HBO’s ‘Albert Brooks: Defending My Life’ is a probing look at a multifaceted comedy legend

Rob Reiner directs the film, and interviews his longtime friend on camera in the film, which debuts on HBO and Max this weekend.

Albert Brooks guest-starred as himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm in its most recent season and the premise was that he was holding a funeral for himself that Brooks, still alive, was able to watch his friends eulogize him from an adjoining room. (In true Curb fashion, it ended badly, first Larry David turned the funeral into a roast, and then Brooks was exposed mid-funeral as a “COVID hoarder.”)

Brooks’ older brother Bob Einstein, also known as Super Dave Osborne, died in 2019, and two years later, had an HBO documentary made about him called The Super Bob Einstein Documentary. Bob, of course, starred for years on Curb Your Enthusiasm, so it was natural that Albert would go on that show. And now, he’s gotten an HBO documentary of his own- like that mock funeral, while still living. 

The Super Dave doc, while enjoyable, was barely a documentary at all, as in addition to archival footage, it seemed to consist mostly of interviews filmed during a lunch break on the set of Curb.

The Brooks doc is much better. Rob Reiner is the director, and the framing device has Brooks and Reiner — who have been friends for 60 years — sitting at a table in some old Hollywood haunt and reminiscing. Multiple documentaries featured nothing but the banter between Reiner’s late father Carl and his longtime best friend Mel Brooks, and that’s a clear inspiration here. I could have easily sat through two hours of just the two of them at the table. 

There’s a lot more though- decades of archival footage, and a impressively A-list cast of talking heads, including Steven Spielberg, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Judd Apatow, Larry David, Conan O’Brien, James L. Brooks, Jon Stewart, Jonah Hill, David Letterman, and a dozen other people. 

There’s plenty about Brooks’ personal life, including all the stories you know: His father Harry, famously, dropped dead on the stage of the Friars Club, immediately after roasting Desi Arnaz. Brooks’ real name was “Albert Einstein” (“The balls, to name their kid Albert Einstein!,” someone says.)

The film covers the many phases of Einstein’s career, going back to the late 1960s. He did groundbreaking, proto-alt comedy on stage and talk shows, often with Reiner sitting right beside him. He made short films at the dawn of Saturday Night Live, and in those, and later his early features Real Life and Modern Romance, he positioned himself as a beleaguered romantic. This continued in his performance in 1987’s Broadcast News, directed by the unrelated James L. Brooks, and his own 1991 film Defending Your Life. His 1985 Lost in America was the first R-rated movie I ever saw.

In the doc, he gets to tell a great story about the famous flop sweat scene:

His later directorial efforts like The Muse and Looking For Comedy in the Muslim World were less inspired, but Brooks had another act as a first-rate character actor, in such great movies as Out of Sight, Drive, and A Most Violent Year. He even wrote a novel. 

I especially enjoyed the part about Brooks’ 1970s comedy, which was mostly before my time; I’d really had no idea how out there it was:

He’ll never be the world’s most famous Albert Einstein. But the documentary, while a joy to watch, really does put across that Albert Brooks has had an amazing career, doing a lot of different things over a considerable period of time. 

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life debuts on HBO and Max on Saturday, November 11.