July 15, 2025 • 48 mins
This week, James L Brooks talked about The Simpsons, Mary Tyler Moore ,Terms of Endearment, having a million lunches to cast parts, his difficult beginnings and how the fear of survival and women's shoes drove him to his success. We also talk about what an amazing mentor he is, incredible writer, the worst notes he's ever gotten from a network, and now he likes to have drool days.
Bio:James L. Brooks is a three-time Academy Award®-winner and eighteen-time Emmy® Award-winner. He began his television career as a writer who also produced such beloved television hits as Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Tracy Ullman Show, and The Simpsons. Brooks began working in film in 1979 when he wrote the screenplay for Starting Over which he co-produced with Alan J. Pakula. In 1983, Brooks wrote, produced and directed Terms of Endearment for which he won three Academy Awards. In 1987, he wrote, produced and directed Broadcast News, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards® including Best Screenplay and Best Picture. Brooks then directed I’ll Do Anything starring Nick Nolte, Albert Brooks, and Julie Kavner. In 1997, Brooks co-wrote, produced, and directed As Good As It Gets, starring Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards® including Best Picture, and both Nicholson and Hunt won Oscars® for their performances. In 2004, Brooks wrote and directed the film Spanglish, starring Adam Sandler, Tea Leoni and Paz Vega. In 2010, Brooks wrote and directed the film How Do You Know, starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson.Brooks’s company, Gracie Films has produced numerous films and television shows since it was formed in 1990. On the television side, the company produces the long-running hit, The Simpsons, as well as producing the Tracey Ullman Show, What About Joan?, and The Critic. On the feature side – Brooks has executive produced the feature film, Say Anything, produced War of the Roses, and co-produced Big. In 1996, Brooks executive produced the film Bottle Rocket, directed by Wes Anderson, and produced Cameron Crowe’s Oscar®-winning Jerry Maguire, starring Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Renee Zellweger. In addition, Brooks produced Penny Marshall’s Riding in Cars with Boys, starring Drew Barrymore, and produced the film Edge of Seventeen, written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig for STX Productions. In addition, Brooks co-wrote and produced The Simpsons Movie, the movie version of the Fox hit.
Bio:James L. Brooks is a three-time Academy Award®-winner and eighteen-time Emmy® Award-winner. He began his television career as a writer who also produced such beloved television hits as Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Tracy Ullman Show, and The Simpsons. Brooks began working in film in 1979 when he wrote the screenplay for Starting Over which he co-produced with Alan J. Pakula. In 1983, Brooks wrote, produced and directed Terms of Endearment for which he won three Academy Awards. In 1987, he wrote, produced and directed Broadcast News, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards® including Best Screenplay and Best Picture. Brooks then directed I’ll Do Anything starring Nick Nolte, Albert Brooks, and Julie Kavner. In 1997, Brooks co-wrote, produced, and directed As Good As It Gets, starring Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards® including Best Picture, and both Nicholson and Hunt won Oscars® for their performances. In 2004, Brooks wrote and directed the film Spanglish, starring Adam Sandler, Tea Leoni and Paz Vega. In 2010, Brooks wrote and directed the film How Do You Know, starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson.Brooks’s company, Gracie Films has produced numerous films and television shows since it was formed in 1990. On the television side, the company produces the long-running hit, The Simpsons, as well as producing the Tracey Ullman Show, What About Joan?, and The Critic. On the feature side – Brooks has executive produced the feature film, Say Anything, produced War of the Roses, and co-produced Big. In 1996, Brooks executive produced the film Bottle Rocket, directed by Wes Anderson, and produced Cameron Crowe’s Oscar®-winning Jerry Maguire, starring Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Renee Zellweger. In addition, Brooks produced Penny Marshall’s Riding in Cars with Boys, starring Drew Barrymore, and produced the film Edge of Seventeen, written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig for STX Productions. In addition, Brooks co-wrote and produced The Simpsons Movie, the movie version of the Fox hit.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Strawt Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
My name is Jim Brooks, and when you're Ja Cogan,
you're never alone.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Don't be alone with JJ Cogan.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hey, don't be alone with Jake coganers. I'm still working
on that nickname. I have an amazing show for you today.
James L. Brooks, the great writer, director, occasional actor is
here with me and I couldn't be more excited. But
before I talk a little bit about Jim, I want
to remind you to write to me at DBAWJK at
(00:36):
gmail dot com. I want to connect with you. I
want to hear from you. I want to have a
personal relationship with you. So write to me with your questions,
your comments, especially your listener mail questions that I asked
the guests. I really could appreciate that. And I also
want to ask a big, big favor of you. I
want you to drive me to the airport. No wait,
instead of driving me to the airport, why don't you
(00:57):
just subscribe to the podcast? Is now a lot easier
than driving me to the airport. Right, Okay, choice is yours?
Drive me to the airport or subscribe to Don't be
Alone with Jay Cogan. That being sad, I want to
talk about my guests, which is James L. Brooks. So,
James L. Brooks one of the great TV and movie
writer creators in the world. He's responsible for terms of
(01:21):
deerment for broadcast News. He's responsible for Room two twenty two,
and the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Taxi and the
Tracy Omens Show, and notably The Simpsons. I met him
on the Tracy Omens Show and worked with him on
The Simpsons, and it was my first couple of jobs,
and there was such an education to see this guy work.
He loved the work, he loved the ideas, he loved
(01:46):
the banter, he loved writers. He likes when we create,
he likes when we create good stuff, and he's willing
to work hard to make the work good. Those are
the lessons I took away from working with Jim. And
I'm grateful that he was there first instead of somebody else,
so as a mentor. I treasure the fact that I
(02:06):
know him on treasure of the fact that he truly
influenced me. And he's a spectacular person and a really
interesting individual, and I'm grateful you get a chance to
hear him. We'll be back with James L. Brooks right
after this, don't be alone with j Covid. I'm very
(02:28):
honored that you're here. I feel very lucky because you're
going to be here about a year ago, and you
couldn't come really because you were about to start directing
a movie and this was a face to face interview
and you were afraid of catching COVID.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
It doesn't sound.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
As you know.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
I'm riddled with COVID all the time, and so you
knew face the face with me, there's a good chance
you're going to walk away with some kind of disease.
But now you've directed that movie I have, and and
so you're not afraid of death anymore. That's fine. You're
here to face me face to face. So thank you
for coming here.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Oh man, this is good.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
This is great. Now. Our our history is such that.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
You you were selling flowers, yes, of course, and you.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Took pity on me. There's a beautiful flower girl. You
took pity on me. Yeah, I was a blind flower
woman actually that Charlie Chaplin style. But no, you gave
me and Wally our first job as a writer on anything.
You you and Heidi Peerlman and Jerry Belson, What was
(03:36):
what was the Tracy Lemon Show. Oh wow, and uh
we we pitched a sketch and they said, okay, we
pitched twelve sketches. They said, write one. We wrote one.
Then we got hired on the Tracy Lemon Show. And
that was the first gig.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
And how long how long you.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
We got hired like thirteen episodes in to the end
of the show, so I think it was on four
years or something like that.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Clearly made a big impact on you. No, no, no, no,
no no. So it was that show was.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
First of all, Tracy Ullman is unique talent, you know,
just nobody that was it was she served her talent.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
We served her talent.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And when we usually did three sketches in a night
and she would do elaborate makeup to The great story
is that that shortly before I did the show, I
was home one night and a black man came to
my door and started to talk to me in a
(04:42):
very strange way. And it went on for about fifteen
or twenty minutes. Part of it was, part of it
was like lost, part of it was found. It was
testing me a certain point. Fifteen minutes in I realized
it was Tracy and that's what she did. She did prosthetic,
she did right, She made herself endeavor think she could
do everything. She was and she and so massively uniquely talented,
(05:06):
right that there was something where she was chasing her talent.
It was just you know, so original that, right.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
It was our job to try and think of interesting
characters and put them in scenes that you know, we
could play for you know, seven minutes.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I think so far ahead of its time, Like we
had the running character where she played a sixteen year
old with two gay menas for parents, which was so
far be you know, everything.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And it was upset. Remember the I don't know if
you remember this, but a gunman came to the studio
one time in twentieth century Fox, who was upset about
that that two gay men were in control of a
little girl. And they and they they tucked all the
writers away. Was it coming after you?
Speaker 4 (05:45):
He specifically.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Wanted to kill me, very getting line, very single minded,
very single minded ambush and and it was and it was.
And it turns out that he was His mother reported
this and that he was mentally unstable.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
What are the odds to the studio was.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Insane and he had not Yeah, yet met the ambition
of being criminally insane, and for a while I was
under guard and everything.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That was a scary thing. But that's how far ahead
of the time he were.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, and in case anybody's listening, I'm still under very, very,
very heavy guard.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
But it was a great experience for me when I
when we got on the show, whially and I got
on the show, we we didn't know a ton about
Tracy Ullman. We had heard that she was gigantic in Europe,
but she was coming to the United States. And then
I had heard from people in Europe that they thought
that she was gigantic in the United States. In Europe
(06:49):
they were waiting for her big break. But but she
was very, very and still is enormously talented. I always
thought there was some issue that she wanted. She did characters,
but she wanted to find out the part of the
character that she could make fun of, Like she was
interested in sort of highlighting some things that she made
(07:12):
fun of. She didn't like characters that were just nice,
that were you know, K, the secretary K that she played.
She loved K was sweet, and then Francesca was the
fourteen year old girl was also sweet, but there's something.
She was able to find something I guess about it
that she thought was twisted or interesting for her to play.
(07:34):
That was kind of the requirement because sometimes you wrote
a character and she says, I don't I don't know
how to do this, or I didn't want to do
that because.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Of the prosthetics.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I mean, people talk about being on a movie and
having prosthetics for a short period of time and going
crazy with it. She did it three times a night,
you know, and we had a bust new audiences in
because it would take us like four hours to do
twenty two minutes of entertainment.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
But was that was great?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
It was great because it was so free because that
was the new Fox network, you know, and it was
and nobody was watching it, you know, except she got
she got noticed.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
We got Emmy warns, we got Ammy, we got we
got noticed. I'm not sure what a good rating on
Fox was at that time, but whatever it was, we
were doing it.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And of course that Steve Martin was watched. Remember we
got that Steve Martin was watching it.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
We went nuts.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, and he got it. We didn't. We brought him
on the show, had Steven Spielberg on the show. Did
you always have artistic ambition? No, I consider you one
of my artistic mentor like when when we approached writing
(08:46):
for The Tracy Omen Show or The Simpsons or other things,
he wasn't just to like throw off a few jokes
and walk away. There was there was an idea that
we're trying to do something better than that. There was
an idea that we wanted to tell the truth, tell
something interesting, find an angle that people hadn't seen before,
make something worth watching. And that was fantastic and what
(09:10):
a great way to start a career that eventually wound
up to just be telling shitty jokes. So thank you
for starting me off well and then plummeting down. But
but you you have you hadn't have artistic ambition. Where
did that come from?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Well, what it came from is I don't want to
go into uh my sad childhood but.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
With the but that's half of what I'm going for.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
But okay, but but but but the but you don't
have ambition when there's a struggle for survival within the family, right,
I mean, your your ambition is to survive, and so
I I and I remember I remember my fear was
that I would end up selling women's shoes.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
I don't know why. As a young as a kid,
that was.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
When women's shoes.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
On your knees all day. Right, So sorry, ma'am, you
do need a size larger. Yeah, that was my fear.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Did you ever work in a woman's shoe store?
Speaker 4 (10:12):
No? No, I no.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Thank god.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
But there was a specific.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Fear, you know, like that. That and the fear of imprisonment. Right, yeah,
do you have the fear of imprison I do have.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
The fear of imprisonment.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Yes, I'm glad to hear it.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
And and I don't that's really that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
No, I am very afraid of going to prison. I
don't like being stopped by the police, none of that.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
I don't know how it works.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I got a job where you were supposed to be
a college graduate. You got the job, and I lasted
about I mean, I think a semester and a half
in college because it was the first time in my
life I had fun, and I just I just I
just only went to one class and I was n
(10:57):
yu with the time. I forget how many tens of
thousands of students that had downtown.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
And I got the.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Record for over because okay, yeah, I'm not I'm not
proud of it, but but but uh but and it
was really tough because it was a struggle for me
to pay the tuition for my mother to help pay
the you know. And so I felt it was really
uh shameful.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
That I had screwed up in this way.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
And and then fortunately my sister was friends with somebody
who was secretary to the man who ran the page
staff at CBS, and and and they were at that
point wanting only college graduates, and she and I got
a job on page staff.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
So that was my break.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
That's fantastic. And they and that was, well, you were
a page of CBS. You wound up somehow in the
newsroom or the news.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
This is you want to a second break, Yeah, we'll
go up to okay, I want to shut So this
page billed in for vacation release relief for it for
other sort of entry level jobs. When when those people
went on vacation, I filled in for a guy who
(12:13):
was the copyboy desk assistant was called in the newsroom
in the in the CBS newsroom, which was a storied newsroom.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
That's Edward R.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
Murrow Erwood R. Murrow and Murrow's Boys and Edward R. Murrow.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I read a twelve hundred page book about Edward or Murrow,
and somebody heard the woman being interviewed and they asked
her what she took twelve years to write it? Everything
was like twelve And they said, what was the biggest
surprise she did all this research? That he deserved the legend.
He was the one who saved the country at a
(12:48):
certain point when when during the Red Scare. He was
great looking, he had a top rated television show that
sort of bored him where he visited celebrities on tell
Vision and he was the gold standard. And I, you know,
I maybe have two things that I always referring to
(13:10):
in my life. I brought Edward Rmurow coffee and I
interviewed Louis Armstrong from my high school newspaper.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, fantastic, I'm telling you it was. It's one of
the great experiences in my life, one of the great
experience of my life, like forty five minutes alone from
and at this moment, I've been trying to get my
old high school to find the picture of me in
the Mira with a aad out interviewing Louis Armstrong and
I'm telling you, I get emotional now. It was and
(13:41):
I and I asked him a question that hadn't that
people hadn't asked him, And it was an obvious question,
is what do you do for your lips?
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Right?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And it was an obvious question, but he lit up
and he took out more creams and more bottles and
talked for so long, and it was just exquisite because
he it was one of it's like, it's like like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that cares about part of a DAILI routine.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Hadn't been asked about it. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, all right, Well so it's.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
A little self surveying which I like, don't be alone with.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
At some point you were in the newsroom, and some
point that became working on all these other shows, like
you got your first break writing for TV. Somewhere along
the line, where where did that come?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
My wife at the time, we we were I was
in love with her, uh and we were U We
were in a relationship and she wanted to go to California.
And at this point I had a union job, which
(15:09):
you know, really when I when I was saying that
that I had had a childhood filled with the doubts
about whether I could survive. And I had a job
that I loved that played a decent salary. It was
a w G, a job newswriting, and and and and and.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
I was feeling good.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, great, I was.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I was happy, and I was in love. And she
went to California and and I had also been working
for a radio show, sort of an afternoon drivetime radio show.
And the guy who produced that radio show came was
ahead of me in Los Angeles, and he was doing
documentaries for an app called Waper Productions, which was sort
(15:53):
of a new gritty outfit that was really sort of
scoring in.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
A way with.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and it was Ted Whitz documentary.
So it was starting to happen. And he offered me
a job. And I went to California. And I had
one thousand dollars in the bank, which sort of paid
our deposit. And so I'm broke when I when I
but I have a job. Okay, six months in, I'm
(16:21):
laid off. And then he was a great guy on
Landsberg because he knew I was in trouble. He felt
bad about it, and he did and they were doing
National Geographic Specials at the time, and he called me
in on a freelance job because and the freelance job,
and this is a true story, I had a horrifying
(16:41):
phobia of insects. I mean horrifying where you know eke,
I mean I made sounds like eke, you know. And
and the job that was available was the National Geographic
Special on the World of Insects. And and and and
(17:03):
I got and I went in and I and it
was a real phobia. And the Movieola's at that time.
You ran the film through the Movieolas, and it's sixteen
millimeter phone, so you're you know, it's always it's always
snaking all over the place. But and you've seen these
huge close ups of them doing everything, you know, eating
(17:23):
each other, at war with each other, romantic each other.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And and and it got me over my phobia because
it was a version therapy.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Okay, fantastic, yes, all right. And you got a paycheck,
which is also.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
I did get a paycheck, which was very good.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Okay, So you're working in this with this this band
of of documentary filmmakers, and.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
And I go to a party with it.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I think it was a New Year's Eve party, and
we were this raggedy bunch and in the middle of
us a guy came in in a tuxedo, tall, great looking,
beautiful wife and and he said, at last were with
our with real people, because he had just been to
a fancy thing. But he had friends here and they
(18:10):
came here and and his name was Alan Burns, and
he had five shows that he had created on the
airth that's and he talked to me and uh and
and what do you what do you.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Want to do? Right?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And he had and one of the shows he had
on the air at the time was called My Mother
of the Car, which was a situation comedy based on
a guy whose mother died and came back as a
talking car. And he had created that with four other shows.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
And he was.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
So innately funny and kind and decent. And that's an unusual.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Right combination.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
You're you're you're defeating some magnetic fields to have those
three qual I think.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Also, people don't know this about Alan Burns. He drew
Captain Crunch. Yes, he created the Captain Krunch drawing.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Created Captain Crunch.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yes, absolutely, he wins my heart just for that.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
And he got me a rewrite job on one of
the shows he careerd my mother the car, and then
they gave me a chance to do my own script,
and that caught me started.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
When I show up meeting you, you are a guy
who's already conquered Mary Tyler Moore show. You've already done taxi,
You've already done a million, You've already.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
We used the word wrote instead of conquered.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
So my issue that I wanted to talk with you
about a little bit and asking about artistic aspirations is
because I have artistic aspirations, but I have not achieved
the artistic aspirations aside from this podcast, which of course
as worldwide renowned. People love this podcast from all over
the world. They come and visit, they watch how I
do it. But when I write, I've written movies, I've
(20:03):
written TV shows that I love, but nothing that's broken
through in the way that I'd like it to break through,
just from me. And so I still I'm at at
the tender young age of sixty and you're still doing
things at your age. Is there still time to make
that breakthrough? Is you do think that that forty years
(20:24):
is enough and hang it up, or do you think
that you still got to do it, you still got
to make stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Well, I think I think you could find some stories
of people who did do it at that Yes, it's possible,
it's not impossible.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
What drives you you just finished a movie? What drives
you to keep on making the stuff?
Speaker 4 (20:43):
A healthy sense of desperation?
Speaker 1 (20:46):
How can you be desperate at this point?
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Just two?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I mean, I mean, I don't know what I'd do
if I wasn't working. I just don't know, you know,
I just I just it's first of all, I experience
both things I feel, I mean, I mean the privilege
of it, especially these days, you know that, especially these days,
I mean especially these days.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yes, it's a it's a really strange period to be
trying to make things.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
There's a traffic jam, there's the Netflix traffic jam, and
and streaming. And if you gave me a lie detector
test on how long it took me to write the
script I've just made, I think I would. I certainly,
I certainly would tell the truth, right and I and
I think i'd so I'd be so steadfast and not
telling the truth that I've passed the test.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Okay, yeah, all right, Well, I mean it's been a
few years between.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Let's you know, let's drop it right there. But you
know they haven't been in a few years between movies
because I've produced three movies at that time. But having
produced and worked and thank God for the Simpsons. I
mean it's you know, the word comeback has come up
and I've been.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Working, right.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
No, No, you never stopped working, which is uh, which
is fantastic. You know. One of the things that's true
about the Simpsons. Uh, it's I was there at its inception.
It was an amazing thing to watch. It wouldn't have
come about. I mean how it came about is insane
because you just saw the shorts.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
And at some point you on the involved like them
and SA then the audience was not yes, was laughing
at them, and and you had the bright ideas like
they like this. We were doing three sketches, as I said,
we were busting and people because they went home as
we're on the air for a while, we had enough
(22:37):
Simpsons things to show them during those waiting periods to
the studio audience. And then that killed right, So.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I heard the laughter, right, and you said, you said
to yourself, there's got to be a billion dollar idea
in there, and then it turns out.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
There was the studio was on the verge of bankruptcy then, okay,
I mean it was at a time when just just
it just saved itself.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
It was was on.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
This is the Barry Dillar era.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yeah, yeah, And I said, I'll go elsewhere. I'll do
a very similar show with their name. May it may
not be the sens, right, you know, and and and they.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Gave us an order.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And but but because it's an animated show, you know,
when you give an order, you don't know, you know,
it takes At that point, it took six months ye
to get it back from the cleaner of no from
animation Kreer, we carea, all.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
That stuff took it at that point.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
It took six months, thank god, thank god. And we
had time to fix stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Honestly, we got the order for whatever amount of shows
it was. Was it thirteen, I guess We're thirteen, yeah,
which was a big deal. Hadn't been an animated show
on television twenty five years, stuff like that. So and
we and we got it back and I don't know,
if you know the story, you might know this story.
And we got it back and the group of us
went over to see it, and they were it was
(24:06):
screwed up. They were at a character. Yeah, they were grotests.
You were there that they were grotesque looking.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
We were dead and we.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Didn't know whether they were all like that, right, And
we had a wait that week or whatever the hell
it was where I mean, you couldn't wouldn't have been
watchable for five minutes, right, And and then and then
the term said that it was okay.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
After that, well, it felt like the first couple of
episodes we were still they were still trying to figure
out how to do it and how to animate it
and how to make it. And fortunately the Christmas episode,
which was like six or seven in.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Line, we thought it was first.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
No, first, no, it was the sixth to seventh episode.
Some enchanted evening was first. That's the one with anywhere,
And that was not a great episode. So and we
still didn't fix it really great. But but it's like
that was the first one that came back and we all,
you know, didn't know quite what to do. But the
(25:05):
Christmas episode came back really good and and and we
had retakes and to make it even better. And then
smartly you said, okay, this is our first episode and
I was amazing.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
I think it's one of the best things I've ever
been around, that first episode.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
I love it. It worked very well. It was a
hit out out of the box. But what you're amongst
your contributions were you kept us human in a cartoon.
You made sure that that that this was about human things.
People thinks, well, it.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Was just that was my whole background with you know,
with live action shows, and you know that you try
and find that. So so we we we and we
and it was great because we had so many rules
because because we wanted rigidly not treated as a cartoon.
If you set a cartoon to get really pissed off
at you, right, you know, we were you know, we
were and we and everything was about depth of character
(25:59):
and I mean obsessive, obsessive with that. And then we
started to you know, like we made rules will never
travel to outer space, but every but breaking the rules
was interesting too. Having rules to break them is nice too.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Well, you said, there are a couple of things that
you said at the beginning which were really great, which is,
it's about a family, It's about these people. It's also
you said, don't worry if another show has done something
in the realm of this, if we do it on Simpsons,
it will be different. And that was really good advice
because it was finding stories.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
So legitimate other people's, yes, exactly, plagiarism.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
No, it was really good advice. Nobody we could do
something that about a bowling ball or something that had
been done on another show, maybe a different it would
be different on our show, and it was different on
our show. And that is that is genius advice. And
I've taken that with me forever, and that's that's fantastic.
But what we Wally and Iwood were wrote the episode
(26:59):
where Home falls down a cliff.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Is that the one in the app where he goes
in the ablance and then yeah, yeah, that's one of
the biggest physical jokes in the history of showing.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
One of my proudest right, Well, yeah, my audience must
have seen this joke. But it's it's Homer Simpson's trying
to save his son from going across a gorge on
a skateboard because he saw Evil Canevil do something amazing
and he wants to repeat it, and he says, I
won't let you do it, son, and then he takes
his son from the skateboard to save him because he
(27:28):
loves his son so much. And he winds up on
the skateboard himself and going down the ramp and then falling,
and then suddenly he's soaring over the gorge on a
skateboard and he thinks he can make it, and he says,
I'm King of the world, which was before the Titanic,
that was from us first. And as he's going and
he's almost gonna make it, it's clear suddenly in a
bugs bunny style, that he's not going to make it,
(27:51):
and he hits the cliff and he falls down the cliff,
banging into every rock imaginable, bloodied, beaten, broken at the
bottom of the cliff. And then a helliac comes to
take him out of the cliff and it puts him
on the thing and the hell of ac smashes into
the rocks as it goes. They put him in an ambulance.
Finally he saved. He goes the ambulance, the amlas drives
(28:11):
about ten feet smashed the new tree. The gurney falls
out of the ambuls and he goes back down the cliff. Yeah,
now this is pure Buster Kitton. I mean, we stole
from and I think it's our biggest physical joke. Yeah,
it was very controversial at the time because we weren't
sure that we were allowed to do something like that,
(28:32):
you know, with blood. We made sure to make him bloody.
It wasn't just a cartoon where nothing happened. He was
bloody at the end. He's in the hospital. Like we
tried to humanize it, but it was. It was the
first edging towards cartoon exactly. Yes, he heard himself every time.
One of my proudest that whole episode Bart the Daredevil,
one of my proudest riding moments of me and with
(28:52):
me and Wally Uh. I wanted to ask you too
about Mary Tyler Moore, who you know. I saw the
special that they did about her life not long ago,
and you're featured in it, and about how that show
is created and you and Alan Burns, right, he was
(29:14):
your partner on that, correct, And you guys wanted to
make this show about this divorced lady, and they didn't
want to really do it about a divorced lady.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It was worse than that, which makes it better than that.
We went to pitch to CBS, So we go to
New York and to pitch the show with the greatest
boss anybody ever had, you know, it was Grant Tanker
takes us in to see and I'm telling you fifteen
executives a guy who was at a programming then said
(29:46):
there are two things the American public doesn't like in
their television Euros people with mustaches and Jews. And he
looks at me a Jew, without any thought that maybe
I shouldn't say that to this guy, no thought whatsoever.
(30:08):
He was he was a charge. Yeah, so we pitched
the Divorced Mary Show and and then they asked us
to step outside, and then Grant said, come on, let's go,
and and we went on and dropped that idea and
came up with the idea that that that was the show.
(30:28):
And it was even worse than that idea. I think
she worked for for entertainment calm that at the time
it was something right, and but we we had we
changed it. And it was only like after we were
on the air and successful that I found out that
they had ordered him to fire us that day and
he had not. So that's granted, he's the best.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
That's fantastic. Yeah, Well, that show obviously holds up beautifully
as does Taxi. It's interesting that those shows watching them
today are still so fucking funny and so smart and
feel alive and real. They're not they're not NTM that era.
(31:09):
I don't know if it's you or but it's true
of the Bob Newhart Show is.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
True writers right, giving giving writers control of their work right.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It felt like the kind of writing that people were
doing was influenced a little bit by Nicholson May and
by Neil Simon and by like, you know, what was
going on in the theater, like we're gonna we're gonna
try and be real and try to make TV real,
like you start on My Mother the Car, which was
an odd fantasy show and you got to this more
real place.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
And hated the term sitcom.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, you know, yeah, because they were plays. They were plays,
and they were fantastic plays.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Oh my gosh, don't.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Be alone with go.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
All right, Jim, it's now time for question. Time is question.
There are conflicting stories about who does the iconic shush
that we have Gracy Film's logo, So we want to
know who does it and what and why Gracie Films.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Gracie Films. There used to be an old Vadaville, then radio,
then television team George Burns and Gracy Allen, and Gracie
Allen was always this sweet She played dumb to him, right,
but super smart dumb, you know, you know, like in
(32:46):
her dumbness, there was super smart and and she was
just this holy pleasant comedy spirit. Right, That's why Grace,
So you loved her and was she just represented just
some great comedy And who's talker thing?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
And who's doing this? Some people think it's Tracy Omen.
Some people think it's your daughter Amy.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Maybe maybe Amy, maybe Amy, because Amy's a you know,
in our logo, there's an intelligent girl with glasses who
looks like she's around twelve years old audience, and that
was based on Amy, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Uh, what's your feeling about reboots of comedy hits of
the eighties?
Speaker 4 (33:25):
Everybody should live and be well.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
But I mean it doesn't seem like that's your your
wouldn't be your thing, like they're not rebooting Roda.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
I mean, never feel feeling very good when we when
we did Roda and then we then ed Asna wanted
to do a show, and we say, how do we
do a spin off that's not a spin off right,
and that's when we made it the drama, right, So
I felt very good about that. You know.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
It's it's one of those things where again people are
trying to sell you things that they think are already
popular instead of creating something new. And that's very frustrating
for people like me who I want to make new
things and I want to watch new things. Okay, yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
You're entitled, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Well, I mean, yeah, what are you watching now that
you love?
Speaker 4 (34:11):
I like the studio a lot, Yes, the studio's great. Yeah,
I like the studio a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Big. Wow, this is big. Patrick Rolo wants to wants
to know what's your biggest regret besides not shooting more
movies in Rhode Island. I guess he's from Rhode Island.
Do you have a big regret? Jim?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
I always think. I mean, my theory is, if you
like the way you feel at this moment, there's no regrets,
you know, all right?
Speaker 1 (34:36):
I agree with you. I don't have I don't live
my life full of regret, but I can work it up.
Given time, I could work some up. Absolutely. Oh, I'm
dying to know. Has he heard about the the cut
sketch written by John Mullaney and Bill Hater SNL sketch
where they the premise was a James L. Brooks Samurai movie.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
I never heard that. I'd love to hear anything. Those
two guys mentioned my name.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Well, I happen to write Bill Hayter about this when
I got the question, and Bill Hayter said, oh my gosh, yes,
it was a James L. Brooks Samurai movie called Love,
Honor and Dating after forty I remember to Samurai on
a battlefield. One says to the other, look in the
book of life. I just want to be in the acknowledgments.
That's a James L. Brooks style line. And another one says,
(35:21):
I remember one decapitated guy, and he says one one
guy decapitates another guy and says he was married. I
did him a favor. So that's part of their their
cut sketch. I didn't did make it, but Bill Hayter
was very excited that that to tell.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
You this, how about his dramatic acting.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Fantastic right, comedians who become dramatic actors somehow.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yes, yes, Why do you think I mean? Is this
comedy that much more difficult or.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
I so don't know the answer to that, and it
is so true.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Right right, And people who are dramatic.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Actors like I don't get it. I don't get it.
That doesn't work the other way around.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Like somebody like Jack Nicholson, who is also very funny,
very funny. He was a great actor. He wasn't known
for being a comedian, but he's fantastic. Something about that
soul comedy blesses the soul enough. It hurts the soul
enough to make you a great actor. Somehow, somehow thought
I think it's true. Grown up Gerald writes, does he
(36:23):
have an open green light for a certain at a
certain budget for a next Simpsons movie?
Speaker 4 (36:28):
We we intend to do one.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Okay, yeah, all right, great? Uh his David writes, he's hilarious.
He's hilarious in modern romance, impeccable timing. Ask him why
he never pursued the Pollock Scorsese.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Part time This is fantastic what this person is saying.
We repeat that against David.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
David writes, he's hilarious in modern romance, impeccable timing. Ask
him why he never pursued the Pollock Scorsese part time
acting thing.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
Cheers mancheers tears. Just I was. I was.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
I was the actor from hell for Albert really uh,
you know, like like I was the guy at his
trailer the next this is absolutely true, neurotic breakdown at
his trail the next day. I know he said it
with the fun It was not. It was like when
you know, I was just every kind of and very
important to me because I felt so such such stage fright,
(37:30):
and I felt the kind of vulnerability that an actor
feels when they say move on and you feel you
haven't done it yet. Okay, we got the next setup
and and in order, and experiencing that really increased my
empathy for you know, which is important when you're when
you're try and direct.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
But I was.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
I was at his thing the next day. Let me
do it again. I know I can do it better
than you know.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
I was that guy.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
I wow, that's so crazy. But what what why? Why
do you think that you felt so insecure about it? Was?
Speaker 2 (38:01):
It's not an unusual actors feeling everybody and it's very
good to have the ability to empathize with that feeling
now right right, But most actors, you know, like I'll say,
whenever I can, you want one for yourself.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, I'm a great actor. By the way, You've got
to use me more and stuff. I'm a great actee.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
I was feeling very very good today.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Dino Stan Metagulus, who's a very good writer, wrote his
character again. His character is the hack director. I didn't
know he was a hack director in Modern Romance. Wasn't
based on anyone. It's obviously the opposite of his own sensibility.
Was there any of himself in it? You're completely convinced
it was based on Uh, there was. There was one director.
I knew what the habit of playing with a rubber
(38:41):
band when when he was when he was editing, and
I just picked that out. Yeah, it's so good. I mean,
that's obviously. The movie is one of the greatest.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Man Man and Albert you know, always says there's always
a guy.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
Who comes up to him. There's always that You've got
it right, man, right, got it right.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
It's right.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
You know when you're right about your craziness and everybody
says you got it right.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Thank you, man.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You know, my first day on the Tracy Ollmond Show,
my first day is a professional writer, my first day
as somebody who's working on a TV show, not delivering sandwiches.
I was sitting in a room with you and Jerry
Belson and Heidi Perlman and Ken Aston and Sam Simon
and Albert Brooks. Albert was just sitting there. He wasn't
on the staff. I don't know what he was doing.
(39:24):
He was just sitting in the writer's room, Albert Brooks.
And I was like, oh my god. And I knew
enough not to talk to him. I knew enough to
just let him be, don't try to don't try to
say anything like fanboyish and like he you're great and whatever.
So I didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything
for a week, and he was in the room for
(39:45):
a week. I'm not sure why, and we just worked
together again. At some point, when we're walking back from
a run through a Tracy Yellman, I did sidle up
to him and say, I just want to say it's
pretty cool that you're here. And he got very upset
at me. Really yes, because I don't he was either
doing a bit and I couldn't understand it or not,
but he'd started being very uncomfortable. He didn't I don't
(40:07):
think he wanted to be perceived in that moment as
as somebody, you know, as somebody's idol. He wanted to
just be a writer in that moment, and he was.
He was fantastic. David Stern, who was a writer on
The Simpsons, wrote, I saw him exactly once on stage
at the Tracy Omens show fixing a scene in real
time like magic. Never saw him stronger. Would he ever
(40:28):
consider doing another multiicam show.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
You know, somebody's talked about bringing us back.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
It was great, it was interesting when we were on set,
you were able to and this is the first time
I'd ever seen this. I think consequently other people did
it too. Reorganize the scene? No, at least in theory,
what could be done on stage before we went back
to rewrite, to fix it so that we wouldn't have
to fix everything. So there were certain things about staging,
(40:57):
certain things about line readings.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
That's a big call. Yeah, that's a big call. You know,
you're not always say it's the script right, just say
maybe something else is gone wrong.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
I remember Ted Bessel once did for Interesting. He wanted
to be interesting, and he had a psychiatrist scene where
two people, the psychiatrists and the patient were both facing
opposite each other at the opposite end of the room,
and he just wanted to try it because he wanted
to see it. And you kindly had interesting, interesting, very interesting,
and then immediately redid it where they're facing each other
(41:27):
and they could connect and it was much better scene.
So I appreciated that.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
And you can always tell with the three camera show,
which is you know, you have dress rehearsal, and at
a certain point after they do the scene and dress rehearsal,
and then the assistant director says, actors to the rail
because you're in the bleachers, And you could always tell
a show that's really working because the actors move quickly
to the rail instead of, oh shit, we got to
(41:51):
talk to these guys again.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, it's fantastic. I'd never even thought about it. Yeah,
you seem to surround yourself and have your whole career,
at least as far as I from the moment, I
was sort of in your world. You keep trying to
find and do find interesting talent and people to work with, writers, actors,
other people, people who are newer, people who are young,
(42:14):
people who have other ideas.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
You're making it sound very higherical and stuff like that.
I mean, we all serve the thing. You know, it's
not it's not like you know, it's not like I'm
the thing I'm I mean, if if I'm the thing,
the thing that I do, if I'm the thing, is
I'm not the thing right away, right, because that's that's
that's not the atmosphere for people who work to I
(42:37):
don't feel that way.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
I don't feel good that way. Uh.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
And I and I think I think it's we all
serve the thing. I mean, and I think it's my
job to point at the thing sometime, you know, but
it ain't me that it's You're.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Different in that way. I think a lot of people
think they're the thing, and a lot of people think,
you know that I'm the brand or I'm you know you.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
And all and and people do great work.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
And I know somebody who does great work.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
I love it. I love the work.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
And and the writing staff sits around and watches him write.
Basically they're his audience. That's what they do there, you know, right,
and which is a contribution of some but but you know,
everything is, you know, people get to be different.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
What's your best Monica Johnson story?
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Monica When in the writer's room, Monica would express herself
in these two ways.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
I like it, I hate it.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Should and by the way, cut to the quick.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yeah, I think if you say you hate it, you
should supply an alternative. I think that's that's how we
that's how we tend to like writers to supply an alternative. Okay,
this is I didn't even know what this mean. Chris asked,
what was it like working with Gene Wilder on Thursday's game.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I loved his work.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
It was him and Bob Newhart, so it was just
the cast. If I went through that cast, it was
an amazing past Chlorus. It was, and Valerie was in it.
I mean, so many people were in it. It was like
it was like an amazing cast. And Gene probably justifiably
had a hard time with me. I think I think
(44:18):
I was just inexperienced or something like that. But but
you know, so, but but it was but there, but
he But I loved.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
Just working the picture.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah, and uh, and I love and I love working
with new Heart and new Heart and new Heart said
this is. I'm glad it came up because this is
I think it's such a Quintessentially, when somebody is absolutely
honest and and tells you their core truth, which is
a remarkable and Bob new Heart, who was, you know,
just a god. And I was trying to get him
(44:51):
to do this one thing, you know, you know, this
one sort of bittersweet speech at the end or something
like that. And uh, and then I tried number of
times and it was clear it wasn't going to happen,
and and I moved on and he said, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry. I didn't do what you wanted, Jim. I
was afraid of being bad. And and that's it, isn't it.
And but to somebody to say it out loud, but
(45:13):
that's it.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, Yeah, I've I've trained myself to not be afraid
to be bad. Honestly, I traded myself to that. To
pitch in a writer's room is you have to be
willing to fail in order to get get things done.
The last segment section of this is we call moment
of joy A moment of joy? What gives you joy?
(45:43):
Just joy? If you wanted to make this day a
great day from this point on, what would you do?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
I get joy about a day where I don't know
what I'm going to do next, and where I just oh,
I wonder what I'll do now and then, you know,
and I get enormous joy out of reading, and I
still read a newspaper. I get enormous joy out of
the New York Times, and I when I can read
(46:09):
you know, seventy percent of it.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
That's fantastic. So you get the paper version.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Yeah, and I think, you know, simple pleasures are you know,
are everything they're cracked up to be, you know? And yeah,
all right, especially the ability to let a day develop.
You know, drool time, true dull time, true time is fantastic.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, yeah, I have it all the time. I think
maybe I should limit my drool time and spend a
little bit more time not drooling. That'd be how fun. Well,
we're coming to the end of the show, and I
wanted to tell you a little story. At one point,
I was a young writer on the Tracy Omens Show
and I wanted to get a Christmas gift for you,
and I didn't know what to get this guy who
(46:50):
was really successful, and so I wound up getting you
this one hundred year old brandy there's really very expensive
one hundred year old brand. For me, it was expensive, right,
It was like a four hundred dollars Brandy.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
Jesus I got.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
I think, I thank you you did well. Not only
did you say I said, I said, I want to
give you this thing, but I hope it doesn't feel
like I'm kissing your ass. And you said, who told
you not to kiss people's asses? You said, kissing people's
asses is very important to you. You need to k
kiss people's asses. They like their asses.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Being kissed would be much more enjoyable than people make.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
It exactly, And it was very good advice. Yes, absolutely,
so I'm going to now kiss your ass a little bit,
which is to say that I couldn't have been more
grateful to have my career start in the presence of
you and the people that you work with. The attitude
of creativity, the attitude of passion, the attitude of making
(47:50):
the work good, the attitude of fun while we're doing
it was the greatest gift anybody could ever give me.
And I want to thank you for it. And I'm
still living with it and I still love it, and
it's why I still want to write TV and still
make things because I saw you guys do it so well.
So thank you, Jim, thank you for that. So there,
(48:10):
kissing your ass in that way, and thank you for
being here, Thanks for doing the show.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
And I want to God, your energy, man is great.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Thank you. I want to thank the audience, thank you
for being here. Don't you be alone. Please tune in
to the next episode and subscribe to this goddamn show.
I'm begging you for the million times subscribe to it.
I'm not sure why, but everybody has to subscribe to
This is antithetical.
Speaker 4 (48:34):
To the theory we're all alone.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
It's true. See you next time.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Don't be alone with
Strawt Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
My name is Jim Brooks, and when you're Ja Cogan,
you're never alone.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Don't be alone with JJ Cogan.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hey, don't be alone with Jake coganers. I'm still working
on that nickname. I have an amazing show for you today.
James L. Brooks, the great writer, director, occasional actor is
here with me and I couldn't be more excited. But
before I talk a little bit about Jim, I want
to remind you to write to me at DBAWJK at
(00:36):
gmail dot com. I want to connect with you. I
want to hear from you. I want to have a
personal relationship with you. So write to me with your questions,
your comments, especially your listener mail questions that I asked
the guests. I really could appreciate that. And I also
want to ask a big, big favor of you. I
want you to drive me to the airport. No wait,
instead of driving me to the airport, why don't you
(00:57):
just subscribe to the podcast? Is now a lot easier
than driving me to the airport. Right, Okay, choice is yours?
Drive me to the airport or subscribe to Don't be
Alone with Jay Cogan. That being sad, I want to
talk about my guests, which is James L. Brooks. So,
James L. Brooks one of the great TV and movie
writer creators in the world. He's responsible for terms of
(01:21):
deerment for broadcast News. He's responsible for Room two twenty two,
and the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Taxi and the
Tracy Omens Show, and notably The Simpsons. I met him
on the Tracy Omens Show and worked with him on
The Simpsons, and it was my first couple of jobs,
and there was such an education to see this guy work.
He loved the work, he loved the ideas, he loved
(01:46):
the banter, he loved writers. He likes when we create,
he likes when we create good stuff, and he's willing
to work hard to make the work good. Those are
the lessons I took away from working with Jim. And
I'm grateful that he was there first instead of somebody else,
so as a mentor. I treasure the fact that I
(02:06):
know him on treasure of the fact that he truly
influenced me. And he's a spectacular person and a really
interesting individual, and I'm grateful you get a chance to
hear him. We'll be back with James L. Brooks right
after this, don't be alone with j Covid. I'm very
(02:28):
honored that you're here. I feel very lucky because you're
going to be here about a year ago, and you
couldn't come really because you were about to start directing
a movie and this was a face to face interview
and you were afraid of catching COVID.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
It doesn't sound.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
As you know.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
I'm riddled with COVID all the time, and so you
knew face the face with me, there's a good chance
you're going to walk away with some kind of disease.
But now you've directed that movie I have, and and
so you're not afraid of death anymore. That's fine. You're
here to face me face to face. So thank you
for coming here.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Oh man, this is good.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
This is great. Now. Our our history is such that.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
You you were selling flowers, yes, of course, and you.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Took pity on me. There's a beautiful flower girl. You
took pity on me. Yeah, I was a blind flower
woman actually that Charlie Chaplin style. But no, you gave
me and Wally our first job as a writer on anything.
You you and Heidi Peerlman and Jerry Belson, What was
(03:36):
what was the Tracy Lemon Show. Oh wow, and uh
we we pitched a sketch and they said, okay, we
pitched twelve sketches. They said, write one. We wrote one.
Then we got hired on the Tracy Lemon Show. And
that was the first gig.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
And how long how long you.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
We got hired like thirteen episodes in to the end
of the show, so I think it was on four
years or something like that.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Clearly made a big impact on you. No, no, no, no,
no no. So it was that show was.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
First of all, Tracy Ullman is unique talent, you know,
just nobody that was it was she served her talent.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
We served her talent.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And when we usually did three sketches in a night
and she would do elaborate makeup to The great story
is that that shortly before I did the show, I
was home one night and a black man came to
my door and started to talk to me in a
(04:42):
very strange way. And it went on for about fifteen
or twenty minutes. Part of it was, part of it
was like lost, part of it was found. It was
testing me a certain point. Fifteen minutes in I realized
it was Tracy and that's what she did. She did prosthetic,
she did right, She made herself endeavor think she could
do everything. She was and she and so massively uniquely talented,
(05:06):
right that there was something where she was chasing her talent.
It was just you know, so original that, right.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
It was our job to try and think of interesting
characters and put them in scenes that you know, we
could play for you know, seven minutes.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I think so far ahead of its time, Like we
had the running character where she played a sixteen year
old with two gay menas for parents, which was so
far be you know, everything.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And it was upset. Remember the I don't know if
you remember this, but a gunman came to the studio
one time in twentieth century Fox, who was upset about
that that two gay men were in control of a
little girl. And they and they they tucked all the
writers away. Was it coming after you?
Speaker 4 (05:45):
He specifically.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Wanted to kill me, very getting line, very single minded,
very single minded ambush and and it was and it was.
And it turns out that he was His mother reported
this and that he was mentally unstable.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
What are the odds to the studio was.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Insane and he had not Yeah, yet met the ambition
of being criminally insane, and for a while I was
under guard and everything.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That was a scary thing. But that's how far ahead
of the time he were.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, and in case anybody's listening, I'm still under very, very,
very heavy guard.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
But it was a great experience for me when I
when we got on the show, whially and I got
on the show, we we didn't know a ton about
Tracy Ullman. We had heard that she was gigantic in Europe,
but she was coming to the United States. And then
I had heard from people in Europe that they thought
that she was gigantic in the United States. In Europe
(06:49):
they were waiting for her big break. But but she
was very, very and still is enormously talented. I always
thought there was some issue that she wanted. She did characters,
but she wanted to find out the part of the
character that she could make fun of, Like she was
interested in sort of highlighting some things that she made
(07:12):
fun of. She didn't like characters that were just nice,
that were you know, K, the secretary K that she played.
She loved K was sweet, and then Francesca was the
fourteen year old girl was also sweet, but there's something.
She was able to find something I guess about it
that she thought was twisted or interesting for her to play.
(07:34):
That was kind of the requirement because sometimes you wrote
a character and she says, I don't I don't know
how to do this, or I didn't want to do
that because.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Of the prosthetics.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I mean, people talk about being on a movie and
having prosthetics for a short period of time and going
crazy with it. She did it three times a night,
you know, and we had a bust new audiences in
because it would take us like four hours to do
twenty two minutes of entertainment.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
But was that was great?
Speaker 2 (08:01):
It was great because it was so free because that
was the new Fox network, you know, and it was
and nobody was watching it, you know, except she got
she got noticed.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
We got Emmy warns, we got Ammy, we got we
got noticed. I'm not sure what a good rating on
Fox was at that time, but whatever it was, we
were doing it.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
And of course that Steve Martin was watched. Remember we
got that Steve Martin was watching it.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
We went nuts.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Yeah, and he got it. We didn't. We brought him
on the show, had Steven Spielberg on the show. Did
you always have artistic ambition? No, I consider you one
of my artistic mentor like when when we approached writing
(08:46):
for The Tracy Omen Show or The Simpsons or other things,
he wasn't just to like throw off a few jokes
and walk away. There was there was an idea that
we're trying to do something better than that. There was
an idea that we wanted to tell the truth, tell
something interesting, find an angle that people hadn't seen before,
make something worth watching. And that was fantastic and what
(09:10):
a great way to start a career that eventually wound
up to just be telling shitty jokes. So thank you
for starting me off well and then plummeting down. But
but you you have you hadn't have artistic ambition. Where
did that come from?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Well, what it came from is I don't want to
go into uh my sad childhood but.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
With the but that's half of what I'm going for.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
But okay, but but but but the but you don't
have ambition when there's a struggle for survival within the family, right,
I mean, your your ambition is to survive, and so
I I and I remember I remember my fear was
that I would end up selling women's shoes.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
I don't know why. As a young as a kid,
that was.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
When women's shoes.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
On your knees all day. Right, So sorry, ma'am, you
do need a size larger. Yeah, that was my fear.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Did you ever work in a woman's shoe store?
Speaker 4 (10:12):
No? No, I no.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Thank god.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
I don't know what.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
But there was a specific.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Fear, you know, like that. That and the fear of imprisonment. Right, yeah,
do you have the fear of imprison I do have.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
The fear of imprisonment.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Yes, I'm glad to hear it.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
And and I don't that's really that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
No, I am very afraid of going to prison. I
don't like being stopped by the police, none of that.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
I don't know how it works.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I got a job where you were supposed to be
a college graduate. You got the job, and I lasted
about I mean, I think a semester and a half
in college because it was the first time in my
life I had fun, and I just I just I
just only went to one class and I was n
(10:57):
yu with the time. I forget how many tens of
thousands of students that had downtown.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
And I got the.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Record for over because okay, yeah, I'm not I'm not
proud of it, but but but uh but and it
was really tough because it was a struggle for me
to pay the tuition for my mother to help pay
the you know. And so I felt it was really
uh shameful.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
That I had screwed up in this way.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
And and then fortunately my sister was friends with somebody
who was secretary to the man who ran the page
staff at CBS, and and and they were at that
point wanting only college graduates, and she and I got
a job on page staff.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
So that was my break.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
That's fantastic. And they and that was, well, you were
a page of CBS. You wound up somehow in the
newsroom or the news.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
This is you want to a second break, Yeah, we'll
go up to okay, I want to shut So this
page billed in for vacation release relief for it for
other sort of entry level jobs. When when those people
went on vacation, I filled in for a guy who
(12:13):
was the copyboy desk assistant was called in the newsroom
in the in the CBS newsroom, which was a storied newsroom.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
That's Edward R.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
Murrow Erwood R. Murrow and Murrow's Boys and Edward R. Murrow.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I read a twelve hundred page book about Edward or Murrow,
and somebody heard the woman being interviewed and they asked
her what she took twelve years to write it? Everything
was like twelve And they said, what was the biggest
surprise she did all this research? That he deserved the legend.
He was the one who saved the country at a
(12:48):
certain point when when during the Red Scare. He was
great looking, he had a top rated television show that
sort of bored him where he visited celebrities on tell
Vision and he was the gold standard. And I, you know,
I maybe have two things that I always referring to
(13:10):
in my life. I brought Edward Rmurow coffee and I
interviewed Louis Armstrong from my high school newspaper.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, fantastic, I'm telling you it was. It's one of
the great experiences in my life, one of the great
experience of my life, like forty five minutes alone from
and at this moment, I've been trying to get my
old high school to find the picture of me in
the Mira with a aad out interviewing Louis Armstrong and
I'm telling you, I get emotional now. It was and
(13:41):
I and I asked him a question that hadn't that
people hadn't asked him, And it was an obvious question,
is what do you do for your lips?
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Right?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And it was an obvious question, but he lit up
and he took out more creams and more bottles and
talked for so long, and it was just exquisite because
he it was one of it's like, it's like like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that cares about part of a DAILI routine.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Hadn't been asked about it. That's fantastic.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, all right, Well so it's.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
A little self surveying which I like, don't be alone with.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
At some point you were in the newsroom, and some
point that became working on all these other shows, like
you got your first break writing for TV. Somewhere along
the line, where where did that come?
Speaker 2 (14:49):
My wife at the time, we we were I was
in love with her, uh and we were U We
were in a relationship and she wanted to go to California.
And at this point I had a union job, which
(15:09):
you know, really when I when I was saying that
that I had had a childhood filled with the doubts
about whether I could survive. And I had a job
that I loved that played a decent salary. It was
a w G, a job newswriting, and and and and and.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
I was feeling good.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, great, I was.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I was happy, and I was in love. And she
went to California and and I had also been working
for a radio show, sort of an afternoon drivetime radio show.
And the guy who produced that radio show came was
ahead of me in Los Angeles, and he was doing
documentaries for an app called Waper Productions, which was sort
(15:53):
of a new gritty outfit that was really sort of
scoring in.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
A way with.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and it was Ted Whitz documentary.
So it was starting to happen. And he offered me
a job. And I went to California. And I had
one thousand dollars in the bank, which sort of paid
our deposit. And so I'm broke when I when I
but I have a job. Okay, six months in, I'm
(16:21):
laid off. And then he was a great guy on
Landsberg because he knew I was in trouble. He felt
bad about it, and he did and they were doing
National Geographic Specials at the time, and he called me
in on a freelance job because and the freelance job,
and this is a true story, I had a horrifying
(16:41):
phobia of insects. I mean horrifying where you know eke,
I mean I made sounds like eke, you know. And
and the job that was available was the National Geographic
Special on the World of Insects. And and and and
(17:03):
I got and I went in and I and it
was a real phobia. And the Movieola's at that time.
You ran the film through the Movieolas, and it's sixteen
millimeter phone, so you're you know, it's always it's always
snaking all over the place. But and you've seen these
huge close ups of them doing everything, you know, eating
(17:23):
each other, at war with each other, romantic each other.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And and and it got me over my phobia because
it was a version therapy.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Okay, fantastic, yes, all right. And you got a paycheck,
which is also.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
I did get a paycheck, which was very good.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Okay, So you're working in this with this this band
of of documentary filmmakers, and.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
And I go to a party with it.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I think it was a New Year's Eve party, and
we were this raggedy bunch and in the middle of
us a guy came in in a tuxedo, tall, great looking,
beautiful wife and and he said, at last were with
our with real people, because he had just been to
a fancy thing. But he had friends here and they
(18:10):
came here and and his name was Alan Burns, and
he had five shows that he had created on the
airth that's and he talked to me and uh and
and what do you what do you.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Want to do? Right?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
And he had and one of the shows he had
on the air at the time was called My Mother
of the Car, which was a situation comedy based on
a guy whose mother died and came back as a
talking car. And he had created that with four other shows.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
And he was.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
So innately funny and kind and decent. And that's an unusual.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Right combination.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
You're you're you're defeating some magnetic fields to have those
three qual I think.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Also, people don't know this about Alan Burns. He drew
Captain Crunch. Yes, he created the Captain Krunch drawing.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Created Captain Crunch.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yes, absolutely, he wins my heart just for that.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
And he got me a rewrite job on one of
the shows he careerd my mother the car, and then
they gave me a chance to do my own script,
and that caught me started.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
When I show up meeting you, you are a guy
who's already conquered Mary Tyler Moore show. You've already done taxi,
You've already done a million, You've already.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
We used the word wrote instead of conquered.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
So my issue that I wanted to talk with you
about a little bit and asking about artistic aspirations is
because I have artistic aspirations, but I have not achieved
the artistic aspirations aside from this podcast, which of course
as worldwide renowned. People love this podcast from all over
the world. They come and visit, they watch how I
do it. But when I write, I've written movies, I've
(20:03):
written TV shows that I love, but nothing that's broken
through in the way that I'd like it to break through,
just from me. And so I still I'm at at
the tender young age of sixty and you're still doing
things at your age. Is there still time to make
that breakthrough? Is you do think that that forty years
(20:24):
is enough and hang it up, or do you think
that you still got to do it, you still got
to make stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Well, I think I think you could find some stories
of people who did do it at that Yes, it's possible,
it's not impossible.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
What drives you you just finished a movie? What drives
you to keep on making the stuff?
Speaker 4 (20:43):
A healthy sense of desperation?
Speaker 1 (20:46):
How can you be desperate at this point?
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Just two?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I mean, I mean, I don't know what I'd do
if I wasn't working. I just don't know, you know,
I just I just it's first of all, I experience
both things I feel, I mean, I mean the privilege
of it, especially these days, you know that, especially these days,
I mean especially these days.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Yes, it's a it's a really strange period to be
trying to make things.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
There's a traffic jam, there's the Netflix traffic jam, and
and streaming. And if you gave me a lie detector
test on how long it took me to write the
script I've just made, I think I would. I certainly,
I certainly would tell the truth, right and I and
I think i'd so I'd be so steadfast and not
telling the truth that I've passed the test.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Okay, yeah, all right, Well, I mean it's been a
few years between.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Let's you know, let's drop it right there. But you
know they haven't been in a few years between movies
because I've produced three movies at that time. But having
produced and worked and thank God for the Simpsons. I
mean it's you know, the word comeback has come up
and I've been.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Working, right.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
No, No, you never stopped working, which is uh, which
is fantastic. You know. One of the things that's true
about the Simpsons. Uh, it's I was there at its inception.
It was an amazing thing to watch. It wouldn't have
come about. I mean how it came about is insane
because you just saw the shorts.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
And at some point you on the involved like them
and SA then the audience was not yes, was laughing
at them, and and you had the bright ideas like
they like this. We were doing three sketches, as I said,
we were busting and people because they went home as
we're on the air for a while, we had enough
(22:37):
Simpsons things to show them during those waiting periods to
the studio audience. And then that killed right, So.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I heard the laughter, right, and you said, you said
to yourself, there's got to be a billion dollar idea
in there, and then it turns out.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
There was the studio was on the verge of bankruptcy then, okay,
I mean it was at a time when just just
it just saved itself.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
It was was on.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
This is the Barry Dillar era.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yeah, yeah, And I said, I'll go elsewhere. I'll do
a very similar show with their name. May it may
not be the sens, right, you know, and and and they.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Gave us an order.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And but but because it's an animated show, you know,
when you give an order, you don't know, you know,
it takes At that point, it took six months ye
to get it back from the cleaner of no from
animation Kreer, we carea, all.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
That stuff took it at that point.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
It took six months, thank god, thank god. And we
had time to fix stuff.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Honestly, we got the order for whatever amount of shows
it was. Was it thirteen, I guess We're thirteen, yeah,
which was a big deal. Hadn't been an animated show
on television twenty five years, stuff like that. So and
we and we got it back and I don't know,
if you know the story, you might know this story.
And we got it back and the group of us
went over to see it, and they were it was
(24:06):
screwed up. They were at a character. Yeah, they were grotests.
You were there that they were grotesque looking.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
We were dead and we.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Didn't know whether they were all like that, right, And
we had a wait that week or whatever the hell
it was where I mean, you couldn't wouldn't have been
watchable for five minutes, right, And and then and then
the term said that it was okay.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
After that, well, it felt like the first couple of
episodes we were still they were still trying to figure
out how to do it and how to animate it
and how to make it. And fortunately the Christmas episode,
which was like six or seven in.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Line, we thought it was first.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
No, first, no, it was the sixth to seventh episode.
Some enchanted evening was first. That's the one with anywhere,
And that was not a great episode. So and we
still didn't fix it really great. But but it's like
that was the first one that came back and we all,
you know, didn't know quite what to do. But the
(25:05):
Christmas episode came back really good and and and we
had retakes and to make it even better. And then
smartly you said, okay, this is our first episode and
I was amazing.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
I think it's one of the best things I've ever
been around, that first episode.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
I love it. It worked very well. It was a
hit out out of the box. But what you're amongst
your contributions were you kept us human in a cartoon.
You made sure that that that this was about human things.
People thinks, well, it.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Was just that was my whole background with you know,
with live action shows, and you know that you try
and find that. So so we we we and we
and it was great because we had so many rules
because because we wanted rigidly not treated as a cartoon.
If you set a cartoon to get really pissed off
at you, right, you know, we were you know, we
were and we and everything was about depth of character
(25:59):
and I mean obsessive, obsessive with that. And then we
started to you know, like we made rules will never
travel to outer space, but every but breaking the rules
was interesting too. Having rules to break them is nice too.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Well, you said, there are a couple of things that
you said at the beginning which were really great, which is,
it's about a family, It's about these people. It's also
you said, don't worry if another show has done something
in the realm of this, if we do it on Simpsons,
it will be different. And that was really good advice
because it was finding stories.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
So legitimate other people's, yes, exactly, plagiarism.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
No, it was really good advice. Nobody we could do
something that about a bowling ball or something that had
been done on another show, maybe a different it would
be different on our show, and it was different on
our show. And that is that is genius advice. And
I've taken that with me forever, and that's that's fantastic.
But what we Wally and Iwood were wrote the episode
(26:59):
where Home falls down a cliff.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Is that the one in the app where he goes
in the ablance and then yeah, yeah, that's one of
the biggest physical jokes in the history of showing.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
One of my proudest right, Well, yeah, my audience must
have seen this joke. But it's it's Homer Simpson's trying
to save his son from going across a gorge on
a skateboard because he saw Evil Canevil do something amazing
and he wants to repeat it, and he says, I
won't let you do it, son, and then he takes
his son from the skateboard to save him because he
(27:28):
loves his son so much. And he winds up on
the skateboard himself and going down the ramp and then falling,
and then suddenly he's soaring over the gorge on a
skateboard and he thinks he can make it, and he says,
I'm King of the world, which was before the Titanic,
that was from us first. And as he's going and
he's almost gonna make it, it's clear suddenly in a
bugs bunny style, that he's not going to make it,
(27:51):
and he hits the cliff and he falls down the cliff,
banging into every rock imaginable, bloodied, beaten, broken at the
bottom of the cliff. And then a helliac comes to
take him out of the cliff and it puts him
on the thing and the hell of ac smashes into
the rocks as it goes. They put him in an ambulance.
Finally he saved. He goes the ambulance, the amlas drives
(28:11):
about ten feet smashed the new tree. The gurney falls
out of the ambuls and he goes back down the cliff. Yeah,
now this is pure Buster Kitton. I mean, we stole
from and I think it's our biggest physical joke. Yeah,
it was very controversial at the time because we weren't
sure that we were allowed to do something like that,
(28:32):
you know, with blood. We made sure to make him bloody.
It wasn't just a cartoon where nothing happened. He was
bloody at the end. He's in the hospital. Like we
tried to humanize it, but it was. It was the
first edging towards cartoon exactly. Yes, he heard himself every time.
One of my proudest that whole episode Bart the Daredevil,
one of my proudest riding moments of me and with
(28:52):
me and Wally Uh. I wanted to ask you too
about Mary Tyler Moore, who you know. I saw the
special that they did about her life not long ago,
and you're featured in it, and about how that show
is created and you and Alan Burns, right, he was
(29:14):
your partner on that, correct, And you guys wanted to
make this show about this divorced lady, and they didn't
want to really do it about a divorced lady.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
It was worse than that, which makes it better than that.
We went to pitch to CBS, So we go to
New York and to pitch the show with the greatest
boss anybody ever had, you know, it was Grant Tanker
takes us in to see and I'm telling you fifteen
executives a guy who was at a programming then said
(29:46):
there are two things the American public doesn't like in
their television Euros people with mustaches and Jews. And he
looks at me a Jew, without any thought that maybe
I shouldn't say that to this guy, no thought whatsoever.
(30:08):
He was he was a charge. Yeah, so we pitched
the Divorced Mary Show and and then they asked us
to step outside, and then Grant said, come on, let's go,
and and we went on and dropped that idea and
came up with the idea that that that was the show.
(30:28):
And it was even worse than that idea. I think
she worked for for entertainment calm that at the time
it was something right, and but we we had we
changed it. And it was only like after we were
on the air and successful that I found out that
they had ordered him to fire us that day and
he had not. So that's granted, he's the best.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
That's fantastic. Yeah, Well, that show obviously holds up beautifully
as does Taxi. It's interesting that those shows watching them
today are still so fucking funny and so smart and
feel alive and real. They're not they're not NTM that era.
(31:09):
I don't know if it's you or but it's true
of the Bob Newhart Show is.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
True writers right, giving giving writers control of their work right.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It felt like the kind of writing that people were
doing was influenced a little bit by Nicholson May and
by Neil Simon and by like, you know, what was
going on in the theater, like we're gonna we're gonna
try and be real and try to make TV real,
like you start on My Mother the Car, which was
an odd fantasy show and you got to this more
real place.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
And hated the term sitcom.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, you know, yeah, because they were plays. They were plays,
and they were fantastic plays.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Oh my gosh, don't.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Be alone with go.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
All right, Jim, it's now time for question. Time is question.
There are conflicting stories about who does the iconic shush
that we have Gracy Film's logo, So we want to
know who does it and what and why Gracie Films.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Gracie Films. There used to be an old Vadaville, then radio,
then television team George Burns and Gracy Allen, and Gracie
Allen was always this sweet She played dumb to him, right,
but super smart dumb, you know, you know, like in
(32:46):
her dumbness, there was super smart and and she was
just this holy pleasant comedy spirit. Right, That's why Grace,
So you loved her and was she just represented just
some great comedy And who's talker thing?
Speaker 1 (33:02):
And who's doing this? Some people think it's Tracy Omen.
Some people think it's your daughter Amy.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Maybe maybe Amy, maybe Amy, because Amy's a you know,
in our logo, there's an intelligent girl with glasses who
looks like she's around twelve years old audience, and that
was based on Amy, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Uh, what's your feeling about reboots of comedy hits of
the eighties?
Speaker 4 (33:25):
Everybody should live and be well.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
But I mean it doesn't seem like that's your your
wouldn't be your thing, like they're not rebooting Roda.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
I mean, never feel feeling very good when we when
we did Roda and then we then ed Asna wanted
to do a show, and we say, how do we
do a spin off that's not a spin off right,
and that's when we made it the drama, right, So
I felt very good about that. You know.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
It's it's one of those things where again people are
trying to sell you things that they think are already
popular instead of creating something new. And that's very frustrating
for people like me who I want to make new
things and I want to watch new things. Okay, yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (34:04):
You're entitled, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Well, I mean, yeah, what are you watching now that
you love?
Speaker 4 (34:11):
I like the studio a lot, Yes, the studio's great. Yeah,
I like the studio a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Big. Wow, this is big. Patrick Rolo wants to wants
to know what's your biggest regret besides not shooting more
movies in Rhode Island. I guess he's from Rhode Island.
Do you have a big regret? Jim?
Speaker 2 (34:27):
I always think. I mean, my theory is, if you
like the way you feel at this moment, there's no regrets,
you know, all right?
Speaker 1 (34:36):
I agree with you. I don't have I don't live
my life full of regret, but I can work it up.
Given time, I could work some up. Absolutely. Oh, I'm
dying to know. Has he heard about the the cut
sketch written by John Mullaney and Bill Hater SNL sketch
where they the premise was a James L. Brooks Samurai movie.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
I never heard that. I'd love to hear anything. Those
two guys mentioned my name.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Well, I happen to write Bill Hayter about this when
I got the question, and Bill Hayter said, oh my gosh, yes,
it was a James L. Brooks Samurai movie called Love,
Honor and Dating after forty I remember to Samurai on
a battlefield. One says to the other, look in the
book of life. I just want to be in the acknowledgments.
That's a James L. Brooks style line. And another one says,
(35:21):
I remember one decapitated guy, and he says one one
guy decapitates another guy and says he was married. I
did him a favor. So that's part of their their
cut sketch. I didn't did make it, but Bill Hayter
was very excited that that to tell.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
You this, how about his dramatic acting.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Fantastic right, comedians who become dramatic actors somehow.
Speaker 4 (35:45):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yes, yes, Why do you think I mean? Is this
comedy that much more difficult or.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
I so don't know the answer to that, and it
is so true.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Right right, And people who are dramatic.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Actors like I don't get it. I don't get it.
That doesn't work the other way around.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Like somebody like Jack Nicholson, who is also very funny,
very funny. He was a great actor. He wasn't known
for being a comedian, but he's fantastic. Something about that
soul comedy blesses the soul enough. It hurts the soul
enough to make you a great actor. Somehow, somehow thought
I think it's true. Grown up Gerald writes, does he
(36:23):
have an open green light for a certain at a
certain budget for a next Simpsons movie?
Speaker 4 (36:28):
We we intend to do one.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Okay, yeah, all right, great? Uh his David writes, he's hilarious.
He's hilarious in modern romance, impeccable timing. Ask him why
he never pursued the Pollock Scorsese.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Part time This is fantastic what this person is saying.
We repeat that against David.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
David writes, he's hilarious in modern romance, impeccable timing. Ask
him why he never pursued the Pollock Scorsese part time
acting thing.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
Cheers mancheers tears. Just I was. I was.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
I was the actor from hell for Albert really uh,
you know, like like I was the guy at his
trailer the next this is absolutely true, neurotic breakdown at
his trail the next day. I know he said it
with the fun It was not. It was like when
you know, I was just every kind of and very
important to me because I felt so such such stage fright,
(37:30):
and I felt the kind of vulnerability that an actor
feels when they say move on and you feel you
haven't done it yet. Okay, we got the next setup
and and in order, and experiencing that really increased my
empathy for you know, which is important when you're when
you're try and direct.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
But I was.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
I was at his thing the next day. Let me
do it again. I know I can do it better
than you know.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
I was that guy.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
I wow, that's so crazy. But what what why? Why
do you think that you felt so insecure about it? Was?
Speaker 2 (38:01):
It's not an unusual actors feeling everybody and it's very
good to have the ability to empathize with that feeling
now right right, But most actors, you know, like I'll say,
whenever I can, you want one for yourself.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Right.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, I'm a great actor. By the way, You've got
to use me more and stuff. I'm a great actee.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
I was feeling very very good today.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Dino Stan Metagulus, who's a very good writer, wrote his
character again. His character is the hack director. I didn't
know he was a hack director in Modern Romance. Wasn't
based on anyone. It's obviously the opposite of his own sensibility.
Was there any of himself in it? You're completely convinced
it was based on Uh, there was. There was one director.
I knew what the habit of playing with a rubber
(38:41):
band when when he was when he was editing, and
I just picked that out. Yeah, it's so good. I mean,
that's obviously. The movie is one of the greatest.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Man Man and Albert you know, always says there's always
a guy.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
Who comes up to him. There's always that You've got
it right, man, right, got it right.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
It's right.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
You know when you're right about your craziness and everybody
says you got it right.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Thank you, man.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You know, my first day on the Tracy Ollmond Show,
my first day is a professional writer, my first day
as somebody who's working on a TV show, not delivering sandwiches.
I was sitting in a room with you and Jerry
Belson and Heidi Perlman and Ken Aston and Sam Simon
and Albert Brooks. Albert was just sitting there. He wasn't
on the staff. I don't know what he was doing.
(39:24):
He was just sitting in the writer's room, Albert Brooks.
And I was like, oh my god. And I knew
enough not to talk to him. I knew enough to
just let him be, don't try to don't try to
say anything like fanboyish and like he you're great and whatever.
So I didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything
for a week, and he was in the room for
(39:45):
a week. I'm not sure why, and we just worked
together again. At some point, when we're walking back from
a run through a Tracy Yellman, I did sidle up
to him and say, I just want to say it's
pretty cool that you're here. And he got very upset
at me. Really yes, because I don't he was either
doing a bit and I couldn't understand it or not,
but he'd started being very uncomfortable. He didn't I don't
(40:07):
think he wanted to be perceived in that moment as
as somebody, you know, as somebody's idol. He wanted to
just be a writer in that moment, and he was.
He was fantastic. David Stern, who was a writer on
The Simpsons, wrote, I saw him exactly once on stage
at the Tracy Omens show fixing a scene in real
time like magic. Never saw him stronger. Would he ever
(40:28):
consider doing another multiicam show.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
You know, somebody's talked about bringing us back.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
It was great, it was interesting when we were on set,
you were able to and this is the first time
I'd ever seen this. I think consequently other people did
it too. Reorganize the scene? No, at least in theory,
what could be done on stage before we went back
to rewrite, to fix it so that we wouldn't have
to fix everything. So there were certain things about staging,
(40:57):
certain things about line readings.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
That's a big call. Yeah, that's a big call. You know,
you're not always say it's the script right, just say
maybe something else is gone wrong.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
I remember Ted Bessel once did for Interesting. He wanted
to be interesting, and he had a psychiatrist scene where
two people, the psychiatrists and the patient were both facing
opposite each other at the opposite end of the room,
and he just wanted to try it because he wanted
to see it. And you kindly had interesting, interesting, very interesting,
and then immediately redid it where they're facing each other
(41:27):
and they could connect and it was much better scene.
So I appreciated that.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
And you can always tell with the three camera show,
which is you know, you have dress rehearsal, and at
a certain point after they do the scene and dress rehearsal,
and then the assistant director says, actors to the rail
because you're in the bleachers, And you could always tell
a show that's really working because the actors move quickly
to the rail instead of, oh shit, we got to
(41:51):
talk to these guys again.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, it's fantastic. I'd never even thought about it. Yeah,
you seem to surround yourself and have your whole career,
at least as far as I from the moment, I
was sort of in your world. You keep trying to
find and do find interesting talent and people to work with, writers, actors,
other people, people who are newer, people who are young,
(42:14):
people who have other ideas.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
You're making it sound very higherical and stuff like that.
I mean, we all serve the thing. You know, it's
not it's not like you know, it's not like I'm
the thing I'm I mean, if if I'm the thing,
the thing that I do, if I'm the thing, is
I'm not the thing right away, right, because that's that's
that's not the atmosphere for people who work to I
(42:37):
don't feel that way.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
I don't feel good that way. Uh.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
And I and I think I think it's we all
serve the thing. I mean, and I think it's my
job to point at the thing sometime, you know, but
it ain't me that it's You're.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Different in that way. I think a lot of people
think they're the thing, and a lot of people think,
you know that I'm the brand or I'm you know you.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
And all and and people do great work.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
And I know somebody who does great work.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
I love it. I love the work.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
And and the writing staff sits around and watches him write.
Basically they're his audience. That's what they do there, you know, right,
and which is a contribution of some but but you know,
everything is, you know, people get to be different.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
What's your best Monica Johnson story?
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Monica When in the writer's room, Monica would express herself
in these two ways.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
I like it, I hate it.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
Should and by the way, cut to the quick.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Yeah, I think if you say you hate it, you
should supply an alternative. I think that's that's how we
that's how we tend to like writers to supply an alternative. Okay,
this is I didn't even know what this mean. Chris asked,
what was it like working with Gene Wilder on Thursday's game.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
I loved his work.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
It was him and Bob Newhart, so it was just
the cast. If I went through that cast, it was
an amazing past Chlorus. It was, and Valerie was in it.
I mean, so many people were in it. It was like
it was like an amazing cast. And Gene probably justifiably
had a hard time with me. I think I think
(44:18):
I was just inexperienced or something like that. But but
you know, so, but but it was but there, but
he But I loved.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
Just working the picture.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah, and uh, and I love and I love working
with new Heart and new Heart and new Heart said
this is. I'm glad it came up because this is
I think it's such a Quintessentially, when somebody is absolutely
honest and and tells you their core truth, which is
a remarkable and Bob new Heart, who was, you know,
just a god. And I was trying to get him
(44:51):
to do this one thing, you know, you know, this
one sort of bittersweet speech at the end or something
like that. And uh, and then I tried number of
times and it was clear it wasn't going to happen,
and and I moved on and he said, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry. I didn't do what you wanted, Jim. I
was afraid of being bad. And and that's it, isn't it.
And but to somebody to say it out loud, but
(45:13):
that's it.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, Yeah, I've I've trained myself to not be afraid
to be bad. Honestly, I traded myself to that. To
pitch in a writer's room is you have to be
willing to fail in order to get get things done.
The last segment section of this is we call moment
of joy A moment of joy? What gives you joy?
(45:43):
Just joy? If you wanted to make this day a
great day from this point on, what would you do?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
I get joy about a day where I don't know
what I'm going to do next, and where I just oh,
I wonder what I'll do now and then, you know,
and I get enormous joy out of reading, and I
still read a newspaper. I get enormous joy out of
the New York Times, and I when I can read
(46:09):
you know, seventy percent of it.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
That's fantastic. So you get the paper version.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Yeah, and I think, you know, simple pleasures are you know,
are everything they're cracked up to be, you know? And yeah,
all right, especially the ability to let a day develop.
You know, drool time, true dull time, true time is fantastic.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, yeah, I have it all the time. I think
maybe I should limit my drool time and spend a
little bit more time not drooling. That'd be how fun. Well,
we're coming to the end of the show, and I
wanted to tell you a little story. At one point,
I was a young writer on the Tracy Omens Show
and I wanted to get a Christmas gift for you,
and I didn't know what to get this guy who
(46:50):
was really successful, and so I wound up getting you
this one hundred year old brandy there's really very expensive
one hundred year old brand. For me, it was expensive, right,
It was like a four hundred dollars Brandy.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
Jesus I got.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
I think, I thank you you did well. Not only
did you say I said, I said, I want to
give you this thing, but I hope it doesn't feel
like I'm kissing your ass. And you said, who told
you not to kiss people's asses? You said, kissing people's
asses is very important to you. You need to k
kiss people's asses. They like their asses.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Being kissed would be much more enjoyable than people make.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
It exactly, And it was very good advice. Yes, absolutely,
so I'm going to now kiss your ass a little bit,
which is to say that I couldn't have been more
grateful to have my career start in the presence of
you and the people that you work with. The attitude
of creativity, the attitude of passion, the attitude of making
(47:50):
the work good, the attitude of fun while we're doing
it was the greatest gift anybody could ever give me.
And I want to thank you for it. And I'm
still living with it and I still love it, and
it's why I still want to write TV and still
make things because I saw you guys do it so well.
So thank you, Jim, thank you for that. So there,
(48:10):
kissing your ass in that way, and thank you for
being here, Thanks for doing the show.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
And I want to God, your energy, man is great.
Speaker 4 (48:19):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Thank you. I want to thank the audience, thank you
for being here. Don't you be alone. Please tune in
to the next episode and subscribe to this goddamn show.
I'm begging you for the million times subscribe to it.
I'm not sure why, but everybody has to subscribe to
This is antithetical.
Speaker 4 (48:34):
To the theory we're all alone.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
It's true. See you next time.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Don't be alone with
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