Perhaps it’s too easy an association to make, but when one thinks of writer-director-actors who work primarily in the field of comedic drama, you can’t help but compare people to Woody Allen. I do feel that all of those we follow in that Allen mould, Albert Brooks may very well the best of them. With the three excellent films I’m going to talk about today, Brooks managed to achieve the exact sort of perfect balance of comedy and drama that led to Allen becoming one of the masters of the form. But Allen aside, Brooks has more than made his own way and in many ways some of his films are even better at blending the absurdity with the human, whereas Allen often chooses one mode for each film. Look Allen will always be my guy, but Brooks is pretty excellent, as these three films illuminate.
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Modern Romance (1981)
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“if it’s not love, then what is it?”. Modern Romance is what would happen if we followed the sub-plot characters that tell their relationship woes to our lead, except this stumbling, fumbling neurotic is our lead and we follow him and his on and off and on and off and on again, and then off again, girlfriend over the course of 90 minutes as they break up, struggle alone, get back together and immediately remember why they broke up in the first place. Such is the case with the best Allen films there is the major possibility that this formula and such a neurotic and infuriating lead character, in this case Albert Brooks as Robert Cole, a film editor, can be seriously, seriously annoying and repugnant, rather than endearing. The power of Brooks’ performance and writing in this film is to strike that incredible and sometimes seemingly impossible balance to make such a character be one we can root for. However whereas that’s where Allen stops, Brooks continues, and in actuality doesn’t make his Robert wholly endearing, as a matter of fact the great tightrope of the film is that we spend the first half rooting for Robert and Mary to get back together, only to then spend the rest of the film in so many ways rooting for them to split up again. Before then giving us the ultimately inevitable, hilarious, cringe-worthy climax we knew but dreaded we’d get the whole time, before then even taking it further, with three hilariously languid title cards that reveal themselves slowly one after another, with once more exactly what we know they’re going to say and exactly what we can’t believe we’re reading. This is certainly the lesser of the three films we’re talking about today, but does have one of the funniest and driest conclusions of the triptych.
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Ultimately one of Brooks best decisions in his presentation of this relationship, is in the handling of the character of the girlfriend Mary Harvard, played by the witty, dry and beautiful Kathryn Harrorld. At no point does the conceit of this troubled, yet funny, demanding, yet loving Brooks character managing to maintain a relationship with this stunningly attractive and intelligent career woman ever come off as ridiculous, for the masterstroke of the screenplay is that Mary is in so many ways just as foolish in love and just as bashful in the enterprise of a relationship. The script was co-written by Brooks with Monica Mcgowan Johnson, with whom we would work with on the majority of his films, bar Defending Your Life. The film quite simply doesn’t let anybody off the hook. But the jokes aren’t just in the realm of breaking conventions of the modern rom-com film, the film also is one of the earliest and best uses of the radio gag, with Brook’s Robert repeatedly unexpectedly coming across songs on the radio hauntingly familiar to his current predicament. The first half hour of the film in fact more or less plays like a one man comedy of manners, not unlike the work of Chaplin, with Robert very funnily navigating the single world through being duped by a salesman at a clothes store, struggling with a clerk to find a talking toy that says “I’m sorry Mary”, or even beating Leo to the punch with an extended Quaaludes sequence. The film too has great fun with the immense irritation of Robert’s job as a film editor as he struggles to deal with the directors notes (played in a great turn by future Broadcast News collaborator and friend James L. Brooks) alongside Bruno Kirby as Jay, perfecting the rom-com best friend persona that he would all stun us with once more as Jess in When Harry Met Sally. But at the core of the film is a struggling relationship between a man and a woman, it’s been done before, but I’ve never really felt a rom-com like this give such sincerity and weight to two people who are in so many ways a little bit dumb and blinded to the simple fact they don’t work. The core of the film is a very unfortunate, but ultimately very realistic tug of war with jealousy and other such destructive themes that can have such an effect on any relationship. As a matter of fact according to Brooks himself, Stanley Kubrick called him after viewing the film and told him that he had always wished to a film about jealousy. Not too bad a review for a pretty straight forward dry romantic-comedy. This fact also gives us a chance to have a truly bizarre, but kind of perfect double bill of this and Eyes Wide Shut.
Lost in America (1985)
The conceit of Brooks’ next film after Modern Romance was rather simple; a couple miss the whole “drop out” phase of their 1960’s/70’s youth and teens and hence go about dropping out of society in the 80s in their 30’s. Only of course to drop back into society two weeks later. It’s a brilliant conceit and at every turn Brooks and his writing partner Johnson go about utilising the iconography of this earlier sensation, whether it be through the repeated use of the couple stating “they dropped out of society” or in that repeatedly re-iterated explanation through the use of the film Easy Rider. However in the direction of the film, aswell as of course the script, Brooks takes every chance to completely visually undermine this relation to the classic Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda film, initially with a hilariously abrupt cut to a motor home wheel set to the Easy Rider classic, Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf. Visually also the choice to film entirely on location, bar three days on sound stages, really does give one the ultimate sense of returning to the American tradition of setting off and ‘finding’ America. Our couple are played here by Brooks once more and the always brilliant Julie Haggerty. For a period of time Brooks was actually lining Bill Murray up for the role of his own David Howard, before scheduling led to Brooks taking on the role himself. Haggerty was the first choice for Linda Howard, but Johnson and Brooks both site how the role was based majorly on Johnson herself, who has a very similar love of gambling, very similar to the one that ultimately cripples our couple and puts them in a terribly tight spot just as their journey begins.
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The comedy of the film is just so enjoyable scene after scene, with David finding himself and putting himself into situation after situation to try and deal with the shambolic time that the two are having. For as much as Modern Romance doesn’t let either partner off, I feel much the same can be said here, it’s the balance of David’s ambitious hubris and Linda’s baffled impulsiveness and naivety that leads to this journey being one of disaster. The combination of Brooks and Johnson as writers clearly allowed for a great companionship and relatability to bleed into the writing, with Defending Your Life Brooks does prove that he can write arguably his best work on his own, but with this pairing of relationship focussed films Johnson and Brooks made for the perfect pair. The film does have a rather episodic nature about it, naturally as the couples plan goes from worse to worse, before eventually plateuing somewhere in the middle of nowhere with David as a crossing guard and Linda working at a fast food chain. With nowhere left to go and desperately no place but up, the two decide “to eat sh*t” and head back to the big apple to fall back in line with corporate America. It’s the wonderful nihilistic quality of the ending paired with the triumphant music and happiness of Brooks and Haggerty that make this ending walk that fine line so well, afterall this should be a pretty dower ending, with our two leads coming to terms with the fact that their only happiness will be found returning to a place where they weren’t actually happy to begin with. Lost in America too ends with the crawling title cards going about here a final summation of the couples argument for both dropping in and dropping out, instead of another gag to leave us with as was the case with Modern Romance. Either way both films utilise this conceit very cleverly and make the films uproarious conclusion, a mad-cap journey back to New York, as scored by Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York, a thrilling and very funny conclusion to a thrilling, if remarkably cringey, and very funny film.
Defending Your Life (1991)
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I first viewed the 1990 tragi-comic, dramatic, romantic, thoughtful and philosophical Albert Brooks masterpiece Defending Your Life on a very cold and rainy day in Philadelphia during a film festival in a reprise screening in honour of the memory of one of the films recently deceased stars Rip Torn. At this time physical media releases of Brooks film in England were few and far between and so despite the critical admiration for Brooks and my own feeling that from all that I’d heard I would love the films of the man, this was to be my first exposure to his directorial work. The print was blurry at times, the cinema was empty and yet from the minute Brooks’s Daniel Miller began singing Barbara Streisand’s funky version of Something’s Coming I knew that “The first true story of what happens after you die” was going to be a very special experience, and I was certainly right. The way in which Brooks talks about the success of the film does lead one to believe that beside his other works he sees it as a more commercial piece of work, but does that negate the power of the piece? I think not. Brooks intelligent, humorous and touching portrayal of what life after death could be is the sort of drama and humour that I perfectly align with and Brooks sure as hell packs the film with more than enough intriguing notes on what an afterlife could possibly be, along with the many different ways in which he places gags and jokes within the screenplay on both the nature of life and the nature of this hilariously clinical version of the hereafter, aswell as even further hilarity ensuing from the pure business-like nature of the whole scenario – whether it be in the reuse of old Universal Studios trams or even in the brilliantly minor usage of Buck Henry as a replacement solicitor, giving notation to previous comedic visions of the afterlife on film with Herny of course being a star of the film that shares the most with this one, the Warren Beatty remake of Heaven Can Wait.
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The film too boats a sensational romance plot, which slowly reveals itself to be its chief focus, along with the journey of Daniel to realise his nature could be altered. This romance occurs between Brooks character and Meryl Streep’s, who got the role through a party at Carrie Fisher’s house where Brooks just so happened to be and just so happened to ask her; “You wouldn’t be interested in playing the lead in my movie, would you?” Thankfully she said “yes”. For as much as we view Streep as the queen of the Oscar drama, I have always felt and found many of my favourite Streep turns to be in her ‘lighter’ romantic and comedic work. This is purely my personal preference and I would state that Streep’s best works does lie in her more dramatic roles, however I feel this period of hers in the realm of comedy in the 80’s and early 90’s is often overlooked, or rather not seen in the same calibre as her other roles. But for me her Julia is some of her best. But for me in actuality the power of the film doesn’t lie in its comedy. This is not to say that Shirley Maclaine knowingly pointing fun at herself in the ‘past lives pavillion’ isn’t the most beautifully self-deprecating joke I’ve seen in some time (I do not need another reason to love Shirley Maclaine as much as I do, but I sure got one). I mean all this to say that when I sat down that day in Philadelphia the film what I was expecting was a comedy, which of course it is, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to be in tears by the end of it. Through the beautifully triumphant score of Michael Gore and the deeply effecting performances of Brooks and Streep, along with Rip Torn giving a line delivery for the ages with “Brave enough for you?” – I suddenly burst into tears. For as much as the film really is a sensational comedy with many intriguing and complex notions of the afterlife, it really is also a very touching dissection of guilt, regret, love and the human nature to long to be better. Afterall, isn’t that all what we want? To just be that little bit better.
The power of Brooks is that very human comedy that he is so perfect at distilling. There is something painfully human about almost all of the circumstances presented in these three films, hence what makes them work so astoundingly well, and what makes them the three sequential masterpieces that centre his career as a writer, director and actor.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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