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Rob Reiner and his forever pal Albert Brooks sit in a restaurant booth talking, and that’s it: Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (now streaming on Max), a biographical documentary, emerges. Reiner has been buds with Brooks since they were in high school, so Reiner could probably bio the living tar out of his friend all by himself. But in the interest of getting other people to call Brooks a genius, Reiner recruits a series of entertainment luminaries to be talking heads here – Steven Spielberg, Chris Rock, Ben Stiller, David Letterman, Brian Williams, Sarah Silverman, Tiffany Haddish, Judd Apatow, Larry David, the list goes on – and pieces together this retrospective of the man’s idiosyncratic and artistically potent career, the likes of which don’t happen very often (if at all, anymore).
The Gist: It’s worth noting how Reiner and Brooks’ lives and work parallel each other: Both are offspring of entertainers, both enjoyed multi-slash careers as actors, writers and directors, and both were nominated for Oscars (Brooks for acting in Broadcast News, Reiner’s directorial effort A Few Good Men was up for best picture). Now they’re well in their 70s, and each has a half-eaten piece of cheesecake on the table in front of them as they speak casually about their longstanding friendship and then, eventually, get to Brooks’ biographical stuff. Absolutely 100 percent in tune with the deconstructionist style of Brooks’ early standup career, Reiner makes reference to how he’s going to embarrass his pal with the opening of this very documentary – and we just saw that, via a parade of A-listers citing our guy as an influence.
But before we get into how Brooks used to make the rounds of the zillion or so variety shows of the late 1960s and early ’70s, eventually breaking through as one of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show regulars, we learn that his real last name is Einstein. No, it’s true – the man was named Albert Einstein by his parents. What does that mean? Did it make him predestined for greatness and innovation? Maybe? Depends on if you believe in that type of thing. His father was Harry Einstein, known in the comedy biz as Harry Parke or Parkyakarkus, a radio personality and bit movie player who suffered from heart disease and died on the Friars Club dais immediately after roasting Lucille Ball; his mother was singer and actress Thelma Leeds, whose achievements never succeeded footnote status. Brooks would transcend both his parents’ fame, initially with his standup routines, which he’d sometimes concoct mere moments before stepping through the curtain and in front of the camera, deploying conceptual pieces that often lampooned the art of comedy itself.
Appearing on Carson thrust him into a brighter spotlight, and he made comedy albums and did standup tours before Lorne Michaels tried to recruit him to be the permanent host of a new project he was developing that ended up being something you may have heard of called Saturday Night Live. Famously, Brooks insisted that the show should have guest hosts every week, and said he’d direct short comedy films for the program – and whaddayaknow, he had roughed in the format of a comedy institution. By the mid-’70s, he’d landed acting gigs (his first was a supporting role in a little film called Taxi Driver), and soon began directing himself in movies, first in Real Life, which Brooks points out to Reiner predated Spinal Tap in the mockumentary sweepstakes, and then in critically acclaimed fringe comedies such as Modern Romance, Lost in America and Defending Your Life. From here, the documentary touches on Brooks’ eventual late-in-life marriage (he was 50) and fatherhood – and yes, he talks about Drive, The Simpsons (cue that Hank Scorpio clip, please!) and Finding Nemo, because he has to, he just has to, doesn’t he?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Pair Albert Brooks: Defending My Life with the HBO two-parter George Carlin’s American Dream to get a glimpse at two of the boomer generation’s greatest cutting-edge comic artists. (It’s also worth noting that Max now boasts Defending Your Life and Lost in America in its library.)
Performance Worth Watching: Nobody upstages Brooks’ early comedy routines (the Three Stooges bit that we see Jon Stewart mimic, the phony-mime shtick, the elephant-trainer routine that replaces the elephant with a frog, etc.). But outside of that, the talking head who gives the best soundbite is Chris Rock, who touches on the art of bit theft in the comedy biz: “He’s so good, you can’t steal it. If you stole it, you wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
Memorable Dialogue: Brooks: “A very famous agent said to me, ‘I don’t know why you always take the hard road.’ And my answer was, ‘You think I see two roads.’”
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Sex and Skin: A brief shot of Sharon Stone’s nude derriere in a clip from The Muse.
Our Take: Albert Brooks is a filmmaker’s filmmaker and a comedian’s comedian, and so Defending My Life has filmmakers and comedians speaking on his work with authority – and among all these voices, you’ll question exactly none of them. Unsurprisingly, Reiner puts together a flattering portrait of the man, and although at one point he’s called “the first alternative comic,” superlatives are generally toned down; nobody’s calling him a top-10-this or the best-ever-at-that. It’s a subtle point, but the tone here, established by the Reiner-Brooks conversation, is warmer, more personal, the talking heads sharing stories about the man, or how they first saw or reacted to his work.
Reiner doesn’t avoid necessary context, though – this is a very sturdy biography. He neatly weaves these voices in with Brooks’ self-reflection, creating a modestly revealing guided tour of Brooks’ career, and offering a greater understanding of the man and why he did what he did: His standup was in many ways a reaction to his father’s vaudeville shtick, although it wasn’t out of bitterness, but a quest for innovation and expression (in fact, an anecdote about Brooks’ father declaring the then-teenager the funniest person alive is the film’s only real bit of hyperbole, and it’s touching). His films were singular in voice and concept and driven by curiosity, ranging from psychotherapeutic (Modern Romance, Mother) to satirical (Lost in America) to politically challenging (Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World). The documentary isn’t nearly as probing when it comes to Brooks’ acting, simply maintaining the long-held assertion that he’s far more dramatically versatile than you might expect from a man who once had people in stitches while pretending to be the world’s most terrible ventriloquist.
Brooks has kept a relatively low profile during the last decade-plus, with a simple explanation: He focused on starting a family late in life. (There may be a greater one about the inability for idiosyncratic auteurs like himself to find much support for making films in the current climate, but Reiner keeps the perspective looking in rather than out.) Despite that fact, Reiner doesn’t feel the need to piece together a series of declarations, but rather reiterate Brooks’ influence with a balance of the personal, intellectual and analytical. The doc is open and honest without airing anything too deep or intense. At the very worst, it’ll inspire you to discover (or rediscover) the best of his filmography – and there’s plenty of it.
Our Call: Albert Brooks: Defending My Life is as insightful as it is delightful. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
