Just because somebody recognizes that something is bad doesn’t mean they have any idea how to make it better. There is no shortage of people or institutions that deserve critique, but there is no shortage of criticism either—what society is desperately short on is any sort of alternative to its norms and default behavior patterns. Those who rebel against these behavior patterns may soon discover that they only understood what they were against, not what they were for.
Albert Brooks understands this tendency of human behavior well. Back when he was directing films, he had a knack for creating characters that set out on projects to dismantle the status quo in their lives and work—only to find that they have no idea how to do so, and that their desire to live life in a different way was merely performative.
The characters that Brooks wrote and portrayed think they are above the influence of cultural pressures, but their actions show that they are just as influenced as the rest of us. Brooks saw that no one was easier to laugh at than a hypocrite, and that it was possible to skewer something and skewer how people criticize that thing at the same time. He used this duality applied to different topics with hilarious results.
Laughter can be a tremendous balm when life gets tough, but it can also allow a viewer to hear a message more clearly. Moving dramas that call viewers to action or timely documentaries that bring attention to key issues can be agents of change, but comedies can be even more effective.
From the time of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx brothers, comedy in film has been rooted in truths about the world; jokes have doubled as messages about the exploitation of workers and the oppression of the poor. When viewers are confronted with a message that they may not want to hear, they will be on guard; always conscious that the film may be trying to manipulate them. Laughter is the best way to disarm this instinct, linking the viewer with the joke writer by making them say “I think that’s funny too.” It creates a bridge that allows them to accept truths that challenge their current beliefs.
In Real Life (1979), Brooks plays himself as he makes “a movie about reality.” Using focus groups with the assistance of the National Institute for Human Behavior, he finds the most ordinary, nondescript family he can possibly find, and sets out to make a documentary by filming their lives. Frustrated with the artificiality of Hollywood filmmaking, he pitches the movie to the community by saying that “the most hilarious comedy, the most gripping drama, the most suspenseful disaster; they don’t happen on the movie screen—they happen in my backyard and yours.”
Brooks recognizes that films have a tendency to exaggerate and introduce contrivance in their efforts to entertain; instead, his film will show life as it is, connecting with people on a deeper level. But in saying he wants to make a movie about ordinary people, the onscreen Brooks has already made the movie artificial with his desire for them to be ordinary. The desire has an agenda to it, rather than just capturing actual interaction—they must be ordinary. The Institute conducts endless tests to determine the most ordinary family of all applicants, failing to recognize that no one family could be representative of all of America. Eventually, the team chooses the Yeager family, consisting of the mother Jeanette (Frances Lee McCain), the father Warren (Charles Grodin), and their two children.
Real Life doesn’t pull its punches in its rather cynical portrayal of the movie business. Brooks introduces the Yeagers to twenty crew members who are immediately sent away for the duration of filming, never to be seen again. They aren’t needed because of the unique nature of the film, but Brooks explains to the Yeagers that the union requires them to be employed for any production. Furthermore, Brooks’ film is financed by a studio that doesn’t understand the basic concept of his movie either. An executive is teleconferenced into the filmmaking teams’ meetings, and the only contribution of his disembodied voice is to derail the conversation with insistences that the film needs to add a big movie star to the film so people will go see it.
But these potshots at the movie business are nothing compared to the real butt of the joke in the movie, which is Brooks’ fictional portrayal of himself. He is obsessed with capturing life as it is, but doesn’t understand that the presence of a camera changes human behavior. Dr. Ted Cleary (J.A. Preston), a psychologist with the Institute who is studying the Yeagers, tells Brooks, “now, these people are definitely operating differently now than when filming started… it’s undeniable that you’ve strongly altered the reality that you’re filming. In my opinion, you’re getting a false reality here, and I don’t know what you’re gonna do about it.” Brooks completely disregards this advice, seeing Cleary as simply a stick in the mud and obstacle to the film’s success rather than a scientist with legitimate concerns.
The onscreen Brooks’ charm gives way quickly to his intrusive nature, meddling in the Yeagers’ lives as he attempts to make his vision of the film become a reality. He employs Ettanauer cameras, which are essentially giant helmets that the film crew will wear to follow the Yeagers around, and are undoubtedly more intrusive than a movie camera. The feeling of being observed immediately causes a rift in the Yeager family, with Warren trying to hold the family together and come off as pleasant for the cameras while Jeannette is furious about the situation and her husband’s behavior. Warren eventually loses his passion for the documentary, too, when the cameras make him so nervous that he commits veterinary malpractice and overdoses a horse on anesthetic while being filmed, resulting in its death. Of course, Brooks can’t help himself from intervening in their marriage and daily activities in general, and consistently makes things worse.
Eventually, it becomes clear that Brooks’ desire for his documentary to show reality is a farce. When the Yeagers become despondent and quiet following the death of Jeanette’s grandmother, Brooks shows up at their house in a clown costume to cheer them up, desperate to get some good footage. He is only interested in their lives and behaviors insofar as they reflect his vision for what life is, which is just as artificial as Hollywood’s. He isn’t interested in actually sitting with them in their feelings, or making a film that shows life in all its mundanity and untidiness. The concept of documenting reality is all about novelty, and it is entirely defined by being an alternative to the typical film. But when the rubber meets the road, the Yeagers don’t conform to the plastic suburban family that Brooks had envisioned, and he has no idea how to meet them where they are.
At the climax of the film, both the Institute and the Yeagers decide that it’s for the best to end the project and the filming early. Brooks has a breakdown and dresses in his clown costume again. Before setting fire to the Yeagers’ house, he rants to the Ettenauer camera about the failure of his project, saying, “Why did I pick reality? Why did I pick that out of all the subjects? I don’t know anything about it… I never thought I’d say this: the studio is right. The audience loves fake, they crave fake. Reality sucks.” His hypocrisy has been fully revealed, and he’s made a fool out of himself in the process.
In Lost in America (1985), Brooks turns his attention to the rat race (and consequently, to those who hate it). David Howard (played by Brooks) and his wife Linda (Julie Hagerty) plan to move into a big house as soon as David receives a promotion. Linda, however, is feeling rather stagnant. She confides to a coworker, “Nothing’s changing – I’m not, David’s not, we’ve just stopped. Life’s just gone by. You know, he genuinely believes that this promotion is gonna change everything. But you know, he believed that every single promotion, and it never does. Things are always the same, back to the same.” David, though initially highly motivated by the upward social mobility and material possessions his career path can provide, has a rude awakening when he is passed over for the promotion for being too useful in his current role. Upon this betrayal from his supervisor, who had been grooming him for the promotion, he loses his temper and is fired.
But just because the corporate hustle and grind for more money is unbearable doesn’t mean that they have any good alternatives. The Howards decide to “drop out of society”, selling all of their assets and travelling the country in a recreational vehicle. They make very few plans made beyond that, which they see as preserving the possibility for spontaneity, but in reality shows that they have very little vision for their new mode of existence. The desire for a glamorous life of hard work and shiny things has simply been replaced by a desire for a glamorous life of relaxation, adventure, and comfort—and the Howards prove to be pretty bad at all three.
It is clear here that David, in particular, is just as controlled by his money now as he was before he had dropped out of society. When they first set foot in the recreational vehicle, he extols all its features, mirroring the way he had talked earlier about their new and bigger house. Despite swapping out the expensive new home for a much cheaper recreational vehicle that allows them to travel the country, he remains fixated on possessions and dwelling places as status symbols. This is put to the test when Linda loses all their money gambling in Las Vegas, the first night of their adventure. David is furious, and becomes insistent that she didn’t understand what he meant by a “nest egg.” He is still clinging to the security that his money can provide; he has simply shifted his focus from earning it to maintaining it.
The Howards don’t take to their newfound poverty well. They both find jobs, David as a crossing guard and Linda as an assistant manager at a fast-food restaurant. But David, in particular, still has the attitude of a participant in the rat race, even if he no longer has the circumstances of one. He sees himself as above their new situation, giving up on his new employment as a crossing guard after the very first day, when he is mocked by some local children. The film concludes with the Howards going to New York and begging for their old jobs back (with significant pay cuts).
The Howards repeatedly insist that they are dropping out of society, but they never really have a plan for what their life will be or what their goals are. They knew they didn’t like the stagnancy of their old lives and the way that they were treated like assets rather than human beings. They didn’t want to continue acquiring material possessions; they didn’t want to be controlled anymore. But they had no real vision for what could give them purpose aside from their recently abandoned ambitions. There is real rest to be had when one steps away from employment to pursue happiness; and there is also satisfaction to be found in a job well done, regardless of overqualification. But the Howards find none of that in their brief adventure. They are miserable for the entire time that they spend as society dropouts.
To some, Brooks’ mode of comedy and subjects of ridicule can feel beside the point. The argument goes: shouldn’t we be focusing on the real problems, instead of the people who are trying to do something different and failing? Shouldn’t they be applauded for at least trying? Poking fun at them will discourage anyone from trying to break free, and we will go back to the status quo, which is certainly worse.
But Brooks’ films don’t pull any punches towards the status quo. The two-sided nature of Brooks’ comedy, where he is satirizing both a status quo behavior and the hypocritical people who try to do the opposite of that behavior, is a wonder to behold. It is so effective in its equality—the films set themselves up in opposition to the status quo in the first act, and then subvert expectations by satirizing that very opposition in the rest of the film. Much more time is spent critiquing the hypocrites than the status quo, but because the status quo’s deficiencies are the focal point of the film’s setup, it can’t be seen as a viable alternative and the tightrope act reads as balanced. The viewer sees immediately why Brooks’ characters decide to rebel against the norms, and then spend the rest of the film laughing at the ways that they do so. Yet it is clear that Real Life sees no value in Hollywood filmmaking that is more about making money than making art, and that Lost in America sees no value in the corporate ladder climb and collection of wealth and possessions.
And Brooks understands that the audience for a more intellectually-focused comedy film isn’t going to be drawn to mindless Hollywood entertainment or the rat race anyway. The people he made his films for are already prone to being critical of those things. He is taking on a much tougher task—he is mocking the very people who are watching his films, and asking them to laugh at themselves. They are the ones who are paying attention, after all, and who therefore need a wake-up call that being against something is not enough if they don’t know what they actually stand for. And they will hear this message a lot more clearly if he can get them to stop taking themselves so seriously and laugh a little.
