Why Didn't We Fall in Love with Albert Brooks?
A solo dive into 'Broadcast News,' 'Defending Your Life,' his lost roles, and his neurotic charm — by Fletcher.
For this newsletter, I once wrote about Meg Ryan, the woman figurehead of the rom-com genre. Rom-com women have fallen in line with Ryan’s peppy habits, her quirks and her many, many tears. It’s the Meg Ryan effect. She’s changed the rom-com genre, and we’ll forever be indebted to her dreamy little smile.
Who is the rom-com figurehead of the men? I believe Noah Centineo is on the rise, but he’s not quite there yet, and the masses will tell me I’m nuts. There’s Hugh Grant, Richard Gere. Meg’s pals Tom Hanks and Billy Crystal. All are fairly charismatic, fairly charming. And yet, none should be the classic rom-com guy. I wish he would be more neurotic, more sensitive, and to switch the script, more manic. No more suave, smart guys in rom-coms. No more quirky weirdos who stare at girls with weird hair.
In his heyday, Albert Brooks met all of these characteristics. He starred in a handful of rom-coms, and should be the classic, everlasting rom-com guy. Believe it or not, he almost was.
Though this wasn’t her intention, I have my mother to thank for my adoration for rom-coms. A smart move: when my brain was still fresh, she’d plop me down in front of our tiny television and force me to watch her favorite films. Never rom-coms. Always films like My Cousin Vinny, Raising Arizona, humor I hadn’t figured out quite yet (though I have now). Once, she chose to show me the Albert Brooks comedy Defending Your Life — forgetting that it was a romantic comedy.
Infatuation. I was entranced by the dynamic between Meryl Streep’s bubbly Julia, and Brooks’ cynical Daniel. They meet in the afterlife, almost like The Good Place, where their lives are judged by gods; will they move onto a higher world, or will they be sent back to humanity to try again? The final scene drove me mad, enriched by their heavenly affair. This boring schmuck Daniel — always holding himself back, afraid to leap into anything new — risks his soul to be with Julia.
Thus began my affair with rom-coms, with the image of Albert Brooks as Daniel Miller stuck somewhere in the crevices of my heart. I so wished he was in every rom-com, everyone’s dream guy. He could have been. Rob Reiner actually offered Brooks the role of Harry Burns in When Harry Met Sally… alongside Meg Ryan. Brooks turned it down. The reason? “It read to me like a Woody Allen movie, verbatim,” Brooks said. “And I thought that was not something I should be in.” While I do give props to Billy Crystal, Brooks would’ve taken the sensitivity and deprecating humor to endearing excellence.
And those other rom-com legends I rattled off earlier — Brooks was offered their roles as well. He almost took Tom Hanks’ role in Big, but passed on it because it was too childish: “At the time I was offered Big, I wanted to dig my teeth into a grown-up character,” Brooks said. “I didn’t want to play little kids.” Imagine Pretty Woman without smooth-talking Richard Gere — in his place could have been the bumbling Brooks, another role he passed on. Although it’s not a rom-com, SNL creator Lorne Michaels did offer Brooks a permanent host position on the show; when Brooks turned him down, the carousel of weekly hosts became the show’s iconic approach. While I wish he would’ve taken these roles, I appreciate the mystique it’s created.
Brooks had such untapped potential in rom-coms. On occasion, he took roles in the genre and was met with critical acclaim — with little appreciation from the masses. Brooks’ sophomore directorial feature, Modern Romance, jazzed up the genre: it’s labeled as an “anti-rom-com.” A couple can’t stop breaking up and getting back together. Brooks’s Robert Cole is manic, neurotic, constantly speaking to himself in bursts of anger and sadness. So, he’s an average human guy.
In an interview with fellow comic Judd Apatow, Brooks commented on what drove him to film that type of unhinged romance. “I had a relationship that was immensely physical without the other components,” Brooks said. “And when you’re young, that’s confusing, because you’re being told, ‘Well, what do you think relationships are?’ They are physical. But you need a little bit of everything. I tried my hand at the most funny women, but I’m not a person who believes you want a person like yourself. You want key things in common, but you don’t want the nutsiness to be the same, because that’s too much.”
What insight! This man knows his romance like curls atop his head; he knows his comedy as well as that grin he sees in the mirror.
Further: “How do you like that? I’ve buried the lede.” I’ve dragged you all the way through to the end of the piece to get to one of the finest rom-coms ever created, Broadcast News. Brooks garnered his first and only Oscar nom for his performance as ever-conscientious reporter Aaron Altman. (Also, re: the Oscars, see his tweets sniping the Academy.) Aaron works much too hard, he’s a horrible flirt, and when he finally gets the chance to show his journalistic talent as an anchor, it’s a sweaty bust. He’s far too besotted with Jane (Holly Hunter) for her to love him back.
As a whole, Aaron seems like kind of an embarrassment. He is! But he’s nuanced. Brooks balances passion with being too heavy-handed, balances one ounce of charm with pounds of neuroticism. Between he, Jane, and Tom “Charisma Personified” Grunick (William Hurt), Broadcast News establishes the ideal love triangle.
Just imagine what all rom-coms could be like with Brooks’s classic leading man. Rom-com women would be free to be the charismatic, suave ones, like Holly Hunter’s Jane of Broadcast News. Maybe I’m a bit idealistic.
These three films — Defending Your Life, Modern Romance, and Broadcast News — are top-tier rom-coms, whether they’re widely discussed or not. They share the endearing neuroticism of Brooks, a characteristic that should have made him the leading man. He doesn’t ooze sex appeal, he’s not the perfect guy, but that’s often the point of a rom-com guy, right?
"I don't know where the comedy comes from," Brooks said about his films. "It's not like calculating how you're going to ask a girl for a date. It comes from a different part of the brain. It just comes out."