Rob Reiner’s HBO documentary, Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, celebrates the brilliant career of his longtime friend. In a wide-ranging conversation with Reiner, Brooks acknowledges that the business has changed a lot in recent years — in ways that might have stopped him before he got started.
“Thinking of my early movies, I would never pass the algorithm. It had to be one person who looked me in the eye and said, ‘Damn it, you're funny. Go do it,’ and you know, that was the end of it,” says Brooks.
Brooks and Reiner dive into the making of the HBO documentary, and they share stories from their early years in the industry, and what they think of the paradigm shift in Hollywood.