Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Jan Shepard.
Hello.
And I'm joined by Monica Padman. We have an absolute titan of show business today, James L. Brooks. He is an Academy Award-winning director, producer, and screenwriter. He wrote and directed As Good As It Gets, Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons.
Wow.
One of the creators of The Simpsons.
And he helped Bottle Rocket.
He produced Bottle Rocket, which was a mess when he first heard it, as we'll learn. He has a new movie in theaters December 12th, Ella McKay. This was a delight. Very Norman Lear-esque, created like a real genre of TV that persists today.
He broke a lot of barriers.
He did, he did.
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Chapter 2: How did James L. Brooks get his start in journalism?
As a matter of fact, at a certain point a long time ago, but I got into thinking about the guy who bullied me so much when I was in high school, and I made an effort to find out what happened to him. Federal judge. Oh, wow.
I was expecting worse for him.
I know, that's what you want.
Some bullies are kind of industrious, I guess.
Gosh. I mean, I guess in some ways he's still a bully.
No, I was looking for much worse.
Yes, yes.
Perhaps the turnaround salesman that gets people at the door. T.O., what did you call him? Takeover. Takeover, takeover. You were pursuing writing, and you were writing comedy stuff when you were young, and you were submitting.
I wrote for the school newspaper. We were a high school of 300, and I was very resourceful in getting exclusive interviews with very big celebrities.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did James L. Brooks face in his early career?
Somehow I ended up saying, I want to write. And he got me a chance to write a show. It was My Mother the Car.
Right, right, right, right. Your first writing job. Yeah. But that turned into, you wrote episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons. We won.
Yes.
Yes. And then that slowly snowballs into you creating Room 211? Room 222. Okay, and that's... 1970, 1969, 68, 69, somewhere in there. Now, this show's kind of shockingly ahead of its time in a lot of ways. It had only the second black lead character on a TV show ever. Right, and the first to have more than one.
Yeah, and they tried to talk you out of that at some point. It was a tough sale. There's this guy, Gene Reynolds, who was a very... big director, producer, and a ferociously ethical guy. So they try to say the pilot episode I wrote after so much research, because he was a big research guy. He's the guy who taught you this technique? Which has stuck with me, insisted on it. Hey, I did it.
I did it. I did it. I went to the high school. I hung with the teacher. Go back, go back, go back, go back, go back. go back a lot so that what I thought would be a week of my life became months of my life. And I'm glad it stuck.
Yeah. What specifically was revealed in that process that you found so useful?
Authenticity. You've unconsciously dug deeper by showing up again and again and again. It starts to be, oh, that's interesting to you. Take it in. You get it just by going back.
Yeah, you carried that forward through all your projects. When you're thinking of approaching something, time is such a valuable commodity. How much time are you building in for that research? And is that ever cumbersome?
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Chapter 4: How did James L. Brooks transition from television to film?
Time to go beyond the highlights and get into the real heart of basketball. Watch Mind the Game now on YouTube, Prime Video, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. So when he had his own dressing room?
Yeah. And he's seminal. He started performance art, I think. There was a time when he was wrestling. He wrestled women. He insulted women and then said, wrestle me, I can beat any women. Then they would really wrestle. And then he went in a real wrestling ring and got hurt. And it was a front page story because he was known at that point.
Yes, he hurt his neck and he came out in a neck brace. He went on a tour bashing the guy who hurt him. And then I found out it was fake. And it was on front pages. Oh, jeez.
You're just going to sue the guy. What a live wire. And he wanted a rematch. If you watch the thing, it's a body slam where he's upside down and a guy holding him goes like that so that you're wincing. But when you really slow it down, you see that it was set up. You see that he stopped just short of the slam and they made the noise. Yeah.
But yeah, are you on set? Like, who's going to show up today?
Yeah, sort of. And Tony showed up with two prostitutes one day.
Sure, yeah.
That adds up. Yeah. Wow. Did you shoot that here or in New York? We shoot it here. My partner, Ed Weinberger, who Andy had told this was going to happen, and he said, Ed, I need you to really punish me, but punish Tony when he comes in. And he comes in with the two prostitutes. Ed goes crazy, calls the security guards who are not in on it.
The security guards, like almost in a cartoon, drag him and throw him out of the gate. Where he calls Ed and said, thanks, that was one of the greatest.
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Chapter 5: What insights does James L. Brooks share about ambition in storytelling?
And I don't know if it's bad to fall in love with that, but you're going places and you don't even know it. You're going on a journey and I'd be stuck here. I love you. You Yeah.
Persistence, persistence, persistence.
Interesting.
So yeah, he is enamored with the obviousness that she is going to be going places. He's ambitious, but she's not in the wrong way. He likes that she's governor.
Chapter 6: How does the discussion of contemporary female characters unfold?
He likes the accoutrements and stuff like that.
He wants to be on TV with her. He wants the title.
Like he's using her.
Even if he doesn't know, he is.
What's been sort of a thing traditionally, my way out. Oh, this guy takes me to a whole new place. Prince Charming takes me to a new life.
Yes, if it's reversed, we don't say she's using him, I guess is the thing.
The trope you've seen a million times in movies is like the wife of a man and she's quite ambitious and helps him achieve his goals.
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Chapter 7: What emotional experiences does James describe regarding his family?
But it's really unique and interesting and a bit icky when you see the reverse of it.
Right. Like, why should it be?
Why should it be? But it's, I don't like it.
That is a very contemporary woman right now. There's a lot of that going on right now that's hard.
They write their marriage vows and his is, except for you and me, baby, everything's a joke. And that's an outlook, you know.
Yeah.
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Chapter 8: How does the conversation shift to the impact of personal experiences on creativity?
Well, it's delightful. I love Kumail, too. Kumail Nanjiani is one of my all-time favorites. Yeah, the big six. It's like the good guys cast. It's like everyone that's in it is sincerely a good guy.
Oh, I have one more question. Yeah. When's the first time you cried? You told us the second time.
My mother's death.
I guess we could have assumed that.
I made an ass of you and me.
You did.
He said second. I was like, okay, I'm guessing 22 was the first time.
And how much time in between was those two?
A long time. I can tell you. A long time. I have it. 83, 22, 66 to 83. So that's a big gap. I think I had about a similar gap.
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