Born into show business—his father literally died on stage at a Friar's Club roast for Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, and his brother is Bob Einstein, a.k.a. "Super Dave" Osbourne—Albert Brooks is among the most innovative and respected comedians of his generation. As a stand-up, he made a name for himself on the talk-show circuit, appearing on The Steve Allen Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and others before settling in for a semi-regular stint on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. After producing two groundbreaking comedy albums (Comedy Minus One and A Star Is Bought) and several short films for the nascent Saturday Night Live, Brooks wrote, directed, and starred in his first feature, 1979's Real Life, a prescient black comedy that anticipated the current reality-show craze. Though never a prolific filmmaker, Brooks makes up in quality what he lacks in quantity: His subsequent works include Modern Romance, Lost In America, Defending Your Life, Mother, and The Muse.
He's also made several prominent appearances as an actor, appearing in Taxi Driver, Out Of Sight, Finding Nemo, and—in an Oscar-nominated supporting role—James L. Brooks' Broadcast News. Brooks' latest effort, Looking For Comedy In The Muslim World, was dropped by its original studio, which balked at the title. But its story about an American comic (Brooks) sent on a government mission to India and Pakistan to see what makes Muslims laugh is a lighthearted, self-deprecating treat. Brooks recently spoke to The A.V. Club about comedy after 9/11, premièring Looking For Comedy at the Dubai International Film Festival, the former and current state of stand-up comedy, and how it's okay to bomb.
The A.V. Club: How did you arrive at the idea for Looking For Comedy In The Muslim World?
Albert Brooks: It was a slow process, because after 9/11, just when it came time for me to make another comedy movie, no one was doing anything comedy-wise in movies about this new world we were living in. And I felt that if I couldn't do it, I didn't want to do anything else. I said to somebody, "It's like if a 9.0 earthquake happened in Los Angeles, and then you made a movie about Los Angeles and you didn't include it." So to make a movie about some other subject just didn't feel right to me. I felt like this was the subject that had to be dealt with. Of course, you couldn't do anything [about the post-9/11 world] in a comedy for a year or so after. You didn't even know if there were going to be more attacks. You didn't even know what was gonna happen. And then somewhere around the end of 2002, I started trying to figure out how I could even make a comedy that deals with any of this. How? I started to think about it then, and so it formulated over the next year.
AVC: Was it hard to find room for comedy in a situation that inspires such passions from both sides?
AB: Yes, believe me. But you know, there's no road map. You can't say, "Well, Jeff did this, I think I'll just tweak that idea." Obviously, I knew I wasn't gonna make fun of the religion or anything. That would be insane even if you wanted to make fun of it, which I didn't, and, you know, you have to be very, very careful. First of all, even to shoot in India, you have to get permission from the government, or they wouldn't have even let me in there. I was sort of tiptoeing around the fact that I might wind up causing an issue between [India] and Pakistan—actually, the [government official] laughed at that. He had other issues he didn't want. He told me that they didn't allow Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom to be shot there, and I asked why, and he said because they had a scene where they ate monkey brains. And even though I show that there are cows everywhere, if I had a scene where you stop and the car won't pass a cow, I don't think they'd let you do that. They're tired of that. Certain things like religious beliefs or cultural clichés, they don't want perpetuated. So the issues I was dealing with, they seemed to be all right with.
AVC: So the resistance comes from outside the Muslim world?
AB: It's interesting, because the Muslim world is a very large world. There are Arab Muslims, and Pakistan is all a Muslim nation, and even though India is primarily Hindu, the irony is, the minority population places it as the second-largest Muslim population in the world. So when you're in India, you meet many Muslim people, and they have their own relationships with the Sikhs and the Hindus. There's sort of a thing going on there. The Hindus, the guys on the crew, were whispering Sikh jokes—"How come Sikhs don't play poker?" You know, stuff like that. But primarily, because I had to get permission from [the Indian] government, the issues were more about the traditions that they were worried about, that India was worried about. But I'm the central buffoon in the movie. I'm willing to make fun of myself in all aspects, from being a Jew to being in movies that… you know… for being in The In-Laws, I'll just say that. [Laughs.] So I think as long as you're willing to do that, really, then things become okay in a strange way.
AVC: The film seems similar to Real Life, Lost In America, and Mother, in that they're about these grand experiments that ultimately fail.
AB: Well, interesting that you say that. But Mother was more of a success. Because Mother, at least you found out who the mother was, and you had some sort of closure to this—"I get it, I know why she's jealous." But you're right. Real Life, Lost In America, and Looking For Comedy In The Muslim World have that same sort of grand experiment gone haywire.
AVC: It gives the films a self-deprecating quality that makes them more approachable as well, at least in Looking For Comedy In The Muslim World.
AB: Yes, it does. I know in Lost In America, there were many people who liked the movie, and many people who said to me, "You know, I sorta wished I could have seen what it would have been like if the characters had bought a cabin and lived there for a year." Well, okay, that's well and good. But my character had to go and eat shit, I'm sorry. Real Life, I remember Rex Reed, who I don't even think knew who I was in Real Life, and of course hated it. It's one of the reviews that I will never forget as long as I live, because it was so insane. He said, "Why would Paramount Pictures give this man the money to do such an important experiment?" And I thought "Wow." It was really one of those things where, "Gee, I guess a lot of people have no idea what I'm doing. This is wild. I'm starting from way behind the pack." On this movie, there were people who said, "Well, what did you find?" Well, you gotta see the movie. It's not finding, it's looking.
AVC: How did the film play for a Muslim audience?
AB: Oh, man. Listen, I'm telling you, [premièring the film at the Dubai International Film Festival] was the greatest comedy experience I've ever had, bar none. I was panicked. I didn't know what to expect. I didn't want to go. There was no part of me that was okay about this, but I went, and it was one of those things in life where it's just… Sometimes you're worried about a test for cancer, and you've got cancer. Things don't always turn out so good. But there were two sold-out shows. I went to the opening, and I heard the second show went exactly the same.
Right before the show started, the lights went down, and I'm tapped on the shoulder, and the Minister of Information, of Culture, this sheik, has come in from Abu Dhabi, surprising everyone with his entourage. There are 14 men in their white robes, and they clear the little balcony out. And he's up there, and they say, "He wants to meet you." So my wife and I go there, but the movie's started, so they just say, "Sit down!" So we watched the whole movie sitting behind him and his group. The laughter's welling up from the first floor, and he's digging it. And I know the Jewish jokes I have coming up. I actually asked somebody, "If a sheik walks out, do they have to walk out with him? Is that part of the custom? Are the average people allowed to stay if a sheik decides he doesn't like it?" "Oh, dear, don't worry, they're not gonna notice the balcony." He didn't walk out. The audience was getting things that Chicago, New York audiences don't even get. So it had a whole different thing going for it.
They're all worried, too. The people on this planet that are trying to live their life, that aren't trying to destroy things, are in the 99.9-percent majority. And the destroyers are destroying everywhere. They're doing it here, they're trying to do it there. People are nervous about it, so they seemed very happy to be laughing at anything, because the few movies that are coming out in general about this subject are all very serious movies, or they're about the terrorist with the heart of gold, or the guy who changes his mind at the last minute. I wish suicide bombers would change their minds at the last minute. I haven't read about that. They seemed really thankful that someone was willing to do it, especially an American. And more than that, they were laughing at stuff. I've got this line in the movie where I'm just talking to my wife about landing at the New Delhi airport. I say, "Nobody was there to pick us up, they stuffed Abbott and Costello and me into a big cab"—that got a big laugh. I'm thinking, "Abbott and Costello? Why? How did that happen?" She said, "Honey, everyone's so proud of you, even my mother." "Honey, your mother thinks a Muslim is a fabric." Thirty seconds—you didn't hear any lines after that. Roar. The sheik… [Imitates laughter.] I swear to God, it made me hopeful, just hopeful that a good laugh is going to go down anywhere, providing that you don't go into that territory where they don't want you to, which is the religion, and I didn't. It was never my intention to. I don't know if that would have been okay, if I chose to do that.
AVC: Even the few comedies that have gone after subject matter like this have taken a hard satirical angle. But this film has a conciliatory nature. There's something kind of welcoming about it.
AB: Yes. There are a couple of lines in the movie that I really, really, really like, because they're just different. I like when we're crossing the border into Pakistan and I say, "Why doesn't the guy just kill me in this car, I don't want to go with this guy," and the Jon Tenney character says, "I dunno, I think they're comics, not terrorists." It's just a sentence you've never heard before. And the idea of somebody who wants to be a stand-up comedian who normally looks like the guy who wants to kill you… I just like fusing those two. It's just funny to me that maybe show business can win out. That maybe the desire to do stand-up can overwhelm someone's desire to blow us up. It makes me laugh.
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