The B-Side Ep. 173 – James L. Brooks (with Adam Drosin)

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we celebrate filmmaker James L. Brooks! His new movie Ella McKay is in theaters now! Our returning guest is very good friend Adam Drosin, and together we are The Brooks Brothers. Our B-Sides today are I’ll Do Anything (musical cut included), Spanglish, and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. We discuss Brooks’ impossibly successful career as a producer of both film and television, his keen eye for talent (his support of superb filmmaker Kelly Fremon Craig), and, of course, his reckoning with failure. There’s also the recipe for that sandwich in Spanglish, Julia Roberts’ feelings about Nick Nolte on the set of I Love Trouble (which came out the same year as I’ll Do Anything, a rough year for Nolte professionally), and that Gracie Films fanfare. We also give The Critic some deserved love. We ponder the editing choices in Brooks’ 2010 debacle How Do You Know and celebrate his acting in the masterpiece Modern Romance (directed by Albert Brooks!). Cinematographer John Seale also said in an interview that the movie he shot that he used the most film on was Spanglish!