Please Hire Albert Brooks For My Sake
Albert Brooks is a great comedic actor, writer, and filmmaker. And if one thing is clear from his interview in this weekend's New York Times regarding his recurring role in Weeds, he is ready and willing to work. Like, super ready and super willing. Someone please hire Albert Brooks.
Albert Brooks: I love to act, so, yeah. Over the years, because I sort of lived my life making my own movies, and that's what I immersed myself in, I think I turned down so many things that I'm just not put up on the board anymore, you know? ...I read a review of "Iron Man" that said, "Jeff Bridges doing his best Albert Brooks," and I haven't seen the movie, so I don't even know what that means, but I thought, "Hey ..."
New York Times: That you could have done the part?
AB: Well, sure. I could have done my best Jeff Bridges.
More Albert Brooks mega-sadness after the jump.
AB: I see the billboards for that HBO movie "Recount," and it's filled with the kind of people that I can play in my sleep. I think to myself, I should have been first on that list. So doing something like "Weeds," having that out there, is better than me telling people I'm available. Because people sort of have to be shown. It's not that I don't get offered things. I got offered a number of network guest spots on television that I didn't feel comfortable with, because I wasn't quite ready to be interrupted by a Ford commercial. I don't know, it felt like too much of a jump.NYT: Is acting where you want to put your energy now? Are you still working on your own projects or would you rather be a hired hand for a while?
AB: I definitely have films that I want to do myself. I'm writing right now. I'm on Page 54 -- 55 actually -- and if I finish this and I raise the money, then I go do it. I can't not do that. But I'd like an excuse to delay that by having one or two great feature film parts. Because if I take myself out of the game for another two or three years, then I'm probably out of it for good. So I would like very much if when I got home today there was an interesting script waiting for me as an actor.
It is always sad to me to see someone who is tremendously talented still having to scrape and scramble at age 60. I mean, I'm sure Albert Brooks's house would take my apartment to Nice Places To Live School, and he can probably afford lox whenever he wants it, but on some level he's still just trying to get through the day like the rest of us assholes. And that is why I want Hollywood to read this interview and put Albert Brooks back "on the board" (I don't know what the board is, but I'm guessing it looks like this.) Not just for his sake, but because why should I have to be confronted by things like mortality and the fickleness of a long-term career in entertainment? I have more important things to do.
Posted by Gabe at 10:44 AM in Interviews
Tags: Aging | Albert Brooks
I wonder if one of the "network guest spots on television" he was offered was 30 Rock. I never made the connection before today but Albert Brooks on 30 Rock would sort of make sense, in a universe-ending everything-good-has-already-happened kind of way.
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I read that interview and thought it was funny and honest. He simply was saying that if you make your own movies and don't "play with others" after a while no one thinks you want to. Woody Allen or Mel Brooks or any other comic filmmaker for that matter never acted for anyone else. Brooks is a better actor than all of those guys put together, having been nominated for an Academy Award for that. And by the way, he would have been fucking amazing in that part in Iron Man. I've always been a fan of his acting. I thought he was brilliant in in Out of Sight.
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I'd like to nominate Searching for Comedy in the Muslim World for that worst movie ever thing that you're doing/
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You're insane. Comedy in the Muslim World was a great movie. Saw it again two weeks ago on dvd and it was better than I remember and I remember liking it a lot.
I guess everyone can have an opinion but I really disagree on this one.
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Comedy in the Muslim World was a great movie. Saw it again two weeks ago on dvd and it was better than I remember and I remember liking it a lot.
I guess everyone can have an opinion but I really disagree on this one.
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I guess I'm into story arcs and not being racist. But to each their own.
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