The new HBO documentary "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life" is of course a journey into the world of the quietly brilliant comedy giant of the title. Starting out, we see Brooks doing one of his early bits on some back-in-the-day TV show — Carson, Leno, Merv Griffin, one of those; Albert played them all in the days when he still did stand-up. Here he's doing a routine about an elephant trainer whose elephant got sick, but who turned up for a gig anyway — bringing along a frog for a stand-in. Albert has an actual frog with him.
And here he is on another show. "I'm joking tonight for a little boy who's very sick in a hospital in Northern California," he tells the audience. "I promised him I would get big laughs. If I do, he lives. If I don't, he's gone."
Now he's talking about his late mother, who once told him that when she died, she wanted to be cremated. "Of course," Albert says he replied. "I could tell by your cooking."
"He was like a comedic tornado," says Steven Spielberg, one of the many celebrity superfans who do talking-head duty in the new documentary, "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life." "A shining god of comedy," says David Letterman. "The sharpest, wittiest, funniest" — that's Larry David, who knows about such things. Fellow comic Anthony Jeselnik describes Brooks' stage act as "punk rock." Says Jon Stewart: "You couldn't believe the nerve of it."
Brooks was indeed nervy. He says he never road-tested his material in comedy clubs — he just worked it up in a backstage bathroom, then walked out onstage and did it cold. Which might explain a "Tonight Show" appearance in which we see Albert, sitting on the guest couch, pulling out a joint, firing it up — on old-time TV! — and then nonchalantly passing it to Johnny Carson's sidekick, Ed McMahon.
"Defending My Life" was directed by Albert's longtime friend Rob Reiner. They were both showbiz scions and classmates at Hollywood High School back in the 1960s, and Rob has included a clip of his late father, the comedy titan Carl Reiner, being asked who was the funniest person he knew. "A 16-year-old high school kid named Albert Einstein," Carl says.
Fans will already know that Albert's actual family name is in fact Einstein. And they'll also be familiar with his backstory: Moving up from talk shows to making short films for the nascent "Saturday Night Live" (after turning down a program of his own in the "SNL" time slot), then screen acting, first opposite Robert De Niro in the 1976 "Taxi Driver," and later in an iconic role in "Broadcast News." ("Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive?") He started making his own one-of-a-kind films in 1979 with Real Life (a prescient reality TV satire). And his voice has been kept busy on The Simpsons for the last 30 years.
Brooks' work is deceptively deep-rooted in the rich loam of human nature, a fact obscured by his low-key persona and deadpan delivery. His finest and maybe funniest movie, "Lost in America," is hilariously perceptive about love and marriage and, uh, Las Vegas (the setting for one of his all-time classic scenes). Characteristically, though, he sees the film as more than just a comedy: it's about "people who make enormous decisions," he says, "and are wrong."
Like other conceptually enterprising filmmakers, Brooks has some difficulty financing his pictures. (The last one came out 18 years ago.) Judging by the ardent praise directed his way in Defending My Life, though, his admirers have gotten used to being patient. As Larry David says, "He's really special." And as Alana Haim puts it, "I'm still looking for my Albert Brooks."
Kurt Loder is the film critic for Reason Online. To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
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