James L. Brooks

James L. Brooks
James L. Brooks, August 2007
Born	May 9, 1940 (1940-05-09) (age 69) North Bergen, New Jersey, United States
Occupation	Director, producer, writer
Spouse(s)	Marianne Catherine Morrissey (m. 1964) Holly Beth Holmberg (1978-1999)
Official website

James L. Brooks (born May 9, 1940) is an American producer, screenwriter and director. He has created, produced and written numerous television programs including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons, Rhoda and Taxi. Brooks has also produced, directed and written a number of film such as Terms of Endearment, for which he received three Academy Awards in 1984 as well as Broadcast News and As Good as It Gets. For his various television shows he has been awarded nineteen Primetime Emmys. He has also won two Golden Globe Awards.

Early life

Brooks was born on May 9, 1940 in North Bergen, New Jersey, United States,^[1][2] to Jewish parents Dorothy Helen (née Sheinheit) and Edward M. Brooks, a salesman.^[3] He described his early life as "tough" with a "broken home, [and him being] poor and sort of lonely, that sort of stuff",^[4] 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 who helped look after him as a child and his father left when he was twelve.^[1][2]

Brooks wrote as a child and was on his high school newspaper; he sent comedic short stories out to publishers and occasionally got positive responses although none were published. He lists some of his influences as Sid Caesar, Jack Benny, Lenny Bruce, Mike Nichols and Elaine May.^[1]

Career

Television

In 1987, The Chicago Sun-Times described Brooks' career as "a non-stop crescendo."^[4] Although he dropped out of New York University,^[2][3] Brooks' sister got him a job as an usher at CBS in New York City which he held for three years. For two weeks he filled in as a copywriter for CBS News as was given the job permanently when the original employee never returned. Brooks went on to become a writer for the news broadcasts.^[1] 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." After sixth months he was laid off as the company were trying to cut back on expenses and, failing to find another job at a news agency, meet 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.^[1] Brooks did occasionally work for Wolper's company again, including on a National Geographic insect special.^[1]

Brooks then went on to write an episode of That Girl before in 1969 creating 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.^[5] 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, while he used the technique on his subsequent works. Brooks left Room 222 after one year.^[1]

He and Burns were hired by CBS programming executive Grant Tinker to together with MTM Productions create a series for his wife Mary Tyler Moore which became The Mary Tyler Moore Show.^[5] 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.^[6] Brooks and Burns hired all of the show's staff themselves.^[1] The Mary Tyler Moore Show became a critical and commercial success and was the first show to feature an independent-minded, working women, not reliant on a man, as its lead.^[7] Geoff Hammill of the Museum of Broadcast Communications described it as "one of the most acclaimed television programs ever produced" in US television history.^[7] 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.^[7] In 2003, USA Today called it "one of the best shows ever to air on TV".^[8] 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.^[9][10]

It spawned other television shows created by Brooks and Burns such as, Rhoda, Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers, Taxi, The Associates and Lou Grant.^[4][5] 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."^[1] Brooks' sitcoms were some of the first with a "focus on character" using an ensemble cast in a non-domestic situation.^[5][1]

Film

In 1978, Brooks began work on feature films. His first project was the 1979 film Starting Over which he wrote and co-produced.^[11] 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.^[12]

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.^[13] It cost $8.5 million and took four years to film.^[1] Brooks won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay Adapted from Another Medium.^[4]

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."^[4] He also grew more concerned of the "threatening" corporate influence into the film industry at the expense of "the idea of the creative spirit".^[4] 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."^[4]

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.^[4] 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."^[4] 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.^[1]

His 1994 film I'll Do Anything was conceived and filmed by Brooks as an old-fashioned movie musical and parody of "Hollywood lifestyles and movie clichés", costing $40 million.^[14] It featured songs by Carole King, Prince, and Sinéad O'Connor, among others, with choreography by Twyla Tharp.^[14][3] 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.^[3] 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."^[14] It was a commercial failure.^[1]

Brooks agreed to produce and direct Old Friends, a screenplay be 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.^[1] Brooks cast Jack Nicholson in both Terms of Endearment and As Good as It Gets with the actor taking and Academy Award for each role.^[15]

Brooks started his own film and television production company, Gracie Films, in 1984.^[5] He produced The War of the Roses and Big.^[1][3] He also played a semi-fictional version of himself in friend Albert Brooks' comedy Modern Romance, as an opinionated film director.

Brooks mentored Cameron Crowe and was the executive producer of Crowe's directorial debut Say Anything... and produced his later film Jerry Maguire.^[1] Brooks also helped Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson after their feature-length script and short film version of Bottle Rocket 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.^[16] Brooks produced and directed Brooklyn Laundry, his first theatrical production in 1990.^[1]

In 2007, Brooks appeared—along with star Hollywood screenwriters Nora Ephron, Carrie Fisher and others—in Dreams on Spec, a documentary about screenwriting in Hollywood. Brooks is one of the few people thanked during the end credits for the film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

Return to television

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.^[11] Brooks asked cartoonist Matt Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts to appear on The Tracey Ullman Show, which Groening initially intended to present as his Life in Hell series. However, when Groening realized that animating Life in Hell would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family in the lobby of Brooks' office.^[17] After the success of the shorts, the Fox Broadcasting Company in 1989 commisioned 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.^[18] According to writer Jon Vitti, Brooks contributed more to the episode "Lisa's Substitute" than to any other in the show's history.^[19]

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' new show The Critic, which created by former The Simpsons show runners 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.^[20] In response, James L. 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."^[20]

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 webisodes. The series has since developed a cult following thanks to reruns on Comedy Central and its complete series release on DVD.^[21]

Brooks had a cameo in The Simpsons episode, "A Star Is Born-Again."

Personal life

He was married to Holly Beth Holmberg from 1978 to 1999; the two had three children together.^[22] He was married to Marianne Catherine Morrissey and has one child with her.^{[2][citation needed]} Brooks has donated over $175,000 to Democratic Party candidates.^[23]

Filmography

Films

Television

References

External links

• James L. Brooks at the Internet Movie Database
• Gracie Films