James L. Brooks
James L. Brooks
James Lawrence "Jim" Brooksis an American director, producer and screenwriter. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University, he got a job as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the CBS News broadcasts. He moved to Los Angeles in 1965 to work on David L. Wolper's documentaries. After being laid off he met producer Allan Burns who...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Producer
Date of Birth9 May 1940
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
There was a great director who directed a picture that I wrote who barred me from the set quite appropriately and said, "I'm sorry, Jim. When you're directing, you don't need to know everything. You need the illusion that you do." And, you know, and I WOULD be there behind him trying to signal the actors in, you know, in a way I wasn't even aware of.
What does it mean for an actor to make a part his own? It means that he takes on what you had intended and starts to put in his own stuff so that it becomes something that could only happen if he played it.
I value comedy. I value somebody who can be funny.
I have a lot of nightmares.
I spent two years telling studio heads that it wasn't a cancer picture. I hate cancer pictures. I don't want to see a cancer picture. There is only one thing worth saying about cancer, and that is that there are human beings in cancer wards.
You become so obsessed, and that's not a bad thing for a movie. Serve it with that sense that it's the whole world.
I always believe you can't kill good movies, because somebody's in some room and will die unless it gets made.
It never stops, accepting that fact is difficult. I took some time out for life.
I love romantic comedy, but I think you have to have another idea that you're chasing along with romantic comedy.
A lot of things just aren't true any more.
Once you read the script, it's the only way it can be.
I had a marketing idea that everybody hated, decency is sexy.
I took some time out for life.
Screenwriting is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It's about as simple as that.