The Stanley Kubrick Of Comedy (not counting Stanley Kubrick)
Albert Brooks' first three movies set the bar for American satire.
Real Life, Albert Brooks' first feature length directorial effort, was released in 1979. It is a brutally intelligent, razor sharp satire of America's ability to turn anything into entertainment. In its attempt to parody the PBS docu-series An American Family, it not only predicted reality TV (and digital technology), but did so with such stiletto precision that, for a film made 43 years ago, it still feels completely contemporary.
It's one of those films that you watch and think, "There's no way they could make this now," but the fact is, I'm surprised it got made then. Hollywood was enjoying a comedy boom in the late 70's / early 80's, inspired by the runaway success of the original Saturday Night Live. 1978 saw the release of National Lampoon's Animal House, which made a movie star of SNL's John Belushi. The following year saw Meatballs, the first starring vehicle for SNL's Bill Murray, and The Jerk, the first starring vehicle for frequent SNL guest host Steve Martin, then at his zenith. But these were broad, silly movies, derided at the time as "gross out comedies." In that regard, Real Life was a cinematic salmon swimming hard upstream. As a film comedy, it's has a lot more in common with Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove than Meatballs.
Like Strangelove, Real Life is a brutal satire that plays it completely straight. Writer, director and star Albert Brooks plays a writer, director and star named Albert Brooks. The character of Albert Brooks is a satire of the real Albert Brooks. Insecure and smug at the same time, he's a self-aware Hollywood phony with a car salesman's smile and a misplaced affection for Western wear.
The fake Brooks is making a documentary on a typical American family, the Yeagers. A Hollywood director through and through, he cannot resist interfering, much to the chagrin of the team of buttoned down sociologists assigned to the project. The fake Brooks shallow goals are stated right up front. "We not only had a chance at winning an Oscar, but a Nobel prize too."
The project, of course, is a shit show. Mrs. Yeager, played by Frances Lee McCain, seems to be in the midst of a mid-life crisis. In her attempts to apologize to Brooks for her dour mood she invites the film crew along with her to the gynecologist (you can watch the Kardashians to see how this then-egregious stunt has been normalized). The whole endeavor blows up in their face when the gynecologist refuses to be filmed, at which point Brooks remembers him from a recent 60 Minutes expose. "Oh my God! You're the Baby Broker!"
Mr. Yeager, played by a peerless, note-perfect Charles Grodin, is a veterinarian. who invites the film crew along with him to observe a surgery where he accidentally kills a horse. The scene is incredible. I won't ruin the ending for the films if you haven't seen it yet, but let's just say it's inspired by Gone With the Wind.
Brooks in 1979 with Steve "Disco Sucks" Dahl
So at a time when Hollywood was being derided for making brainless, frat-boy comedies like Animal House and Meatballs (again, as was the critical posturing at the time), you would think that a smart comedy like Real Life would have been heartily embraced. Well... not everywhere. Roger Ebert gave the film one star, saying Real Life, "gets most of its laughs in the first 10 minutes," and that it "...fails so miserably that it lets its audience down."
I could not disagree more. Then again, Ebert has panned a lot of films I love, among them A Clockwork Orange, Beetlejuice, The Elephant Man, Brazil, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Blue Velvet, etc. Other critics were more insightful. The Washington Post opined, "Albert Brooks may be the Woody Allen of the 1980's. His extraordinary first feature, Real Life, demonstrates a potential genius for movie comedy and is animated by a peculiarly fertile and subtle imagination." This was 1979, when comparing someone to Woody Allen was a compliment.
Real Life was not a box office smasheroo, but it did well enough to set Brooks up for a followup, the equally brutal and painfully hilarious Modern Romance (or as I call it, "My life in the early 90's."). Modern Romance was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite films. He claimed in an interview that he had always wanted to make a film about jealousy and that Modern Romance was the best film on the subject he had yet to see. Modern Romance was followed by Lost In America, which was another laser focused satire, this time on the 80's itself.
Brooks career was just getting going, of course, but his first three movies present a satirical triple-play that has yet to be matched.