Now, by the way, he’s right on that account. But I didn’t want to go through four wives just to accomplish that.
J.A. How old were you when you got married?
A.B. My 40s. And I was very fortunate when I met Kimberly—things gelled. There weren’t all these problems, everybody who has these relationships. I was an expert at it. I made Modern Romance. People used to stop me on the street. I get this a lot, where they honk their horn and roll down the window and a couple says, “We got married because of Modern Romance.” I don’t know what to do. I feel so bad.
J.A. What does that mean?
A.B. I don’t know.
J.A. That means, “We both like it.”
A.B. That means they’re both screwed up. I had a very wise person tell me that he thinks marriage, when you’re younger, you keep thinking you can fix things. That’s what people do. And you can’t really fix anything. It shouldn’t be a massive difficult thing every day. Life’s difficult enough.
J.A. That’s what This Is 40 is about. The disaster of trying to make things better.
A.B. You can fix little teeny things. If a person likes to eat their peas off a plate, and you like to eat them in a bowl, you might win at that. But that’s about it.
J.A. Were you a difficult person to date?
A.B. I wasn’t a bad boyfriend. I had relationships with some of the women who were in the movies. And I wasn’t a cheater. I was a pretty loyal guy.
J.A. You weren’t like the guy in Modern Romance.
A.B. Very early on I was. I had a relationship that was immensely physical without the other components. And when you’re young, that’s confusing, because you’re being told, Well, what do you think relationships are? They are physical. But you need a little bit of everything. I tried my hand at the most funny women, but I’m not a person who believes you want a person like yourself. You want key things in common, but you don’t want the nutsiness to be the same, because that’s too much.
J.A. Well, as a comedian or a comedy person, it seems like the happiest people are people that have a stable spouse.
A.B. Judy Garland’s husbands were never—
J.A. Were never crazier than Judy.
A.B. They were always stable. I mean, my wife is an amazing artist, and she’s a tremendously creative person, but—
J.A. She’s not tortured.
A.B. No, but she didn’t have the same neuroses as I did. She wasn’t worried about the same things. You don’t want someone who’s worried about the same things.
J.A. What do you think makes it work? Even seeing your wife introduce you at your book party, she clearly adores you.
A.B. I think we give each other a huge amount of freedom to be who we are. There’s so much trust that nobody thinks twice about it. And if I need to be in my cave, and I’m trying to write something, it’s understood. There’s no clock punching. And also, our kids. Thank God at this point our kids are kids we really like to hang out with, so that enforces our bond. My wife is insistent on having dinner together as much as possible, and I’m very glad of that, because in this world, with all the devices, that can just go away.
J.A. Do you think that it’s changed you enormously as a person, having kids?
A.B. I’m sure. Because after a while I barely had any desire to do this for myself. You need to show off for somebody. Or you need to store the nuts for somebody.
J.A. What kind of dad are you? What are the TV rules?
A.B. TV isn’t an issue. It’s more the screens. It’s the games, and there’s rules about that, and there’s nothing before homework. They are not big TV-watchers during the day. They are at night. When I was a kid, that’s all we had, and I watched a lot of it. We could trick our parents and say it was good for us.
J.A. I used to watch from three to midnight.
A.B. Yeah, I never went without it.
J.A. When they do their homework, they say, “I need my computer to do my homework,” but they can just be on YouTube for two hours.
A.B. That’s right. Also there’s a lot of doing homework with other kids.
J.A. Video chatting.
A.B. My wife is very good about rules. I mean, she’s more computer-savvy than I am, and so she was the one who even allowed it in the beginning. I don’t know what I would have done. It’s an impossible thing to figure out.
J.A. Some people say their minds are expanding from video games, and other people say their attention spans disappear.
A.B. As I said to my son the other day, I said, “Son, one day you’re going to make an amazing drone pilot.”
J.A. “You could work for Obama.” What are your kids into?
A.B. My daughter, Claire, is an amazing singer and writes songs. And is a good writer. And very creative, and can draw. And Jake is the funniest kid I know. He’s got a real sense of humor. He’s become a reasonable magician. I take him to these places on the weekend where they have what’s called Magic: The Gathering. And there’s like 40 people who look like they work for Microsoft and my son. And he wins most nights.
J.A. Like a competition?
A.B. Competition, yeah. It’s a complicated card game. So he’s going to be a world-class poker player. But the most important thing is that they’ve got good souls. They’ve got good hearts. They know what kid to befriend when that kid needs it … I don’t see the kind of cynicism that you see in other people.
J.A. In us.
A.B. Yeah, well, I don’t think I was a person who made fun of other kids. That wasn’t my style of comedy … I’ve never talked this much about myself.
J.A. You once said you got such a kick out of making people laugh on the phone that it slowed down how much you would write for yourself.
A.B. That was a big problem for me and still is. I have to be careful. I’m going to go doLetterman for you, and I told my wife and a couple of friends of mine what I’m going to do, and it makes them laugh. We were having dinner, and my wife goes, “Tell them what you’re going to do on Letterman.” I said, “No, no, no.” Because my problem was always that when I thought of something funny, if I called up a buddy, and I did it, the ship had sailed. I didn’t need 7,000 people. One person worked. The chromosome had clicked and I had an orgasm. I was done.
J.A. And so you didn’t need to write a movie.
A.B. It’s terrible. It’s not a commercial gene.
J.A. At some point it’s like: how much need is there to—how much is too much?
A.B. Let’s ask you that. You work a lot. I mean, if you enjoy it, it’s good. If you wake up and it feels like it’s destroying you, then you need to think about it.
J.A. True.
A.B. There are many aspects of work that are amazingly rewarding. The actual doing of it. The writing, when it goes well, there’s no better creative high. A day on the set where you assemble a bunch of great actors and you brought this to life. That’s a wonderful thing. There are other aspects where I’ve fought for things in movies. The movies that I’ve directed, for the most part, I’ve been able to win at the cost of alienating people.
J.A. Such as?
A.B. I wrote this movie with Monica Johnson called The Scout that Michael Ritchie directed. I can’t stand the way it ends, and it was a fight that I lost. I yelled so loud at Peter Chernin, I never worked at Fox again. I lost my temper. I went crazy, and I said, “Look, you’re not the one in the paper getting … ” And, sure enough, The New York Times, it was like the reviewer was listening. She said, “I’m so surprised that Albert Brooks would end a movie this way.” And I’m going, “Albert Brooks didn’t end a movie this way!”
J.A. The work can really bring out the worst side of you when you feel like someone else is ruining it. I can completely lose my mind.
A.B. But you’re supposed to. If you’re in a position where an argument can win, you’re supposed to argue. I mean, I’ve lost only a few arguments. That was the good thing about writing and directing my own movies. For Lost in America, they were telling me, “He doesn’t have enough stupid jobs before he decides to go back to New York. Put in more jobs.” And I said, “When you have a man in a crossing-guard outfit, there’s no other stupid job.” They said, “Just try some.” So that was easy, because I was able to say, “Here’s one: Find someone who looks like me and you film it. If it works, we’ll put it in.” That argument I can win.
J.A. How does it feel for you that these movies that were painful at the time and didn’t make that much money are now classics?
A.B. It’s cool, but it’s not an active feeling. You don’t get up in the morning going, “My movie’s still here—fuck you.” That’s not a joyous daily feeling. I mean, as I told you, there’s no line at the bank for being ahead of your time.
J.A. How did you find the process working on This Is 40?
A.B. I liked it with you, because of the rehearsal. I like the idea of what the father was going to be. People ask me all the time about improv, and I tell them improv is just the final icing. You need a structure. It’s like, if you’re going to commit suicide, you need the building to jump out of.
J.A. It’s always scary for me, to think I could write something worthy of certain people to jump in. It’s almost an insecurity.
A.B. But what you’re really writing is a part. In rehearsal, you allow me to make suggestions. It’s the father who has the kids late in life, where the son becomes the father. That’s a good premise. And that’s all you need. It’s intelligent. As opposed to you do a cliché father, and then there are no lines that can make it great.
J.A. What was great is when you e-mailed me better lines the night before, just alternate jokes. Because you probably didn’t work in many alternate jokes when you were directing. I’m always afraid something won’t be funny, so I push to get material to cover my ass, but it seems like you have a more confident process.
A.B. Well, no. You have a different process. I understand your process, which is the cameras are rolling and you spent a lot of time to get to that point, and you get as much as you possibly can, and sometimes you would yell something out, and I would say, “No, I don’t want to say that.” But you can only do that because the structure’s there.
J.A. Do you like the idea of your kids going into show business?
A.B. If I can’t talk them out of it, yes. My mother kept trying to talk me out of everything. “Honey, fall back on business.” I never knew what it meant, and that’s the way it should be. I sum up all of show business in three words: Frank Sinatra Junior. People think there’s nepotism in show business. There’s no nepotism on the performing side, especially in comedy. I don’t know of any famous person that can tell an audience to laugh at their son.
J.A. Exactly. And that was the terrifying part about having my kids in the movie. But when you grow up around the industry, there’s some part of you that picks it up.
A.B. Because it looks like the most fun circus in the world. And they learn quickly, especially in anything to do with performing or comedy. If you can get up on a stage and you can make 300 strangers laugh, I’ll drive you to the gigs. If my kids are willing to sleep in a sleeping bag outside of a summer-stock theater, they’ll do it. But I don’t know yet if that’s their destiny.
J.A. It’s almost like an unconscious steering of them, because it’s not like we’re talking to our kids every day about being a doctor.
A.B. My wife comes from a family of doctors.
J.A. Oh, well, your family’s different. Do you enjoy other people’s comedy these days?
A.B. I saw a Demetri Martin special the other night. I thought it was terrific. I like him because he works in this area that could be funny at any time, and there’s a lot of other people. I watched this Katt Williams special. He’s terrific.
J.A. When I used to do stand-up in the late 80s at the Improv, you’d always hear, “Albert might be coming in, Albert might be coming in.” I don’t think you ever came in. Ever. Why did people think you were coming in?
A.B. Because I’d ask the guy to say that. Paid him 40 bucks a week.
J.A. So you thought about jumping onstage but—
A.B. I did once. I even got a heckler. It was like I picked the wrong night. “Who are you?” I talk to a lot of friends now who tell me I would enjoy doing this again, because it’s different, and people would appreciate it. It’s a nice thing, because it’s so in the moment. That’s the lure.
J.A. Do you miss that part of your career, or do you get it from the occasional talk show and it’s enough?
A.B. Yeah, I get it from the occasional talk show. The other thing would be to go do a stand-up special, something in front of a large audience. That’s what you’re really talking about. If I do Letterman, and it goes well, it’s a fun feeling, when I’m getting my clothing and leaving. And I get back to the hotel—and I’m the same person. There was nothing more exciting in the early years than when Johnny Carson was still in New York. You’d go there and do a Johnny Carson show. You travel alone. And the show would be great. And then you go out by yourself and you have a meal and you go back to the hotel and you watch it. And then you’d go to bed and then you wake up at 3:30 and picture all your friends watching it in Los Angeles. That doesn’t work anymore, because people don’t watch shows like that. You can do a Lettermanand somebody will catch it months later. “Hey, I saw that thing.” “It was two years ago.” I was surprised how few people say anything to you after the day of a show. They will press Record and go to bed. By the way, I’m noticing I press Record a lot on DVR, but I don’t really watch any of it. It starts to fill up the disk and everything runs slow and I just erase it all. I think Nielsen should measure that.
J.A. What do you feel there’s left to write about?
A.B. What I have been writing about is, well, I don’t want to give it away, but the subject of dying and getting old never gets old.
J.A. It’s shocking as you realize: are we all going to have these horrible things happen to us?
A.B. Well, aren’t we? I mean, this getting-old stuff is something. I sound like Bob Hope. I think I envy my dog, because my dog is 16 and she’s limping and she’s still living, but she doesn’t look at me like she knows. She’s not thinking what I’m thinking. It’s a cruel trick, that we all know the ending.
J.A. Are you religious at all?
A.B. It’s funny, I don’t believe in the images of what God is, a thing or a person. I do wonder often the reason the sea horse is here, or a tree, or why I’m here, and so I don’t know if I’m religious. But it’s interesting when you’re part of a group—the Jews, to be exact—that the world has had such problems with. It has really nothing to do with religion. That’s why, if my kids didn’t want to go to temple, I used to say, “Let me explain something to you: If Hitler came back, he’s not going to ask if you went to temple. You’re already on the train. So you might as well know who you are and why they’re going to take you.”
J.A. What do you get out of temple?
A.B. I went to a memorial service and brought my kids and we thought about my dad and my mom, and the rabbi gave kind of a cool sermon, and you’re sitting in a room with everyone who would have to go on the same train. So there’s a bit of community there.
J.A. That’s dark.
A.B. Well, but it’s true. Here’s what we know. We know meditation is healthy. Everybody says it slows your heart rate and everything, and the basis of religion seems to be that when you pray … I don’t know what people who are religious think when they pray, but it’s very close to what meditation is. It’s sort of ritualistic, it’s habit, it’s like exercising, so you might be able to get something out of that. I’m sure some people enjoy thinking it’s out of their hands. There’s all these people who think it’s “meant to be.” But I don’t buy that.
J.A. I’d love to buy it, though. I wish I could.
A.B. I don’t buy it, but I love it.
J.A. It would make the day so much easier.
A.B. Look, only a few people get to die peacefully in their sleep after a wonderful life. So that’s like not making the football team. There’s lots of things you don’t get to have. That’s probably one of them. Thank God, I consider myself lucky that I live after anesthetic. Can you imagine those days? “Sit down. Tuesday we’re taking off your arm.”
J.A. The whole setup sucks. And comedy is a constant exploration of it. I still can’t figure it out, because it’s so absurd and so awful that I can’t do anything but laugh in its face.
A.B. But it’s really not awful. If I’ve learned anything, anything, getting older, it’s the value of moment-to-moment enjoyment. When I was young, all my career was “If I do well tonight, that means that Wednesday will be better. That means I can give this tape to my agent and … ” It was this ongoing chess game. And that is a really disappointing game, because when you get to checkmate, it never feels like it should. And there’s another board that they never told you about. So if I come here and talk to you, if I have an enjoyable three hours, goddamn it, that counts. By the way, people say we may be on the dawn of mixing our cells with the machine and live to 800. Do you want to live to 800?
J.A. Yeah.
A.B. You do?
J.A. That’s what I liked about your book, the deep exploration of those ideas. My one fear is the end. But when I do think deeply about not dying, it scares me as much as dying.
A.B. By the way, the end is going to be fine, because if it’s really the end, what difference does it make? When you close your eyes and you go to sleep and you don’t have a dream and you never wake up … you wouldn’t know.
J.A. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
A.B. The only way it would seem cruel is if you’re completely aware and you’re going, “Oh, look who got the part.” That would be the meanest universe in the world. If they took all of us dead people and propped us up and made us watch people we hated have success, this universe would be beyond cruel.
J.A. Do you ever have a spiritual feeling when you’re creative?
A.B. I used to hate when people say, “I feel it come through me,” but there are moments where two hours go by and you don’t know what happened, and you got all these words, and it’s the highlight of my life.
J.A. Which comedians made the biggest impression on you when you were starting out?
A.B. The biggest influence was Jack Benny. Because of his minimalism. And the way he got laughs. He was at the center of a storm, he let his players do the work, and just by being there made it funny. That was mind-boggling to me.
J.A. Were you around him at all?
A.B. I knew him a little. He was very sweet to me once. I did a bit on The Tonight Show,early on, this bit Alberto and His Elephant Bimbo. I was a European elephant trainer. I came out and I was dressed up with a whip, and I was distraught because the elephant never arrived, and I said, “Look, the show must go on. The Tonight Show, all they could get me was this frog, so I will do my best.” So I took a live frog and put it through all these elephant tricks. Every time he did a trick I threw peanuts at him. And the last trick, I said, “I call this trick ‘Find the nut, boy!’ I gave the peanut to somebody on the stage. I walked over and gave it to Doc Severinsen. “The elephant will find the peanut!” I took this frog. I threw this black huge cloth over him, the one I said I used to blindfold the elephant, and this black rag started hopping all over the place till it eventually hopped over to Doc Severinsen. It actually found him. I didn’t know what the hell the frog was going to do. So after the bit I sit down at the panel, and Jack Benny was on. There was always that last two minutes where Johnny was asking people, “Thank you for coming—what do you have coming up?” And during the last commercial Jack Benny leaned over to Johnny Carson and said, “When we get back, ask me where I’m going to be, will you?” So they came back. Johnny said, “I want to thank Albert. Jack, where are you going to be performing?” And Jack Benny said, “Never mind about me—this is the funniest kid I’ve ever seen!”
J.A. Wow.
A.B. And it was this profound thing. Like, Oh, that’s how you lead your life. Be generous and you can be the best person who ever lived.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/d1df3a319c932e43e92aa643d621bebb/tumblr_mgy0njqhG01qie8ino1_250.jpg)
Where has Albert Brooks the villain been hiding all my life. Shut up and stab me already, you beautiful Jewish bastard.
