SERIES: Comedy Death Ray
Albert Brooks in - Real Life
presented by Bob Odenkirk
Thirty years before the stealthy steadycams of reality TV infested the livingrooms of America like so many brain-sucking termites, this note-perfect satire of self-serious documentaries (specifically the hit television show "An American Family") prophesied the exact extent to which the genre would derange both the subjects of faux verite schlock and the audiences that hung on every artificial (re)enactment. We were more than a little excited when we found out that tonight's presenter, Bob Odenkirk, chose to screen Albert Brooks' 1979 directorial debut for this series. Odenkirk writes: "Real Life is one of the first ultra-smart, dry-as-a-bone comedies that I ever saw in my life, and it's still one of the funniest and most perceptive. It's a great, hilarious movie, but sadly, no one farts in it or is brazenly un-PC to a woman. Still, it's genius!" Those who need more convincing should refer to depressive Charles Grodin, at his most Grodiny, facing off against manic Brooks in the bi-polar comedy Jew-Off of the century. There's also the demented visuals, including cameramen who, in an effort to be less invasive, wear beach-ball sized cameras that cover their whole heads, and which make them appear, in the words of reviewer Eric Shulte, "like hydrocephalic stormtroopers."
Dir. Albert Brooks, 1979, 35mm, 99 min.
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