Albert Brooks Everlasting
There are two observations in Defending My Life, the new documentary about Albert Brooks by his lifelong friend and fellow filmmaker Rob Reiner, that perfectly capture the imprint that Brooks has made, and continues to make, on American culture.
The first comes from Conan O’Brien: “Albert broke the sound barrier,” the talk-show host says. It was through Brooks’s now-legendary mix of originality, absurdity, exuberance, and sheer brilliance that comedians realized what comedy could be—that “there’s this other place you can go,” as O’Brien puts it. For Brooks, that place entailed beloved bits on late-night television—his celebrity-impressions kit, the mime who describes everything he’s doing as he’s doing it, the elephant trainer who lost his elephant—as well as films like the spoof documentary Real Life and the romantic comedies Modern Romance, Lost in America, Broadcast News, and Defending Your Life.
People have repeatedly compared Brooks to other superstars (Woody Allen, Robin Williams, Andy Kaufman, Steve Martin, and Charlie Chaplin all come to mind), but the truth is that there was no one like him before he arrived, and there has been no one like him since. Few artists have been so consistently ahead of the cultural zeitgeist for so many decades—which leads to the second observation, from Chris Rock: “He’s so good, you can’t steal it. If you stole it, you wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
, which is streaming on Max, will undoubtedly charm the Brooks completists. It showcases the warmth in his friendship with Reiner and the abundant adoration of his comedic peers and progenies, all while taking the
