On James L. Brooks and the Significance of Gracie Films

James L. Brooks was born on May 9, 1940.

Brooks’ career in comedy entertainment was born around the same time I was, thus I most certainly grew up watching his television shows and movies. But the significance I refer to in the title to this piece has less to do with his important than the literal meaning of the name Gracie Films. He named his company after Gracie Allen. I find it notable that he chose to build his enterprise around the memory of one of the most important women in American comedy history. (And by the way, George Burns was still with us at the time. He wouldn’t die for another decade!) Females have been at the heart of a substantial portion of Brooks’ best known projects. And I reckon Gracie approves. It would appear that her Guardian Angel has been smiling upon the better part of his career.

Born in Brooklyn, raised by a single mother in New Jersey, lacking a college degree, Brooks started out as a copywriter for CBS news, then moved up television documentaries. He teamed up with producer/writer Allan Burns for many of his earlier projects. He broke into sit-coms in the mid-60s, writing or co-writing episodes of My Mother the Car, That Girl, The Andy Griffith Show,My Three Sons, and The Doris Day Show. His first show as creator was the ABC hit Room 222, which ran from 1969-1974, and was surely one of the first prime time shows I ever watched in real time. This led to being hired by MTM Productions, where Brooks co-created a string of mostly hits, including: The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers (1974), Rhoda (1974), Phyllis (1975), and Lou Grant (1977). He then left MTM to become one of the co-creators of Taxi (1978) and the now-forgotten but equally terrific The Associates (1979).

Television success led inevitably to the big screen. Brooks penned the hit 1979 film Starting Over with Burt Reynolds, Jill Clayburgh, and, Candice Bergen, and actually took acting roles in Albert Brooks’ films Real Life (1979), Modern Romance (1981), and Lost in America (1985). His soapy-funny 1983 Terms of Endearment, which he wrote, directed, and produced, won Multiple Oscars, thrusting Brooks up to a new level of prominence and creative freedom.

In 1986 he formed Gracie Films, with Polly Platt (Peter Bogdanovich’s former wife, art-director, and uncredited coproducer) as principal collaborator. The following year Gracie produced hits for both the big and small screens Broadcast News (which took him back to his own tv news roots, and reciprocated Albert Brooks with a plum role) and The Tracey Ullman Show, from which was spawnedThe Simpsons in 1989. In the midst of this he also produced Penny Marshall’sBig (1988) starring Tom Hanks, Danny DeVito’sWar of the Roses (1989), and Cameron Crowe’sSay Anything (1989).

Starting in the ’90s Brooks track record began to get bumpier. While The Simpsons continued to thrive, he co-produced the short-lived shows Sibs (1991), Phenom (1993), and The Critic (1994), and wrote, produced and directed the drastically unsuccessful movie I’ll Do Anything (1994). He rebounded by producing Jerry Maguire (1996) and Wes Anderson’s first film Bottle Rocket (1996), and returning to form as writer-producer-director of As Good As It Gets (1997) with Jack Nicholson. In 2001 he produced the movie Riding in Cars with Boys and the Joan Cusack sit-com and What About Joan. His two most recent films as auteur Spanglish (2004) and How Do You Know (2010) were major box office disappointments, although The Simpsons Movie (2007) was a predictable success. And of course The Simpsons is still on the air to this day, now in its 36th season, setting several records for longevity.

We are intrigued to learn that at the age of 85, James L. Brooks has a new film coming out in December. Called Ella McCay, it stars Emma Mackey, Woody Harrelson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rebecca Hall, Albert Brooks, Julie Kavner, and others. It’s a political dramedy, and, erm, I hope that it acknowledges the actual times we are living in (as he did so well in Broadcast News). Scoring a bull’s eye would be the perfect cap to a near perfect career.