James L. Brooks
Encyclopedia
James Lawrence Brooks is an American
director
, producer
and screenwriter
. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey
, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University
, he got a job as an usher at CBS
, going on to write for the CBS News broadcasts. He moved to Los Angeles
in 1965 to work on David L. Wolper
's documentaries. After being laid off he met producer Allan Burns
who secured him a job as a writer on the series My Mother the Car
.
Brooks wrote for several shows before being hired as a story editor on My Friend Tony
and later creating the series Room 222
. Grant Tinker
hired Brooks and Burns at MTM Productions to create The Mary Tyler Moore Show
in 1970. The show, one of the first to feature an independent working woman as its lead character, was critically acclaimed and won Brooks several Primetime Emmy Awards. Brooks and Burns then created two successful spin-offs from Mary Tyler Moore in the shape of Rhoda
(a comedy) and Lou Grant
(a drama). Brooks left MTM Productions in 1978 to co-create the sitcom Taxi
which, despite winning multiple Emmys, suffered from low ratings and was canceled twice.
Brooks moved into feature film work when he wrote and co-produced the 1979 film Starting Over. His next project was the critically acclaimed film Terms of Endearment
, which he produced, directed and wrote, winning an Academy Award for all three positions. Basing his next film, Broadcast News
, on his journalistic experiences the film earned him a further two Academy Award nominations. Although his 1994 work I'll Do Anything
was hampered by negative press attention due to the cutting of all of its recorded musical numbers, As Good as It Gets
(co-written with Mark Andrus
) earned further praise. It was seven years until his next film, which came in the shape of 2004's Spanglish
. His sixth film, How Do You Know
, was released in 2010. Brooks also produced and mentored Cameron Crowe
on Say Anything... (1989) and Wes Anderson
and Owen Wilson
on Bottle Rocket
(1996).
Although he did not intend to do so, Brooks returned to television in 1987 as the producer of The Tracey Ullman Show
. He hired cartoonist Matt Groening
to create a series of shorts for the show, which eventually led to The Simpsons
in 1989. The Simpsons won numerous awards and is still running after 22 years. Brooks also co-produced and co-wrote the 2007 film adaptation of the show, The Simpsons Movie
. In total, Brooks has received 47 Emmy nominations, winning 20 of them.
, New York
, United States
and raised in North Bergen, New Jersey
. His parents, Dorothy and Edward Brooks, were both salespeople (his mother sold children's clothes; his father furniture). Brooks' father abandoned his mother when he found out she was pregnant with him, and lost contact with him when Brooks was twelve. His mother died when he was 22. He has described his early life as "tough" with a "broken home, [and him being] poor and sort of lonely, that sort of stuff", later adding: "My father was sort of in-and-out and my mother worked long hours, so there was no choice but for me to be alone in the apartment a lot." He has an older sister, Dianne, who helped look after him as a child.
Brooks spent much of his childhood "surviving" and reading numerous comedic and scripted works, as well as writing; he sent comedic short stories out to publishers and occasionally got positive responses although none were published, and he did not believe he could make a career as a writer. Brooks attended Weehawken High School
but was not a high achiever. He was on his high school newspaper team and frequently secured interviews with celebrities including Louis Armstrong
. He lists some of his influences as Sid Caesar
, Jack Benny
, Lenny Bruce
, Mike Nichols
and Elaine May
, as well as writers Paddy Chayefsky
and F. Scott Fitzgerald
.
described Brooks' career as "a non-stop crescendo." Although he dropped out of a New York University
public relations course, Brooks' sister got him a job as an usher at CBS
in New York City
, a job usually requiring a college education, as she was friends with a secretary there. He held it for two and a half years. For two weeks he filled in as a copywriter
for CBS News and was given the job permanently when the original employee never returned. Brooks went on to become a writer for the news broadcasts, joining the Writers Guild of America
and writing reports on events such as the assassination of President Kennedy
. He moved to Los Angeles
in 1965, to write for documentaries being produced by David L. Wolper
, something he "still [hasn't] quite figured out how [he] got the guts to do," as his job at CBS was secure and well-paid. He worked as an associate producer on series such as Men in Crisis but after sixth months he was laid off as the company were trying to cut back on expenses. Brooks did occasionally work for Wolper's company again, including on a National Geographic insect special.
Failing to find another job at a news agency, he met producer Allan Burns
at a party. Burns got him a job on My Mother the Car
where he was hired to rewrite a script after pitching some story ideas. Brooks then went on to write episodes of That Girl
, The Andy Griffith Show
and My Three Sons
before Sheldon Leonard
hired him as a story editor on My Friend Tony. In 1969 he created for ABC
the series Room 222
, which lasted until 1974. Room 222 was the second series in American history to feature a black lead character, in this case high school teacher Pete Dixon played by Lloyd Haynes
. The network felt the show was sensitive and so attempted to change the pilot story so that Dixon helped a white student rather than a black one, but Brooks prevented it. On the show Brooks worked with Gene Reynolds
who taught him the importance of extensive and diligent research, which he conducted at Los Angeles High School
for Room 222, and he used the technique on his subsequent works. Brooks left Room 222 as head writer after one year to work on other pilots and brought Burns in to produce the show.
Brooks and Burns were hired by CBS programming executive Grant Tinker
to create a series together with MTM Productions for Tinker's wife Mary Tyler Moore
which became The Mary Tyler Moore Show
. Drawing on his own background in journalism, Brooks set the show in a newsroom. Initially the show was unpopular with CBS executives who demanded Tinker fire Brooks and Burns. However the show was one of the beneficiaries of network president Fred Silverman
's "rural purge
"; executive Bob Wood also liked the show and moved it into a better timeslot. Brooks and Burns hired all of the show's staff themselves and eventually ended it of their own accord. The Mary Tyler Moore Show became a critical and commercial success and was the first show to feature an independent-minded, working woman, not reliant on a man, as its lead. Geoff Hammill of the Museum of Broadcast Communications
described it as "one of the most acclaimed television programs ever produced" in US television
history. During its seven-year period it received high praise from critics and numerous Primetime Emmy Awards including for three years in a row Outstanding Comedy Series. In 2003, USA Today
called it "one of the best shows ever to air on TV". In 1997, TV Guide
selected a Mary Tyler Moore Show episode as the best TV episode ever and in 1999, Entertainment Weekly
picked Mary's hat toss in the opening credits as television's second greatest moment.
With Mary Tyler Moore going strong, Brooks produced and wrote the TV film Thursday's Game
, before creating the short-lived series Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers in 1974. He and Burns moved on to Rhoda
, a spin-off of Mary Tyler Moore, taking Valerie Harper
's character Rhoda Morgenstern into her own show. It was well received, lasting four years and earning Brooks several Emmys. The duo's next project came in 1977 in the shape of Lou Grant
, a second Mary Tyler Moore spin-off, which they created along with Tinker. Unlike its source however, the series was a drama starring Edward Asner as Grant. James Brown of the Museum of Broadcast Communications said it "explore[d] a knotty issue facing media people in contemporary society, focusing on how investigating and reporting those issues impact on the layers of personalities populating a complex newspaper publishing company." The show was also critically acclaimed, twice winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series
and also a Peabody Award
.
Brooks left MTM Productions in 1978 and formed the John Charles Walters Company
along with David Davis, Stan Daniels
and Ed Weinberger. They decided to produce Taxi
, a show about a New York taxi company, which unlike the other MTM Productions focused on the "blue-collar male experience". Brooks and Davis had been inspired by the article "Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet" by Mark Jacobson
, which appeared in the September 22, 1975 issue of New York
magazine. The show began on ABC in 1978 airing on Tuesday nights after Three's Company
which generated high ratings and after two seasons it was moved to Wednesday. Its ratings fell and in 1982 it was canceled; NBC picked it up, but the ratings remained low and it was dropped after one season. Despite its ratings, it won three consecutive Outstanding Comedy Series Emmys. Brooks' last TV show produced before he began making films was The Associates
(1979–1980) for ABC. Despite positive critical attention, the show was quickly canceled.
Alex Simon of Venice Magazine described Brooks as "[bringing] realism to the previously overstated world of television comedy. Brooks' fingerprints can now be seen in shows such as Seinfeld
, Friends
, Ally McBeal
and numerous other shows from the 1980's and 90's." Brooks' sitcoms were some of the first with a "focus on character" using an ensemble cast in a non-domestic situation.
. He adapted the screenplay from a novel by Dan Wakefield
into a film The Washington Post
called "a good-humored, heartening update of traditional romantic comedy" unlike the "drab" novel.
Brooks next project came in 1983, when he wrote, produced and directed Terms of Endearment
, adapting the screenplay from Larry McMurtry
's novel of the same name. It cost $8.5 million and took four years to film. Brooks won the Academy Awards
for Best Picture
, Director and Screenplay Adapted from Another Medium.
Brooks was fearful of the attention Oscar success would bring as he would be "deprived of a low profile", finding it "hard to work with the spotlight shining in your eyes." He added: "There's a danger of being seduced into being self-conscious, of being aware of your 'career'. That can be lethal." He also grew more concerned of the "threatening" corporate influence into the film industry at the expense of "the idea of the creative spirit". He channelled this ambivalence into Broadcast News
. As a romantic comedy
, Brooks felt he could say "something new ... with that form" adding "One of the things you're supposed to do every once in a while as a filmmaker is capture time and place. I was just glad there was some way to do it in a comedy." He cast William Hurt
, Holly Hunter
and Albert Brooks
in the three main roles.
He wished to set the film in a field he understood and opted for broadcast journalism. After talking with network journalists at the 1984 Republican National Convention
Brooks realised it had "changed so much since I had been near it" and so "did about a year and a half of solid research," into the industry. When he began writing the screenplay, Brooks felt he "didn't like any of the three [main] characters" but decided not to change them and after two months had reversed his original opinion. Brooks stated that this also happens to the audience: "You're always supposed to arc your characters and you have this change and that's your dramatic purpose. But what I hope happens in this film is that the audience takes part in the arc. So what happens is that the movie doesn't select its own hero. It plays differently with each audience. The audience helps create the experience, depending on which character they hook onto." He did not decide on the ending of the film until the rest of it had been completed. Brooks was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for Broadcast News. At the 38th Berlin International Film Festival
, the film was nominated for the Golden Bear
and Holly Hunter won the Silver Bear for Best Actress
.
His 1994 film I'll Do Anything
, starring Nick Nolte
, was conceived and filmed by Brooks as an old-fashioned movie musical
and parody of "Hollywood lifestyles and movie clichés", costing $40 million. It featured songs by Carole King
, Prince
, and Sinéad O'Connor
, among others, with choreography
by Twyla Tharp
. When preview audience reactions to the music were overwhelmingly negative, all production numbers from the film were cut and Brooks wrote several new scenes, filming them over three days and spending seven weeks editing the film down to two hours. Brooks noted: "Something like this not only tries one's soul - it threatens one's soul." While it was not unusual for Brooks to edit his films substantially after preview screenings on this occasion he was "denied any privacy" because the media reported the negative reviews before its release and "it had to be good enough to counter all this bad publicity." It was a commercial failure, and Brooks attempted to produce a documentary about it four years later but was scuppered by failing to obtain the rights to Prince's song.
Brooks agreed to produce and direct Old Friends, a screenplay by Mark Andrus
. Andrus' script "needed you to suspend disbelief" but Brooks realised "my style when directing is that I really don't know how to get people to suspend disbelief." Brooks spent a year reworking the screenplay: "There were changes made and the emphasis was changed but it's the product, really, of a very unusual writing team," and the project became As Good as It Gets
, taking a year to produce after funding had been secured. According to The New York Times
, Brooks "was constantly experimenting, constantly reshooting, constantly re-editing" the film, changing its ending five times and allowing the actors to improvise the film's tone.
The film garnered more praise than I'll Do Anything and Brooks was again nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. As Good as It Gets received a total of seven Academy Award nominations, winning two, both for Best Actor
for Jack Nicholson
and Best Actress
for Helen Hunt
. Jonathan Rosenbaum
of the Chicago Reader labelled it Brooks' best film, stating "what Brooks manages to do with [the characters] as they struggle mightily to connect with one another is funny, painful, beautiful, and basically truthful—a triumph for everyone involved." It also ranked 140 in Empire
2008 list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". Brooks cast Jack Nicholson
in both Terms of Endearment and As Good as It Gets with the actor taking an Academy Award for each role.
Brooks did not direct and write a film again for seven years until 2004's Spanglish
. Filming took six months, ending in June with three days of additional filming in October; Brooks produced three endings for the film, shooting several scenes in "15 to 25 takes" as he did not feel the film was tonally complete, although the script did not change much during filming. He opted to cast Adam Sandler
in a more dramatic role than his usual goofball comedy parts based on his performance in Punch-Drunk Love
and Sandler's relationship with his family. Describing the length of production, Brooks said: "It's amazing how much more perverse you are as a writer than as a director. I remember just being so happy that I'd painted myself into some corners [while writing]. I thought that would make it interesting. When I had to wrestle with that as a director, it was a different story." Brooks directing style "drove [the cast] bats", especially Téa Leoni
, with Cloris Leachman
(who replaced an ill Anne Bancroft
a month into filming) describing it as "free-falling. You're not going for some result. It's just, throw it in the air and see where it lands." The film was poorly received and was a box-office failure.
His next film, entitled How Do You Know
, was released December 17, 2010; Brooks produced, directed and wrote it. The film stars Reese Witherspoon
as a professional softball
player involved in a love triangle. Brooks began work on the film in 2005, wishing to create a film about a young female athlete. While interviewing numerous women for hundreds of hours in his research for film he also become interested in "the dilemmas of contemporary business executives, who are sometimes held accountable by the law for corporate behavior of which they may not even be aware." He created Paul Rudd
and Jack Nicholson
's characters for this concept. Filming finished in November 2009, although Brooks later reshot the film's opening and ending. The New York Times
described it as "perhaps the most closely guarded of Columbia
's movies this year." Brooks was paid $10 million for the project, which cost $100 million. The film was negatively received. Patrick Goldstein wrote in the Los Angeles Times
that "the characters were stick figures, the jokes were flat, the situations felt scarily insular." He felt the film showed Brooks had "finally lost his comic mojo" concluding "his films used to have a wonderfully restless, neurotic energy, but How Do You Know feels like it was phoned in from someone resting uncomfortably on his laurels." Variety
s Peter Debruge also felt the film showed Brooks had lost his "spark". Richard Corliss
of Time
was more positive, writing "without being great, it's still the flat-out finest romantic comedy of the year," while "Brooks hasn't lost his gift for dreaming up heroes and heroines who worry amusingly."
Brooks started his own film and television production company, Gracie Films
, in 1984. He produced Big
(1988) and The War of the Roses
(1989). Brooks mentored Cameron Crowe
and was the executive producer of Crowe's directorial debut Say Anything... (1989) and produced his later film Jerry Maguire
(1996). Brooks also helped Owen Wilson
and Wes Anderson
after their feature-length script and short film version of Bottle Rocket
(1996) were brought to his attention. Brooks went to Wilson and Anderson's apartment in Dallas
after agreeing to produce the film. Wilson stated: "I think he felt kind of sorry for us". Despite having "the worst [script] reading [Brooks] had ever heard", Brooks kept faith in the project. Brooks produced and directed Brooklyn Laundry, his first theatrical production, in 1990. It starred Glenn Close
, Woody Harrelson
and Laura Dern
. In 2007, Brooks appeared—along with Nora Ephron
, Carrie Fisher
and others in Dreams on Spec
, a documentary about screenwriting in Hollywood.
Although Brooks "never meant" to return to television, he was helping Tracey Ullman
start The Tracey Ullman Show
and when she could not find another producer, stepped in. On the suggestion of friend and colleague Polly Platt
, who gave Brooks the nine panel Life in Hell
cartoon entitled "The Los Angeles Way of Death" which hangs outside Brooks' Gracie Films office, Brooks asked Life in Hell cartoonist Matt Groening
to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts to appear on The Tracey Ullman Show. Groening initially intended to present an animated version of his Life in Hell series. However, when Groening realized that animating Life in Hell would require the rescinding of publication right
s for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family
in the lobby of Brooks' office. After the success of the shorts, the Fox Broadcasting Company
in 1989 commissioned a series of half-hour episodes of the show, now called The Simpsons
. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content. According to writer Jon Vitti
, Brooks contributed more to the episode "Lisa's Substitute
" than to any other in the show's history. The Simpsons garnered critical and commercial acclaim, winning numerous awards and is still running after 20 years. In a 1998 issue celebrating the 20th century's greatest achievements in arts and entertainment, Time
magazine named The Simpsons the century's best television series.
In 1995, Brooks and Groening were involved in a public dispute over the episode "A Star Is Burns
". Groening felt that the episode was a thirty-minute advertisement for Brooks' show The Critic
, (which had moved to Fox from ABC
for its second season) and was created by former The Simpsons show runner
s Al Jean
and Mike Reiss
, and whose lead character Jay Sherman appears in the episode. He hoped Brooks would pull the episode because "articles began to appear in several newspapers around the country saying that [Groening] created The Critic," and removed his names from the credits. In response, Brooks said "I am furious with Matt, he's been going to everybody who wears a suit at Fox and complaining about this. When he voiced his concerns about how to draw The Critic into the Simpsons' universe he was right and we agreed to his changes. Certainly he's allowed his opinion, but airing this publicly in the press is going too far. [...] He is a gifted, adorable, cuddly ingrate. But his behavior right now is rotten."
The Critic was short-lived, broadcasting ten episodes on Fox before its cancellation. A total of only 23 episodes were produced, and it returned briefly in 2000 with a series of ten internet broadcast webisode
s. The series has since developed a cult following
thanks to reruns on Comedy Central
and its complete series release on DVD. His 1993 show Phenom
and 2001 show What About Joan were also short lived.
Brooks co-produced and wrote the 2007 feature-length film adaptation of The Simpsons, The Simpsons Movie
. He directed the voice cast for the first time since the television show's early seasons. Dan Castellaneta
found the recording sessions "more intense" than recording the television series, and "more emotionally dramatic". Some scenes, such as Marge's video message to Homer, were recorded over one hundred times, leaving the voice cast exhausted.
candidates.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey
North Bergen, New Jersey
North Bergen is a township in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2010 Census, the township had a total population of 60,773. Originally founded in 1843, the town was much diminished in territory by a series of secessions. Situated on the Hudson Palisades, it is one...
, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, he got a job as an usher at CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, going on to write for the CBS News broadcasts. He moved to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in 1965 to work on David L. Wolper
David L. Wolper
David Lloyd Wolper was an American television and film producer, responsible for shows such as Roots, The Thorn Birds, North & South, L.A. Confidential, and the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory...
's documentaries. After being laid off he met producer Allan Burns
Allan Burns
Allan Burns is an American screenwriter and television producer. Burns is best known for, alongside James L. Brooks, creating and writing for the television sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda.-Early life:...
who secured him a job as a writer on the series My Mother the Car
My Mother the Car
My Mother the Car is an American fantasy sitcom which aired for a single season on NBC between September 14, 1965 and September 6, 1966. A total of thirty episodes were produced by United Artists Television....
.
Brooks wrote for several shows before being hired as a story editor on My Friend Tony
My Friend Tony
My Friend Tony is an American crime drama that aired on NBC in 1969. The pilot originally aired as "My Pal Tony" on The Danny Thomas Hour on March 4, 1968.-Synopsis:...
and later creating the series Room 222
Room 222
Room 222 is an American comedy-drama television series produced by 20th Century Fox Television. The series aired on ABC from September 17, 1969, to January 11, 1974, for 112 episodes...
. Grant Tinker
Grant Tinker
Grant Almerin Tinker is the former chairman and CEO of NBC from 1981 to 1986, co-founder of MTM Enterprises, and television producer. Tinker is the former husband of television actress Mary Tyler Moore...
hired Brooks and Burns at MTM Productions to create The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mary Tyler Moore Show is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns that aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977...
in 1970. The show, one of the first to feature an independent working woman as its lead character, was critically acclaimed and won Brooks several Primetime Emmy Awards. Brooks and Burns then created two successful spin-offs from Mary Tyler Moore in the shape of Rhoda
Rhoda
Rhoda is an American television sitcom, starring Valerie Harper, which ran for five seasons, from 1974 to 1978 airing in 109 episodes. The show was a spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which Harper between the years 1970 and 1974 had played the role of Rhoda Morgenstern, a spunky,...
(a comedy) and Lou Grant
Lou Grant (TV series)
Lou Grant is an American television drama series starring Ed Asner in the titular role as a newspaper editor. Unusual in American television, this drama series was a spinoff from a sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Aired from 1977 to 1982, Lou Grant won 13 Emmy Awards, including "Outstanding Drama...
(a drama). Brooks left MTM Productions in 1978 to co-create the sitcom Taxi
Taxi (TV series)
Taxi was an American sitcom that originally aired from 1978 to 1982 on ABC and from 1982 to 1983 on NBC. The series, which won 18 Emmy Awards, including three for "Outstanding Comedy Series", focuses on the everyday lives of a handful of New York City taxi drivers and their abusive dispatcher...
which, despite winning multiple Emmys, suffered from low ratings and was canceled twice.
Brooks moved into feature film work when he wrote and co-produced the 1979 film Starting Over. His next project was the critically acclaimed film Terms of Endearment
Terms of Endearment
Terms of Endearment is a 1983 romantic comedy-drama film adapted by James L. Brooks from the novel by Larry McMurtry and starring Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, and Jack Nicholson...
, which he produced, directed and wrote, winning an Academy Award for all three positions. Basing his next film, Broadcast News
Broadcast News (film)
Broadcast News is a 1987 romantic comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by James L. Brooks. The film concerns a virtuoso television news producer , who has daily emotional breakdowns, a brilliant yet prickly reporter and his charismatic but far less seasoned rival...
, on his journalistic experiences the film earned him a further two Academy Award nominations. Although his 1994 work I'll Do Anything
I'll Do Anything
I'll Do Anything is a 1994 American dramedy film written and directed by James L. Brooks. Its primary plot concerns a down-on-his-luck actor who suddenly finds himself the sole caretaker of his six-year-old daughter.-Synopsis:...
was hampered by negative press attention due to the cutting of all of its recorded musical numbers, As Good as It Gets
As Good as It Gets
As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by James L. Brooks and produced by Laura Ziskin. It stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with an asthmatic son, and Greg Kinnear as a gay artist. The screenplay was...
(co-written with Mark Andrus
Mark Andrus
Mark Andrus is an award-winning American screenwriter.After receiving a Master of Business Administration from UC Riverside, Andrus decided to take a creative writing class while waiting to hear from the law schools to which he had applied...
) earned further praise. It was seven years until his next film, which came in the shape of 2004's Spanglish
Spanglish (film)
Spanglish is a 2004 American comedy-drama film written and directed by James L. Brooks, and starring Adam Sandler, Paz Vega, and Téa Leoni. It was released in the United States on December 17, 2004 by Columbia Pictures and by Gracie Films, and in other countries over the first several months of...
. His sixth film, How Do You Know
How Do You Know (film)
How Do You Know is a 2010 romantic comedy drama film directed, written and produced by James L. Brooks. It stars Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson....
, was released in 2010. Brooks also produced and mentored Cameron Crowe
Cameron Crowe
Cameron Bruce Crowe is an American screenwriter and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes....
on Say Anything... (1989) and Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer of features, short films and commercials....
and Owen Wilson
Owen Wilson
Owen Cunningham Wilson is an American actor and writer, known for his roles in the films The Haunting, The Royal Tenenbaums, Zoolander, Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers, You, Me and Dupree, Bottle Rocket, the Cars series, The Darjeeling Limited, Marley & Me, Midnight in Paris, Shanghai Noon,...
on Bottle Rocket
Bottle Rocket
Bottle Rocket is a 1996 comedy film directed by Wes Anderson. It was co-written by Anderson and Owen Wilson. As well as being Wes Anderson's directorial debut, Bottle Rocket was the debut feature for brothers Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson, who co-starred with James Caan and Robert Musgrave.The film...
(1996).
Although he did not intend to do so, Brooks returned to television in 1987 as the producer of The Tracey Ullman Show
The Tracey Ullman Show
The Tracey Ullman Show was an American television variety show, hosted by British comedian and onetime pop singer Tracey Ullman. It debuted on April 5, 1987 as the Fox network's second primetime series after Married... with Children, and ran until May 26, 1990. The show blended sketch comedy shorts...
. He hired cartoonist Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
to create a series of shorts for the show, which eventually led to The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
in 1989. The Simpsons won numerous awards and is still running after 22 years. Brooks also co-produced and co-wrote the 2007 film adaptation of the show, The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons Movie is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the animated television series The Simpsons. The film was directed by David Silverman, and stars the regular television cast of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Tress...
. In total, Brooks has received 47 Emmy nominations, winning 20 of them.
Early life
Brooks was born James Lawrence Brooks on May 9, 1940 in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and raised in North Bergen, New Jersey
North Bergen, New Jersey
North Bergen is a township in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2010 Census, the township had a total population of 60,773. Originally founded in 1843, the town was much diminished in territory by a series of secessions. Situated on the Hudson Palisades, it is one...
. His parents, Dorothy and Edward Brooks, were both salespeople (his mother sold children's clothes; his father furniture). Brooks' father abandoned his mother when he found out she was pregnant with him, and lost contact with him when Brooks was twelve. His mother died when he was 22. He has described his early life as "tough" with a "broken home, [and him being] poor and sort of lonely, that sort of stuff", later adding: "My father was sort of in-and-out and my mother worked long hours, so there was no choice but for me to be alone in the apartment a lot." He has an older sister, Dianne, who helped look after him as a child.
Brooks spent much of his childhood "surviving" and reading numerous comedic and scripted works, as well as writing; he sent comedic short stories out to publishers and occasionally got positive responses although none were published, and he did not believe he could make a career as a writer. Brooks attended Weehawken High School
Weehawken High School
Weehawken High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school that serves students in seventh through twelfth grade from Weehawken, in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States, operating as part of the Weehawken School District....
but was not a high achiever. He was on his high school newspaper team and frequently secured interviews with celebrities including Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
. He lists some of his influences as Sid Caesar
Sid Caesar
Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known as the leading man on the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.- Early life :Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York,...
, Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
, Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider , better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist...
, Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate...
and Elaine May
Elaine May
Elaine May is an American film director, screenwriter and actress. She achieved her greatest fame in the 1950s from her improvisational comedy routines in partnership with Mike Nichols...
, as well as writers Paddy Chayefsky
Paddy Chayefsky
Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky , was an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay....
and F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
.
Television
In 1987, the Chicago Sun-TimesChicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
described Brooks' career as "a non-stop crescendo." Although he dropped out of a New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
public relations course, Brooks' sister got him a job as an usher at CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, a job usually requiring a college education, as she was friends with a secretary there. He held it for two and a half years. For two weeks he filled in as a copywriter
Copywriting
Copywriting is the use of words and ideas to promote a person, business, opinion or idea. Although the word copy may be applied to any content intended for printing , the term copywriter is generally limited to promotional situations, regardless of the medium...
for CBS News and was given the job permanently when the original employee never returned. Brooks went on to become a writer for the news broadcasts, joining the Writers Guild of America
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
and writing reports on events such as the assassination of President Kennedy
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
. He moved to Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
in 1965, to write for documentaries being produced by David L. Wolper
David L. Wolper
David Lloyd Wolper was an American television and film producer, responsible for shows such as Roots, The Thorn Birds, North & South, L.A. Confidential, and the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory...
, something he "still [hasn't] quite figured out how [he] got the guts to do," as his job at CBS was secure and well-paid. He worked as an associate producer on series such as Men in Crisis but after sixth months he was laid off as the company were trying to cut back on expenses. Brooks did occasionally work for Wolper's company again, including on a National Geographic insect special.
Failing to find another job at a news agency, he met producer Allan Burns
Allan Burns
Allan Burns is an American screenwriter and television producer. Burns is best known for, alongside James L. Brooks, creating and writing for the television sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda.-Early life:...
at a party. Burns got him a job on My Mother the Car
My Mother the Car
My Mother the Car is an American fantasy sitcom which aired for a single season on NBC between September 14, 1965 and September 6, 1966. A total of thirty episodes were produced by United Artists Television....
where he was hired to rewrite a script after pitching some story ideas. Brooks then went on to write episodes of That Girl
That Girl
That Girl is an American television situation comedy that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It stars Marlo Thomas as the title character, Ann Marie, an aspiring actress, who had moved from her hometown of Brewster, New York to make it big in New York City...
, The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised by CBS between October 3, 1960, and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays a widowed sheriff in the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina...
and My Three Sons
My Three Sons
My Three Sons is an American situation comedy. The series ran from 1960 to 1965 on ABC, and moved to CBS until its end on August 24, 1972. My Three Sons chronicles the life of a widower and aeronautical engineer named Steven Douglas , raising his three sons.The series was a cornerstone of the CBS...
before Sheldon Leonard
Sheldon Leonard
Sheldon Leonard was a pioneering American film and television producer, director, writer, and actor.-Biography:...
hired him as a story editor on My Friend Tony. In 1969 he created for ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
the series Room 222
Room 222
Room 222 is an American comedy-drama television series produced by 20th Century Fox Television. The series aired on ABC from September 17, 1969, to January 11, 1974, for 112 episodes...
, which lasted until 1974. Room 222 was the second series in American history to feature a black lead character, in this case high school teacher Pete Dixon played by Lloyd Haynes
Lloyd Haynes
Samuel Lloyd Haynes was an African-American actor and television writer. Haynes was a member of the Bahá'í Faith.Haynes served in the Marines from 1952–1964 and during the Korean War...
. The network felt the show was sensitive and so attempted to change the pilot story so that Dixon helped a white student rather than a black one, but Brooks prevented it. On the show Brooks worked with Gene Reynolds
Gene Reynolds
Gene Reynolds is a former American actor turned award-winning television writer, director, and producer.-Early life:He was born Eugene Reynolds Blumenthal on April 4, 1923 to Frank Eugene Blumenthal and Maude Evelyn Blumenthal in Cleveland, Ohio, he was raised in Detroit, Michigan, where his...
who taught him the importance of extensive and diligent research, which he conducted at Los Angeles High School
Los Angeles High School
Los Angeles High School is the oldest public high school in the Southern California Region and in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Its colors are blue and white and the teams are called the Romans....
for Room 222, and he used the technique on his subsequent works. Brooks left Room 222 as head writer after one year to work on other pilots and brought Burns in to produce the show.
Brooks and Burns were hired by CBS programming executive Grant Tinker
Grant Tinker
Grant Almerin Tinker is the former chairman and CEO of NBC from 1981 to 1986, co-founder of MTM Enterprises, and television producer. Tinker is the former husband of television actress Mary Tyler Moore...
to create a series together with MTM Productions for Tinker's wife Mary Tyler Moore
Mary Tyler Moore
Mary Tyler Moore is an American actress, primarily known for her roles in television sitcoms. Moore is best known for The Mary Tyler Moore Show , in which she starred as Mary Richards, a 30-something single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and for her earlier role as...
which became The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Mary Tyler Moore Show is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns that aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977...
. Drawing on his own background in journalism, Brooks set the show in a newsroom. Initially the show was unpopular with CBS executives who demanded Tinker fire Brooks and Burns. However the show was one of the beneficiaries of network president Fred Silverman
Fred Silverman
Fred Silverman is an American television executive and producer. He worked as an executive at the CBS, ABC and NBC networks, and was responsible for bringing to television such programs as the series Scooby-Doo , All in the Family , The Waltons , and Charlie's Angels , as well as the...
's "rural purge
Rural purge
The "rural purge" of American television networks was a series of cancellations between 1969 and 1972, the majority of which occurred at the end of the 1970-71 television season, of still popular rural-themed shows and shows with demographically-skewed audiences...
"; executive Bob Wood also liked the show and moved it into a better timeslot. Brooks and Burns hired all of the show's staff themselves and eventually ended it of their own accord. The Mary Tyler Moore Show became a critical and commercial success and was the first show to feature an independent-minded, working woman, not reliant on a man, as its lead. Geoff Hammill of the Museum of Broadcast Communications
Museum of Broadcast Communications
The Museum of Broadcast Communications is an American museum that currently exists exclusively on the Internet and not in any physical capacity. Its stated mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain...
described it as "one of the most acclaimed television programs ever produced" in US television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
history. During its seven-year period it received high praise from critics and numerous Primetime Emmy Awards including for three years in a row Outstanding Comedy Series. In 2003, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
called it "one of the best shows ever to air on TV". In 1997, TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
selected a Mary Tyler Moore Show episode as the best TV episode ever and in 1999, Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
picked Mary's hat toss in the opening credits as television's second greatest moment.
With Mary Tyler Moore going strong, Brooks produced and wrote the TV film Thursday's Game
Thursday's Game
Thursday's Game is a television movie comedy written by James L. Brooks and directed by Robert Moore. Though filmed in 1971, it first aired in 1974 as an ABC Movie of the Week....
, before creating the short-lived series Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers in 1974. He and Burns moved on to Rhoda
Rhoda
Rhoda is an American television sitcom, starring Valerie Harper, which ran for five seasons, from 1974 to 1978 airing in 109 episodes. The show was a spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which Harper between the years 1970 and 1974 had played the role of Rhoda Morgenstern, a spunky,...
, a spin-off of Mary Tyler Moore, taking Valerie Harper
Valerie Harper
Valerie Harper is an American actress, known for her role as Rhoda Morgenstern on the 1970s television show The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and for her starring roles on the sitcoms Rhoda and Valerie.-Early life and career:Harper was born at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern, Rockland County,...
's character Rhoda Morgenstern into her own show. It was well received, lasting four years and earning Brooks several Emmys. The duo's next project came in 1977 in the shape of Lou Grant
Lou Grant (TV series)
Lou Grant is an American television drama series starring Ed Asner in the titular role as a newspaper editor. Unusual in American television, this drama series was a spinoff from a sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Aired from 1977 to 1982, Lou Grant won 13 Emmy Awards, including "Outstanding Drama...
, a second Mary Tyler Moore spin-off, which they created along with Tinker. Unlike its source however, the series was a drama starring Edward Asner as Grant. James Brown of the Museum of Broadcast Communications said it "explore[d] a knotty issue facing media people in contemporary society, focusing on how investigating and reporting those issues impact on the layers of personalities populating a complex newspaper publishing company." The show was also critically acclaimed, twice winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series
This page lists the winners and nominees for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, since its institution in 1951. The award is often cited as one of the "main awards" at the Emmys ceremonies, and has changed names many times in its history. It was first called Best Dramatic Show...
and also a Peabody Award
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...
.
Brooks left MTM Productions in 1978 and formed the John Charles Walters Company
John Charles Walters Company
The John Charles Walters Company was a production company formed in 1978 by four former employees of MTM Enterprises: James L. Brooks, David Davis, Stan Daniels and Ed Weinberger...
along with David Davis, Stan Daniels
Stan Daniels
Stanley Edwin Daniels was a Canadian-American screenwriter, producer and director, who won eight Emmy Awards for his work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi.-Early life:...
and Ed Weinberger. They decided to produce Taxi
Taxi (TV series)
Taxi was an American sitcom that originally aired from 1978 to 1982 on ABC and from 1982 to 1983 on NBC. The series, which won 18 Emmy Awards, including three for "Outstanding Comedy Series", focuses on the everyday lives of a handful of New York City taxi drivers and their abusive dispatcher...
, a show about a New York taxi company, which unlike the other MTM Productions focused on the "blue-collar male experience". Brooks and Davis had been inspired by the article "Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet" by Mark Jacobson
Mark Jacobson
Mark Jacobson is an American author and writer.-Early life:Jacobson graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and achieved recognition in New York City whilst writing for the Village Voice in the 1970s, most particularly for a lurid account of life in the Chinatown Ghost Shadows...
, which appeared in the September 22, 1975 issue of New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine. The show began on ABC in 1978 airing on Tuesday nights after Three's Company
Three's Company
Three's Company is an American sitcom that aired from March 15, 1977, to September 18, 1984, on ABC. It is based on the British sitcom, Man About the House....
which generated high ratings and after two seasons it was moved to Wednesday. Its ratings fell and in 1982 it was canceled; NBC picked it up, but the ratings remained low and it was dropped after one season. Despite its ratings, it won three consecutive Outstanding Comedy Series Emmys. Brooks' last TV show produced before he began making films was The Associates
The Associates (U.S. TV series)
The Associates is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from 1979-1980. The series starred Martin Short and was cancelled after nine of its thirteen episodes aired, but was nominated for two Golden Globes after its cancellation...
(1979–1980) for ABC. Despite positive critical attention, the show was quickly canceled.
Alex Simon of Venice Magazine described Brooks as "[bringing] realism to the previously overstated world of television comedy. Brooks' fingerprints can now be seen in shows such as Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
, Friends
Friends
Friends is an American sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994 to May 6, 2004. The series revolves around a group of friends in Manhattan. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television...
, Ally McBeal
Ally McBeal
Ally McBeal is an American legal comedy-drama series which aired on the Fox network from 1997 to 2002. The series was created by David E. Kelley, who also served as the executive producer, along with Bill D'Elia...
and numerous other shows from the 1980's and 90's." Brooks' sitcoms were some of the first with a "focus on character" using an ensemble cast in a non-domestic situation.
Film
In 1978, Brooks began work on feature films. His first project was the 1979 film Starting Over which he wrote and co-produced with Alan J. PakulaAlan J. Pakula
Alan Jay Pakula was an American film director, writer and producer noted for his contributions to the conspiracy thriller genre.-Career:...
. He adapted the screenplay from a novel by Dan Wakefield
Dan Wakefield
Dan Wakefield is an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. His best-selling novels, Going All the Way and Starting Over were made into feature films...
into a film The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
called "a good-humored, heartening update of traditional romantic comedy" unlike the "drab" novel.
Brooks next project came in 1983, when he wrote, produced and directed Terms of Endearment
Terms of Endearment
Terms of Endearment is a 1983 romantic comedy-drama film adapted by James L. Brooks from the novel by Larry McMurtry and starring Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, and Jack Nicholson...
, adapting the screenplay from Larry McMurtry
Larry McMurtry
Larry Jeff McMurtry is an American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter whose work is predominantly set in either the old West or in contemporary Texas...
's novel of the same name. It cost $8.5 million and took four years to film. Brooks won the Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
, Director and Screenplay Adapted from Another Medium.
Brooks was fearful of the attention Oscar success would bring as he would be "deprived of a low profile", finding it "hard to work with the spotlight shining in your eyes." He added: "There's a danger of being seduced into being self-conscious, of being aware of your 'career'. That can be lethal." He also grew more concerned of the "threatening" corporate influence into the film industry at the expense of "the idea of the creative spirit". He channelled this ambivalence into Broadcast News
Broadcast News (film)
Broadcast News is a 1987 romantic comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by James L. Brooks. The film concerns a virtuoso television news producer , who has daily emotional breakdowns, a brilliant yet prickly reporter and his charismatic but far less seasoned rival...
. As a romantic comedy
Romantic Comedy
Romantic Comedy can refer to* Romantic Comedy , a 1979 play written by Bernard Slade* Romantic Comedy , a 1983 film adapted from the play and starring Dudley Moore and Mary Steenburgen...
, Brooks felt he could say "something new ... with that form" adding "One of the things you're supposed to do every once in a while as a filmmaker is capture time and place. I was just glad there was some way to do it in a comedy." He cast William Hurt
William Hurt
William McGill Hurt is an American stage and film actor. He received his acting training at the Juilliard School, and began acting on stage in the 1970s. Hurt made his film debut as a troubled scientist in the science-fiction feature Altered States , for which he received a Golden Globe nomination...
, Holly Hunter
Holly Hunter
Holly Hunter is an American actress. Hunter starred in The Piano for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She has also been nominated for Oscars for her roles in Broadcast News, The Firm, and Thirteen...
and Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks
Albert Lawrence Brooks is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and director. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News...
in the three main roles.
He wished to set the film in a field he understood and opted for broadcast journalism. After talking with network journalists at the 1984 Republican National Convention
1984 Republican National Convention
The 1984 National Convention of the Republican Party of the United States convened on August 20 to August 23, 1984, at Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas, Texas. The convention nominated the incumbent Ronald Reagan of California for President of the United States and incumbent George H. W...
Brooks realised it had "changed so much since I had been near it" and so "did about a year and a half of solid research," into the industry. When he began writing the screenplay, Brooks felt he "didn't like any of the three [main] characters" but decided not to change them and after two months had reversed his original opinion. Brooks stated that this also happens to the audience: "You're always supposed to arc your characters and you have this change and that's your dramatic purpose. But what I hope happens in this film is that the audience takes part in the arc. So what happens is that the movie doesn't select its own hero. It plays differently with each audience. The audience helps create the experience, depending on which character they hook onto." He did not decide on the ending of the film until the rest of it had been completed. Brooks was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for Broadcast News. At the 38th Berlin International Film Festival
38th Berlin International Film Festival
The 38th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 12 to 23, 1988.-Jury:* Guglielmo Biraghi * Ellen Burstyn* Heiner Carow* Eberhard Junkersdorf* Tom Luddy* Heinz Rathsack* Daniel Schmid* Andrei Smirnov...
, the film was nominated for the Golden Bear
Golden Bear
According to legend, the Golden Bear was a large golden Ursus arctos. Members of the Ursus arctos species can reach masses of . The Grizzly Bear and the Kodiak Bear are North American subspecies of the Brown Bear....
and Holly Hunter won the Silver Bear for Best Actress
Silver Bear for Best Actress
The Silver Bear for Best Actress is the Berlin International Film Festival's award for achievement in performance by an actress.-Awards:- External links :*...
.
His 1994 film I'll Do Anything
I'll Do Anything
I'll Do Anything is a 1994 American dramedy film written and directed by James L. Brooks. Its primary plot concerns a down-on-his-luck actor who suddenly finds himself the sole caretaker of his six-year-old daughter.-Synopsis:...
, starring Nick Nolte
Nick Nolte
Nicholas King "Nick" Nolte is an American actor whose career has spanned over five decades, peaking in the 1990s when his commercial success made him one of the most popular celebrities of that decade.-Early life:...
, was conceived and filmed by Brooks as an old-fashioned movie musical
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
and parody of "Hollywood lifestyles and movie clichés", costing $40 million. It featured songs by Carole King
Carole King
Carole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...
, Prince
Prince (musician)
Prince Rogers Nelson , often known simply as Prince, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Prince has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. Prince founded his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of...
, and Sinéad O'Connor
Sinéad O'Connor
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor is an Irish singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in the late 1980s with her debut album The Lion and the Cobra and achieved worldwide success in 1990 with a cover of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U"....
, among others, with choreography
Choreography
Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...
by Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
. When preview audience reactions to the music were overwhelmingly negative, all production numbers from the film were cut and Brooks wrote several new scenes, filming them over three days and spending seven weeks editing the film down to two hours. Brooks noted: "Something like this not only tries one's soul - it threatens one's soul." While it was not unusual for Brooks to edit his films substantially after preview screenings on this occasion he was "denied any privacy" because the media reported the negative reviews before its release and "it had to be good enough to counter all this bad publicity." It was a commercial failure, and Brooks attempted to produce a documentary about it four years later but was scuppered by failing to obtain the rights to Prince's song.
Mark Andrus
Mark Andrus is an award-winning American screenwriter.After receiving a Master of Business Administration from UC Riverside, Andrus decided to take a creative writing class while waiting to hear from the law schools to which he had applied...
. Andrus' script "needed you to suspend disbelief" but Brooks realised "my style when directing is that I really don't know how to get people to suspend disbelief." Brooks spent a year reworking the screenplay: "There were changes made and the emphasis was changed but it's the product, really, of a very unusual writing team," and the project became As Good as It Gets
As Good as It Gets
As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by James L. Brooks and produced by Laura Ziskin. It stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with an asthmatic son, and Greg Kinnear as a gay artist. The screenplay was...
, taking a year to produce after funding had been secured. According to The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Brooks "was constantly experimenting, constantly reshooting, constantly re-editing" the film, changing its ending five times and allowing the actors to improvise the film's tone.
The film garnered more praise than I'll Do Anything and Brooks was again nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. As Good as It Gets received a total of seven Academy Award nominations, winning two, both for Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
for Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
and Best Actress
Academy Award for Best Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
for Helen Hunt
Helen Hunt
Helen Elizabeth Hunt is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She starred in the sitcom Mad About You for seven years, before being cast in the romantic comedy As Good as It Gets...
. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
of the Chicago Reader labelled it Brooks' best film, stating "what Brooks manages to do with [the characters] as they struggle mightily to connect with one another is funny, painful, beautiful, and basically truthful—a triumph for everyone involved." It also ranked 140 in Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
2008 list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". Brooks cast Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
in both Terms of Endearment and As Good as It Gets with the actor taking an Academy Award for each role.
Brooks did not direct and write a film again for seven years until 2004's Spanglish
Spanglish (film)
Spanglish is a 2004 American comedy-drama film written and directed by James L. Brooks, and starring Adam Sandler, Paz Vega, and Téa Leoni. It was released in the United States on December 17, 2004 by Columbia Pictures and by Gracie Films, and in other countries over the first several months of...
. Filming took six months, ending in June with three days of additional filming in October; Brooks produced three endings for the film, shooting several scenes in "15 to 25 takes" as he did not feel the film was tonally complete, although the script did not change much during filming. He opted to cast Adam Sandler
Adam Sandler
Adam Richard Sandler is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, musician, and film producer.After becoming a Saturday Night Live cast member, Sandler went on to star in several Hollywood feature films that grossed over $100 million at the box office...
in a more dramatic role than his usual goofball comedy parts based on his performance in Punch-Drunk Love
Punch-Drunk Love
Punch-Drunk Love is a 2002 romantic comedy-drama written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzmán also appear....
and Sandler's relationship with his family. Describing the length of production, Brooks said: "It's amazing how much more perverse you are as a writer than as a director. I remember just being so happy that I'd painted myself into some corners [while writing]. I thought that would make it interesting. When I had to wrestle with that as a director, it was a different story." Brooks directing style "drove [the cast] bats", especially Téa Leoni
Téa Leoni
Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni , better known by her stage name Téa Leoni, is an American actress. She has starred in a wide range of films including Jurassic Park III, The Family Man, Deep Impact, Fun with Dick and Jane, Spanglish, Bad Boys, and Ghost Town.-Early life:Leoni was born in New York City...
, with Cloris Leachman
Cloris Leachman
Cloris Leachman is an American actress of stage, film and television. She has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards—more than any other performer—and one Daytime Emmy Award...
(who replaced an ill Anne Bancroft
Anne Bancroft
Anne Bancroft was an American actress associated with the Method acting school, which she had studied under Lee Strasberg....
a month into filming) describing it as "free-falling. You're not going for some result. It's just, throw it in the air and see where it lands." The film was poorly received and was a box-office failure.
His next film, entitled How Do You Know
How Do You Know (film)
How Do You Know is a 2010 romantic comedy drama film directed, written and produced by James L. Brooks. It stars Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson....
, was released December 17, 2010; Brooks produced, directed and wrote it. The film stars Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon
Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon , better known as Reese Witherspoon, is an American actress and film producer. Witherspoon landed her first feature role as the female lead in the film The Man in the Moon in 1991; later that year she made her television acting debut, in the cable movie Wildflower...
as a professional softball
Softball
Softball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of 10 to 14 players. It is a direct descendant of baseball although there are some key differences: softballs are larger than baseballs, and the pitches are thrown underhand rather than overhand...
player involved in a love triangle. Brooks began work on the film in 2005, wishing to create a film about a young female athlete. While interviewing numerous women for hundreds of hours in his research for film he also become interested in "the dilemmas of contemporary business executives, who are sometimes held accountable by the law for corporate behavior of which they may not even be aware." He created Paul Rudd
Paul Rudd
Paul Stephen Rudd is an American actor and screenwriter. He has primarily appeared in comedies, and is known for his roles in the films Clueless, Wet Hot American Summer, Anchorman, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Dinner for Schmucks, The Object of My...
and Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
's characters for this concept. Filming finished in November 2009, although Brooks later reshot the film's opening and ending. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
described it as "perhaps the most closely guarded of Columbia
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
's movies this year." Brooks was paid $10 million for the project, which cost $100 million. The film was negatively received. Patrick Goldstein wrote in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
that "the characters were stick figures, the jokes were flat, the situations felt scarily insular." He felt the film showed Brooks had "finally lost his comic mojo" concluding "his films used to have a wonderfully restless, neurotic energy, but How Do You Know feels like it was phoned in from someone resting uncomfortably on his laurels." Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
s Peter Debruge also felt the film showed Brooks had lost his "spark". Richard Corliss
Richard Corliss
Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...
of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
was more positive, writing "without being great, it's still the flat-out finest romantic comedy of the year," while "Brooks hasn't lost his gift for dreaming up heroes and heroines who worry amusingly."
Brooks started his own film and television production company, Gracie Films
Gracie Films
Gracie Films is an American film and television production company, created by James L. Brooks in 1986. The company has produced many award-winning films and television series, including Broadcast News, Jerry Maguire, and most notably The Simpsons...
, in 1984. He produced Big
Big
Big is a 1988 romantic comedy film directed by Penny Marshall and stars Tom Hanks as Josh Baskin, a young boy who makes a wish "to be big" to a magical fortune-telling machine and is then aged to adulthood overnight...
(1988) and The War of the Roses
The War of the Roses (film)
The War of the Roses is a 1989 American comedy film based upon the 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler. It is a black comedy about a wealthy couple with a seemingly perfect marriage. When their marriage begins to fall apart, material possessions become the center of an outrageous and...
(1989). Brooks mentored Cameron Crowe
Cameron Crowe
Cameron Bruce Crowe is an American screenwriter and film director. Before moving into the film industry, Crowe was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine, for which he still frequently writes....
and was the executive producer of Crowe's directorial debut Say Anything... (1989) and produced his later film Jerry Maguire
Jerry Maguire
Jerry Maguire is a 1996 American romantic comedy-drama film starring Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding, Jr. It was written, co-produced, and directed by Cameron Crowe...
(1996). Brooks also helped Owen Wilson
Owen Wilson
Owen Cunningham Wilson is an American actor and writer, known for his roles in the films The Haunting, The Royal Tenenbaums, Zoolander, Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers, You, Me and Dupree, Bottle Rocket, the Cars series, The Darjeeling Limited, Marley & Me, Midnight in Paris, Shanghai Noon,...
and Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer of features, short films and commercials....
after their feature-length script and short film version of Bottle Rocket
Bottle Rocket
Bottle Rocket is a 1996 comedy film directed by Wes Anderson. It was co-written by Anderson and Owen Wilson. As well as being Wes Anderson's directorial debut, Bottle Rocket was the debut feature for brothers Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson, who co-starred with James Caan and Robert Musgrave.The film...
(1996) were brought to his attention. Brooks went to Wilson and Anderson's apartment in Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
after agreeing to produce the film. Wilson stated: "I think he felt kind of sorry for us". Despite having "the worst [script] reading [Brooks] had ever heard", Brooks kept faith in the project. Brooks produced and directed Brooklyn Laundry, his first theatrical production, in 1990. It starred Glenn Close
Glenn Close
Glenn Close is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and...
, Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
and Laura Dern
Laura Dern
Laura Elizabeth Dern is an American actress, film director and producer. Dern has acted in such films as Smooth Talk , Blue Velvet , Fat Man and Little Boy , Wild at Heart , Jurassic Park and October Sky...
. In 2007, Brooks appeared—along with Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, playwright, journalist, author, and blogger.She is best known for her romantic comedies and is a triple nominee for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay; for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in...
, Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Frances Fisher is an American actress, novelist, screenwriter, and lecturer. She is most famous for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, her bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge, for which she wrote the screenplay to the film of the same name, and her...
and others in Dreams on Spec
Dreams on Spec
Dreams on Spec is a 2007 American documentary film that profiles the struggles and triumphs of emerging Hollywood screenwriters. It was written and directed by Daniel J...
, a documentary about screenwriting in Hollywood.
Return to television
Tracey Ullman
Tracey Ullman is a British stage and television actress, comedienne, singer, dancer, screenwriter and author ....
start The Tracey Ullman Show
The Tracey Ullman Show
The Tracey Ullman Show was an American television variety show, hosted by British comedian and onetime pop singer Tracey Ullman. It debuted on April 5, 1987 as the Fox network's second primetime series after Married... with Children, and ran until May 26, 1990. The show blended sketch comedy shorts...
and when she could not find another producer, stepped in. On the suggestion of friend and colleague Polly Platt
Polly Platt
Mary Marr "Polly" Platt was an American film producer, production designer and screenwriter.-Early life:Platt was born Mary Marr Platt in Fort Sheridan, Illinois on January 29, 1939, later using the name Polly. Her father John was a colonel in the army while her mother Vivian worked in...
, who gave Brooks the nine panel Life in Hell
Life in Hell
Life in Hell is a weekly comic strip by Matt Groening. The strip features anthropomorphic rabbits and a pair of gay lovers. Groening uses these characters to explore a wide range of topics about love, sex, work, and death...
cartoon entitled "The Los Angeles Way of Death" which hangs outside Brooks' Gracie Films office, Brooks asked Life in Hell cartoonist Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts to appear on The Tracey Ullman Show. Groening initially intended to present an animated version of his Life in Hell series. However, when Groening realized that animating Life in Hell would require the rescinding of publication right
Publication right
The publication right is a copyright granted to the publisher who first publishes a previously unpublished work after that work's original copyright has expired...
s for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family
Dysfunctional family
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often abuse on the part of individual members occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is...
in the lobby of Brooks' office. After the success of the shorts, the Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
in 1989 commissioned a series of half-hour episodes of the show, now called The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content. According to writer Jon Vitti
Jon Vitti
Jon Vitti is an American writer best known for his work on the television series The Simpsons. He has also written for the King of the Hill and The Critic series, and has served as a consultant for several animated movies, including Ice Age and Robots...
, Brooks contributed more to the episode "Lisa's Substitute
Lisa's Substitute
"Lisa's Substitute" is the nineteenth episode of The Simpsons second season. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on April 25, 1991. In the episode, Lisa's teacher Miss Hoover takes medical leave due to what she thinks is Lyme disease, so substitute teacher Mr. Bergstrom takes over the...
" than to any other in the show's history. The Simpsons garnered critical and commercial acclaim, winning numerous awards and is still running after 20 years. In a 1998 issue celebrating the 20th century's greatest achievements in arts and entertainment, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine named The Simpsons the century's best television series.
In 1995, Brooks and Groening were involved in a public dispute over the episode "A Star Is Burns
A Star is Burns
"A Star Is Burns" is the eighteenth episode of The Simpsons sixth season. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 5, 1995. In the episode, Springfield decides to hold a film festival, and famed critic Jay Sherman is invited to be a judge...
". Groening felt that the episode was a thirty-minute advertisement for Brooks' show The Critic
The Critic
The Critic is an American prime time animated series revolving around the life of film critic Jay Sherman, voiced by actor Jon Lovitz. It was created by Al Jean and Mike Reiss, both of whom had worked as writers on The Simpsons. The Critic had 23 episodes produced, first broadcast on ABC in 1994,...
, (which had moved to Fox from ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
for its second season) and was created by former The Simpsons show runner
Show runner
Showrunner is a term of art originating in the United States and Canadian television industry referring to the person who is responsible for the day-to-day operation of a television seriesalthough such persons generally are credited as an executive producer...
s Al Jean
Al Jean
Al Jean is an award-winning American screenwriter and producer, best known for his work on The Simpsons. He was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and graduated from Harvard University in 1981. Jean began his writing career in the 1980s with fellow Harvard alum Mike Reiss...
and Mike Reiss
Mike Reiss
Michael "Mike" Reiss is an American television comedy writer. He served as a show-runner, writer and producer for the animated series The Simpsons and co-created the animated series The Critic...
, and whose lead character Jay Sherman appears in the episode. He hoped Brooks would pull the episode because "articles began to appear in several newspapers around the country saying that [Groening] created The Critic," and removed his names from the credits. In response, Brooks said "I am furious with Matt, he's been going to everybody who wears a suit at Fox and complaining about this. When he voiced his concerns about how to draw The Critic into the Simpsons' universe he was right and we agreed to his changes. Certainly he's allowed his opinion, but airing this publicly in the press is going too far. [...] He is a gifted, adorable, cuddly ingrate. But his behavior right now is rotten."
The Critic was short-lived, broadcasting ten episodes on Fox before its cancellation. A total of only 23 episodes were produced, and it returned briefly in 2000 with a series of ten internet broadcast webisode
Webisode
A webisode is a short episode which airs initially as Internet television, either download or stream as opposed to first airing on broadcast or cable television. The format can be used as a preview, a promotion, as part of a collection of shorts, or a commercial.A webisode can be an episode...
s. The series has since developed a cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
thanks to reruns on Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
and its complete series release on DVD. His 1993 show Phenom
Phenom (TV series)
Phenom is an American sitcom about a tennis wunderkind that aired on ABC from September 14, 1993 to May 10, 1994. The series stars Angela Goethals, Judith Light, and William Devane.-Synopsis:...
and 2001 show What About Joan were also short lived.
Brooks co-produced and wrote the 2007 feature-length film adaptation of The Simpsons, The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons Movie is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the animated television series The Simpsons. The film was directed by David Silverman, and stars the regular television cast of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Tress...
. He directed the voice cast for the first time since the television show's early seasons. Dan Castellaneta
Dan Castellaneta
Daniel Louis "Dan" Castellaneta is an American actor, voice actor, comedian, singer and screenwriter. Noted for his long-running role as Homer Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, he voices many other characters on The Simpsons, including Abraham "Grampa" Simpson, Barney Gumble,...
found the recording sessions "more intense" than recording the television series, and "more emotionally dramatic". Some scenes, such as Marge's video message to Homer, were recorded over one hundred times, leaving the voice cast exhausted.
Personal life
He was married to Holly Beth Holmberg from 1978 to 1999; the two had three children together. He was married to Marianne Catherine Morrissey and has one child with her. Brooks has donated over $175,000 to Democratic PartyDemocratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
candidates.
Films
| Year | Film | Position | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | Starting Over | Producer Writer |
|
| Real Life Real Life (film) Real Life is an American comedy film released in 1979. The first feature directed by Albert Brooks, who also co-authored the screenplay, it is a spoof of the 1973 reality television program An American Family and portrays a documentary filmmaker named Albert Brooks who attempts to live with and... |
Actor | Appears as Driving evaluator | |
| 1981 | Modern Romance Modern Romance -Cast:* Albert Brooks .... Robert Cole* Kathryn Harrold .... Mary Harvard* Bruno Kirby .... Jay-Plot:Robert Cole is a Hollywood film editor right in the middle of cutting a new science fiction film with George Kennedy. His relationship with very patient bank executive Mary Harvard is caught... |
Actor | Appears as David |
| 1983 | Terms of Endearment Terms of Endearment Terms of Endearment is a 1983 romantic comedy-drama film adapted by James L. Brooks from the novel by Larry McMurtry and starring Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, and Jack Nicholson... |
Director Producer Writer |
|
| 1987 | Broadcast News Broadcast News (film) Broadcast News is a 1987 romantic comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by James L. Brooks. The film concerns a virtuoso television news producer , who has daily emotional breakdowns, a brilliant yet prickly reporter and his charismatic but far less seasoned rival... |
Director Producer Writer |
|
| 1988 | Big Big Big is a 1988 romantic comedy film directed by Penny Marshall and stars Tom Hanks as Josh Baskin, a young boy who makes a wish "to be big" to a magical fortune-telling machine and is then aged to adulthood overnight... |
Producer | |
| 1989 | Say Anything... | Executive producer | |
| The War of the Roses The War of the Roses (film) The War of the Roses is a 1989 American comedy film based upon the 1981 novel The War of the Roses by Warren Adler. It is a black comedy about a wealthy couple with a seemingly perfect marriage. When their marriage begins to fall apart, material possessions become the center of an outrageous and... |
Co-producer | ||
| 1994 | I'll Do Anything I'll Do Anything I'll Do Anything is a 1994 American dramedy film written and directed by James L. Brooks. Its primary plot concerns a down-on-his-luck actor who suddenly finds himself the sole caretaker of his six-year-old daughter.-Synopsis:... |
Director Producer Writer |
|
| 1996 | Bottle Rocket Bottle Rocket Bottle Rocket is a 1996 comedy film directed by Wes Anderson. It was co-written by Anderson and Owen Wilson. As well as being Wes Anderson's directorial debut, Bottle Rocket was the debut feature for brothers Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson, who co-starred with James Caan and Robert Musgrave.The film... |
Executive producer | |
| Jerry Maguire Jerry Maguire Jerry Maguire is a 1996 American romantic comedy-drama film starring Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding, Jr. It was written, co-produced, and directed by Cameron Crowe... |
Co-producer | ||
| 1997 | As Good as It Gets As Good as It Gets As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by James L. Brooks and produced by Laura Ziskin. It stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with an asthmatic son, and Greg Kinnear as a gay artist. The screenplay was... |
Director Co-writer Producer |
|
| 2001 | Riding in Cars with Boys Riding in Cars with Boys Riding in Cars with Boys is a 2001 film based on the autobiography of the same name by Beverly Donofrio, about a woman who overcame difficulties including being a teen mother to earning a master's degree from the span of 1961 to 1986. It stars Drew Barrymore, Steve Zahn, Brittany Murphy, and James... |
Co-producer | |
| 2004 | Spanglish Spanglish (film) Spanglish is a 2004 American comedy-drama film written and directed by James L. Brooks, and starring Adam Sandler, Paz Vega, and Téa Leoni. It was released in the United States on December 17, 2004 by Columbia Pictures and by Gracie Films, and in other countries over the first several months of... |
Director Producer Writer |
|
| 2007 | The Simpsons Movie The Simpsons Movie The Simpsons Movie is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the animated television series The Simpsons. The film was directed by David Silverman, and stars the regular television cast of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Tress... |
Producer Co-writer |
|
| 2010 | How Do You Know How Do You Know (film) How Do You Know is a 2010 romantic comedy drama film directed, written and produced by James L. Brooks. It stars Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson.... |
Director Producer Writer |
Television
| Year | Series | Position | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1965 | Men in Crisis | Producer Writer |
Two episodes |
| October Madness: The World Series | Writer | TV special | |
| 1965–1966 | Time-Life Specials: The March of Time | Writer | Three episodes |
| 1966 | My Mother the Car My Mother the Car My Mother the Car is an American fantasy sitcom which aired for a single season on NBC between September 14, 1965 and September 6, 1966. A total of thirty episodes were produced by United Artists Television.... |
Writer | Two episodes |
| 1966–1967 | That Girl That Girl That Girl is an American television situation comedy that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It stars Marlo Thomas as the title character, Ann Marie, an aspiring actress, who had moved from her hometown of Brewster, New York to make it big in New York City... |
Writer | Three episodes |
| 1967–1968 | Accidental Family Accidental Family Accidental Family is an American sitcom broadcast on NBC during the first part of the 1967-68 U.S. television season.-Synopsis:The series stars Jerry Van Dyke as a widowed comedian, Jerry Webster, who bought a farm in the San Fernando Valley to serve as a place for him to raise his son, Sandy, when... |
Writer Story editor |
|
| 1968 | The Andy Griffith Show The Andy Griffith Show The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised by CBS between October 3, 1960, and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays a widowed sheriff in the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina... |
Writer | Two episodes |
| My Three Sons My Three Sons My Three Sons is an American situation comedy. The series ran from 1960 to 1965 on ABC, and moved to CBS until its end on August 24, 1972. My Three Sons chronicles the life of a widower and aeronautical engineer named Steven Douglas , raising his three sons.The series was a cornerstone of the CBS... |
Writer | One episode | |
| The Doris Day Show The Doris Day Show The Doris Day Show is an American sitcom that was originally broadcast on the CBS network from September 1968 until September 1973. In addition to showcasing Doris Day, the show is remembered for its many abrupt format changes over the course of its five-year run... |
Writer | One episode | |
| 1969 | My Friend Tony | Writer Story editor |
|
| 1969–1970 | Room 222 Room 222 Room 222 is an American comedy-drama television series produced by 20th Century Fox Television. The series aired on ABC from September 17, 1969, to January 11, 1974, for 112 episodes... |
Creator Writer |
|
| 1970–1977 | The Mary Tyler Moore Show The Mary Tyler Moore Show The Mary Tyler Moore Show is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns that aired on CBS from 1970 to 1977... |
Creator Executive producer Producer Script consultant Writer |
|
| 1973 | Going Places | Writer | TV film |
| 1974 | Thursday's Game Thursday's Game Thursday's Game is a television movie comedy written by James L. Brooks and directed by Robert Moore. Though filmed in 1971, it first aired in 1974 as an ABC Movie of the Week.... |
Producer Writer |
TV film |
| Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers | Creator Writer |
||
| 1974–1978 | Rhoda Rhoda Rhoda is an American television sitcom, starring Valerie Harper, which ran for five seasons, from 1974 to 1978 airing in 109 episodes. The show was a spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which Harper between the years 1970 and 1974 had played the role of Rhoda Morgenstern, a spunky,... |
Actor Creator Executive producer Producer Writer |
Appears uncredited as "Subway Passenger" in Episode 1.9: "Rhoda's Wedding: Part 2" |
| 1976 | Saturday Night Live Saturday Night Live Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture... |
Actor | Appears as Paul Reynold in Episode 1.9 |
| 1977–1982 | Lou Grant Lou Grant (TV series) Lou Grant is an American television drama series starring Ed Asner in the titular role as a newspaper editor. Unusual in American television, this drama series was a spinoff from a sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Aired from 1977 to 1982, Lou Grant won 13 Emmy Awards, including "Outstanding Drama... |
Creator Executive consultant Executive producer Writer |
|
| 1978 | Cindy | Creative consultant Producer Writer |
TV film |
| 1978–1983 | Taxi Taxi (TV series) Taxi was an American sitcom that originally aired from 1978 to 1982 on ABC and from 1982 to 1983 on NBC. The series, which won 18 Emmy Awards, including three for "Outstanding Comedy Series", focuses on the everyday lives of a handful of New York City taxi drivers and their abusive dispatcher... |
Creator Executive creative consultant Executive producer Writer |
|
| 1979 | The Associates The Associates (U.S. TV series) The Associates is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from 1979-1980. The series starred Martin Short and was cancelled after nine of its thirteen episodes aired, but was nominated for two Golden Globes after its cancellation... |
Executive producer | |
| 1980 | Carlton Your Doorman Carlton Your Doorman Carlton Your Doorman was an animated television special starring the unseen doorman Carlton from the sitcom Rhoda. As on Rhoda, Carlton's voice was provided by Lorenzo Music... |
Created character | |
| 1987–1990 | The Tracey Ullman Show The Tracey Ullman Show The Tracey Ullman Show was an American television variety show, hosted by British comedian and onetime pop singer Tracey Ullman. It debuted on April 5, 1987 as the Fox network's second primetime series after Married... with Children, and ran until May 26, 1990. The show blended sketch comedy shorts... |
Executive producer | |
| 1989– | The Simpsons The Simpsons The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie... |
Actor Creative consultant Executive producer Producer Writer |
Appears as himself in Episode 14.13: "A Star Is Born-Again A Star Is Born-Again "A Star Is Born Again" is the 13th episode from The Simpsons fourteenth season, which first aired on March 2, 2003. The episode owes much of its plot to Notting Hill... " |
| 1991–1992 | Sibs Sibs Sibs was an American sitcom broadcast by ABC as part of its 1991-92 prime time lineup.Sibs starred veteran actress Marsha Mason as Nora Rusico, a successful accountant and Alex Rocco as her longsuffering husband, Howie. The source of most of Howie's suffering was his wife's younger sisters , Audie... |
Executive producer | |
| 1993 | Phenom Phenom (TV series) Phenom is an American sitcom about a tennis wunderkind that aired on ABC from September 14, 1993 to May 10, 1994. The series stars Angela Goethals, Judith Light, and William Devane.-Synopsis:... |
Executive producer | |
| 1994–1995 | The Critic The Critic The Critic is an American prime time animated series revolving around the life of film critic Jay Sherman, voiced by actor Jon Lovitz. It was created by Al Jean and Mike Reiss, both of whom had worked as writers on The Simpsons. The Critic had 23 episodes produced, first broadcast on ABC in 1994,... |
Executive creative consultant Executive producer |
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| 2001 | What About Joan | Producer |