TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Comedy, Romance, Satire, Drama, Comedy of Manners, Fantasy Comedy, Showbiz Comedy, Romantic Comedy
Key Collaborators: Monica Johnson (Screenwriter), David Finfer (Editor), Herb Nanas (Producer), Eric Saarinen (Cinematographer), Thomas Ackerman (Cinematographer), James L. Brooks (Character Actor)

"Albert Brooks has been called ‘‘the West Coast Woody Allen.’’ While Brooks does write, direct, and star in comedies set in California instead of New York, his films tend to reflect a more consistent tone of baby boomer self-involved angst than do Allen's films, and are probably more revealing of the director himself and more universal. Brooks is a true comedian’s comedian (David Letterman has said, ‘‘He’s above all of us’’), he has a cult following, and in 1997 Entertainment Weekly listed him as the fifth funniest human alive (after Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne, and Jim Carrey)." - Bob Sullivan (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 2000)

"A man of many talents, the most complete formation of Albert Brooks’ genius comes in the movies he’s directed. A scarce seven to date, with the most recent released a whopping 20 years ago, Brooks (along with frequent co-writer Monica Johnson) has honed a legacy of astute observations on how we interact with each other and the world. Brooks always cast himself in the leading role, as he was unafraid to be ugly, destructive and completely out of control on screen." - Mitchell Beaupre ( Paste Magazine, 2024)

"Brooks the director, like Brooks the actor (and the two often go together), makes amusing and inventive little comedies about the anxieties of modern man that very few people outside his audience of core fans seem willing to pay money to see. Like Woody Allen, whose themes he sometimes parallels, Brooks is usually rewarded only by decent critical reviews. Like his sweating newsman in Broadcast News, he has never quite moved into the big time. But then his own mixture of humour and social comment was practically guaranteed not to have mass appeal." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Film Directors, 1999)

"Brooks’s protagonists tend to be successful, yet average, creative types who write or work in advertising or filmmaking (one of the incidental joys of Modern Romance is its dead-accurate depiction of a film editor’s working life). His characterizations effectively refract the contradictions, compromises, and neuroses of the Baby Boom generation with its overdeveloped sense of entitlement and unapologetic materialism: narcissistic and controlling yet insecure and resigned, reflexively self-analytical yet lacking emotional self-honesty. It’s hard to think of another American filmmaker who has dedicated him/herself so completely to scrutinizing the foibles of his generational peers without becoming moralistic or sentimental." - Gavin Smith (Film Comment, 1999)

"Brooks’s comedy, as it has evolved, is the comedy of ambivalence. His characters are often terrified of making decisions—or taking decisive action—because they’re terrified of the infinite possible consequences. (This conflict is the fulcrum of his most accomplished film, Defending Your Life.) I love this because it’s my sickness, too. I go back to his films again and again because they make me feel less defeated and alone. My condition, they remind me, is a human one, to be suffered not in isolation but rather in solidarity with Albert Brooks." - Ari Aster (The Criterion Collection, 2020)

"There were so many hard parts about making movies, but one of the great joys was finally getting it into theaters, and I got such a thrill watching a packed theater go crazy over something that I made." - Albert Brooks (The Hollywood Reporter, 2023)