James L. Brooks

“The Importance of Being Earnest. This has one of my favorite one-liners in it, The Importance of Being Earnest: "If you are not too long, I shall wait for you the rest of my life."”

“Lady Eve, okay, Lady Eve has one of the best love speeches ever written. His, his speech about, you know, "When I look at you, I see, I see two children coming towards each other. They're eight years old," and keeps on advancing it. One copy of The Lady Eve.”

“Sullivan's Travels. Everything by Preston Sturges.”

“Okay, Shampoo, because everybody in the cast hit it out of the park.”

“Albert Brooks is one of the, you know, I mean a specifically original and great comedy talent. And Julie Hagerty was the perfect person for him to play with. And this has one of the, I guess one of the most famous comedy monologues in film. And you know, and you know, Albert wrote, I think with Monica Johnson on this, yeah. Wrote, directed, starred in. I think, was I in this? I think I was. Did they go that far down, far enough in the cast? Was I in this? I think, yes, I was in this. I think I was, I was in a few of Albert's films. He always said, he always said, "Be in the film and I'll make it fun." I always said yes. It was never fun, because I became that, but it was, this is the most valuable thing I got from the experience. And, and, you know, and, and, and Albert's, you know, just a comedy genius, the most original stuff. The, you know, he, it, it's, he's this very specific figure in American comedy and is, and I became, you know, the thing I got being in front of the camera for the only time that I was ever in front of the camera, and once I was, had a, had a real part I think in one of them, and, and I became the worst actor a director can have. I was the guy who was outside your trailer when you got there in the morning: "I can do it again, let me do it better." I became that guy. But it's only when you feel the vulnerability of being like that, it helps you, you know, it, I think it helps you direct.”

“Before I directed my first film, John Cassavetes and Elaine May were on the studio lot, and they were improvising a play. They were writing a play by improvisation. And it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. And just before I, never directed before, I'm getting ready for my first movie, and he was so generous and just hanging with him, you know, there'll never be a spirit of film like him. I mean everybody, everybody expected to do it for the love. I remember there was one actor who was involved in it, it was going to be Christmas, and we were all at lunch together. I was just there every day in the audience, and sometimes they'd turn to me and they'd direct comments at me. I didn't know whether it was part of the improvisation or whether it was real. You couldn't tell reality and improvisation, eventually you didn't know what was real, what was unreal. But the, the spirit was extraordinary to be around. And then there was one day during the Christmas holiday where everybody, he took everybody and me, the audience, to lunch. And, and one of the actors said—well, they've been at it for several weeks—and one of the actors said, "I had to take a paying job." And, and it wasn't only that John said no, he said to the guy, "You better not let Elaine hear you said that." Because that was it, everybody was there for passion. Anyway, he's in, you know, I'll make a case for him being one of the great men ever in film, and started independent film. I mean, you can't be more important than him.”