Film aficionados immediately tend to think of Woody Allen or Mel Brooks when considering the funniest and most significant artists to emerge in the last 40 years of comedic movie history. But a few of us, myself included, consider the other Brooks, Albert, to be in the same company as these multifaceted kings of cinematic comedy. As evidence, the Dryden will offer screenings of this writer-director-actor’s first two features, the ingenious 1979 pseudo-documentary, Real Life (July 28), and a love story even more neurotic than Annie Hall, 1981’s Modern Romance (August 4).
Unlike native New Yorkers Woody and Mel, former stage comic Albert Brooks is a lifetime resident of Los Angeles, and his comedy has a distinctively California flavor. Born Albert Einstein, he was named by a man who obviously had a sense of humor: the comedian Harry Einstein, better known by his stage name, Parkyakarkus. Show business runs in Albert Brooks’s family (his brother, Bob Einstein, has his own comedy alter ego: Super Dave Osborne), and it’s frequently the direct subject of his work as it is in Real Life, or it figures in somewhere, like in the subplot of Modern Romance.
Like the cringe-inducing comedy of Curb Your Enthusiasm or the original BBC version of The Office, many of the laughs in these two Brooks movies come from his sometimes frustrating but always funny on-screen persona, which is materially obsessed and deeply self-involved. If this is a brave form of self-criticism, it takes on an even bolder dimension in Real Life where he plays an overly ambitious and neurotic comic-turned-filmmaker named (what else?) Albert Brooks. Inspired by the PBS American Family series, Brooks decides to film the daily family life of a Phoenix, Arizona, veterinarian (played by the hilariously deadpan Charles Grodin). Pressured to deliver “entertainment,” the obnoxious and painfully funny Brooks unintentionally does all he can to bring about the destruction of his own project, which doesn’t stop at trying to seduce one of his subjects or bribe the family with presents. Ahead of its time, Real Life’s truths are more evident now in the age of so-called Reality TV and our increasingly media-savvy society.
In the opening scene of Modern Romance, Brooks’s character Robert, an obsessive-compulsive film editor, breaks up with his long-suffering girlfriend, Mary (Kathryn Harrold), by telling her they’re in a “no-win situation…like Vietnam.” Robert, immediately remorseful, spends much of the remainder of the film trying to win Mary back again! While it surprises us with its honest and very funny take on a particular type of contemporary relationship, Modern Romance also offers special insight on the way movies get made, as it follows the attempts of Robert and his assistant (a very funny performance by the late Bruno Kirby) to complete work on an awful, low-budget science-fiction epic.
Why isn’t Albert Brooks better known as a filmmaker? Maybe it’s because his comic targets are never as broadly satirical or as audience-friendly as Mel Brooks’s and, as a director, he’s only worked seven times in 28 years, a record that pales in comparison to the always-working Woody Allen. While his most recent feature, the underrated Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, was released in 2006, he’s still probably best known today for his brilliant short films made for the first season of Saturday Night Live and for his appearances in other directors’ movies, like Taxi Driver and Broadcast News. Now you have an opportunity to discover or better appreciate his multifaceted talents.
Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department
