Playboy Interview: Albert Brooks

Albert Brooks, it has been said, is the funniest white man in America. Actually, someone said that right here, in this magazine, 16 years ago--back when Richard Pryor was working more. Two years ago, Entertainment Weekly called Albert Brooks the fifth funniest living person--after Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne and Jim Carrey, all of whom are white and would certainly have voted Albert Brooks ahead of them. Comedians, in fact, revere him in outsize fashion. David Letterman has said: "He's above all of us." Steve Martin has said: "He is someone you respect and fear at the same time, because of his brilliance." Such fear is justified. Carrie Fisher was once trapped for a weekend on a boat with Brooks and reported: "He never slept and he was never not funny, and I was scared that he'd follow me everywhere and keep me laughing until I got physically ill and died." Brooks himself has admitted, "My biggest fear is of being too funny and murdering people by making them cough and then winding up in a lawsuit."

Albert Brooks is known to and by his comic brethren simply as Albert. His name is usually invoked in hushed tones of awe. It's as if his mind came without an off switch. Filmmaker James L. Brooks has said, "I don't think of it as being on--I think of it as being him." The director James L. Brooks is not related to the comedian Albert Brooks, although Albert Brooks has appeared in two films by James L. Brooks--most famously, Broadcast News (1987), whose most memorable scene may well be that of Albert, playing reporter Aaron Altman, sweating prodigious amounts of flop while anchoring a disastrous newscast. When asked to explain his acting motivation for the scene, Albert said, "Jim read me my back-end deal before we shot it." The part earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and perhaps his widest visibility to date.

He began as a stand-up comedian whose television appearances--especially on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson in the early Seventies--became the stuff of legend. His bits were bits of gold: Albare, the bad French mime who described his every gesture ("Now I am petting ze dog"); Alberto the elephant trainer, whose elephant was lost, leaving him with only a replacement frog; and the World's Worst Ventriloquist, whose lips moved more than his dummy's did. Time magazine anointed him "the smartest, most audacious talent since Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen." Said his friend Steven Spielberg in 1975: "Albert is not only the funniest but also the most visual humorist working today." Whereupon Albert Brooks became, more or less, a comic filmmaker whose output of movies would be small yet unforgettable and sparkle in the same rarefied manner as the lean legacy of Preston Sturges. Newsweek called Brooks' Californian angst is more universal, he has a harder time getting studio financing and his hair is curlier.

As of this month, there are six feature films written and directed by Albert Brooks, all of which will be forever treasured by people who memorize his dialogue and repeat it to their friends. The Brooksian oeuvre in retrospect: Real Life (1979), the first and finest parody of the classic PBS documentary An American Family, in which Brooks brings cameras into an ordinary Phoenix household so achingly dull that he is finally forced to set it afire; Modern Romance (1981), an unparalleled dissection of hopeless love, at the outset of which he breaks up with a woman--Kathryn Harrold--and spends the rest of the film trying to get her back; Lost in America (1985), in which an upwardly mobile couple cashes in their life savings to drop out of society ("to touch Indians") and the wife--Julie Hagerty--immediately loses everything in Las Vegas ("You took our nest egg and you broke it all over the Desert Inn! You filled up the casino with yolk!"): Defending Your Life (1991), in which Brooks dies and wakes up in an afterlife way station called Judgment City, where he must account for his earthly lot while falling in love with also-dead Meryl Streep; Mother (1996), in which he is a twice-divorced man who moves back home with his mother (Debbie Reynolds) because he thinks solving his relationship with her will solve his relationships with all women; and now The Muse, a Capraesque fantasy in which he plays a desperate screenwriter who finds an actual muse--Sharon Stone as a daughter of Zeus living in Los Angeles--to help him write a Jim Carrey comedy. Stone--finally allowed to be funny on-screen--says of Albert: "He's the Martin Scorsese of comedy. Not since Basic Instinct have I been offered a part that was so exceptional that I couldn't believe I wasn't 70,000th in line for it." She was first. Besides Stone. The Muse boasts cast members Andie MacDowell, Jeff Bridges, Rob Reiner, Steven Wright, James Cameron and Scorsese himself--which only confirms the importance of being near Albert.

More fun facts about Albert Brooks: He was born Albert Lawrence Einstein ("No! No wonder people kept making fun of me!") on July 22, 1947. His father, Harry Einstein, was the beloved radio comedian Parkyakarkus, and his mother is the former actress-singer Thelma Leeds Bernstein; they met as contract players at RKO in the Thirties. Albert is the fourth son of Einstein--his half brother is the baseball writer Charles; his full brothers are Cliff, a successful ad executive, and Bob, a comedy producer also known as Super Dave Osborne. Raised in Beverly Hills--adjacent. Albert reigned as class clown of Beverly Hills High School among such friends as Richard Dreyfuss and Rob Reiner. At 16, he did an impromptu bit in Carl Reiner's living room--an escape artist trying desperately to free himself from a handkerchief draped gently over his wrists. Carl Reiner went on The Tonight Show and declared young Albert Einstein a comic genius. Albert attended and dropped out of Carnegie Tech drama school in Pittsburgh, returned to Los Angeles with aspirations to act, got nowhere, grudgingly became a comedian and quickly changed his name. ("You know, the real Albert Einstein changed his name to sound more intelligent.")

As Albert Brooks, in 1968, he went forth and made television comedy on the shows of Steve Allen, Dean Martin, Flip Wilson, Johnny Cash, Helen Reddy, Ed Sullivan, Merv Griffin and, most significantly, Johnny Carson. Brooks' two record albums--Comedy Minus One (1973) and the Grammynominted A Star Is Bought (1975)--became landmarks of the form, though his days as a stand-up comic began taking a toll on his psyche. A minor nervous breakdown spurred him to turn his talents toward filmmaking. His first short film, Albert Brooks' Famous School for Comedians (1973), was based on a parody of correspondence schools that he had written for Esquire (Fill in blank: "Take my wife.----. A: for instance; B: I'll be along later; C: please!"). After rejecting an offer to be permanent host of Saturday Night Live, he made six short films for the show's first season. In one of those films, he performed open-heart surgery; in another he was sick in bed.

He has appeared in other people's movies--as an annoying campaign worker in Taxi Driver; as a newlywed who dies during orgasm in Private Benjamin; as a guy eaten by Dan Aykroyd in The Twilight Zone; as a singing film producer in I'll Do Anything; as a gruff baseball scout in The Scout (he co-wrote and sort of regrets it); and--all in the past two years--as an elderly alcoholic doctor (Critical Care), a bald convict (Out of Sight) and the voice of a suicidal tiger (Dr. Dolittle). He once had a reputation for being reclusive and secretive--friends were rarely allowed to see his house and often didn't know the last names of women he dated unless they were famous. The famous ones were Linda Ronstadt, Candice Bergen, Julie Hagerty and Kathryn Harrold. In 1997, he married Kimberly Shlain, a beautiful multimedia creative artist, who last October gave birth to their son, Jacob Eli Brooks. The Brooks family lives high atop Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, in a large house that their friends have been allowed to see. We dispatched writer Bill Zehme to survey the amazing mind of this comic auteur. Zehme reports: "I have known Albert for many years and feel certain that I'll eventually see the house. We once worked together onstage, at the first U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, where I moderated the American Film Institute's tribute to him. It was, in essence, the first time he'd done stand-up comedy in 20 years. He killed, of course--much choking and gagging in the room. Afterward, we decided that it might have had something to do with thin air at a high altitude. Now, four years hence, I discovered a new Albert--less manic, more grounded, still much funnier than you, a family man who suspects that the purple Teletubby is, in fact, gay--or at least misunderstood. We met several times at his office on the Universal lot, where he was in the final stages of editing The Muse, about which he was very excited. Later, we spoke at length on the phone, during which time he played me Elton John's entire original score for the film. He sang along, even though there were no words. It took a while. I think he has a very nice voice."

[Q] Playboy: Go ahead.

[A] Brooks: Oh, I don't know. You do it. I'm not going to do your opening for you.

[Q] Playboy: Come on. The Playboy Interview is all yours. Just do your plug for the readers and we'll get on with it.

[A] Brooks: Look, let's be honest. What have the readers done before getting here? They've gone to the pictures first, maybe to us second--or else the joke page. It depends on the reader. Maybe we're third. But by the time they get to us, they've masturbated, right? They've finished and they're bored. Well, there's nothing better to do after a nice come than to go see The Muse--open now in wide release and at a theater near you!

[Q] Playboy: Wait--can we have them read the interview first?

[A] Brooks: Yes, yes, you're right. Let them towel off with us. You know, I sent a cartoon to playboy when I was in high school. It didn't get accepted, but I really thought it was great. I bad someone draw it for me, and I presented it very professionally. It showed a store that sold etchings and the etchings salesman was talking to a beautiful woman. His line was, "Wanna come up to my room and fuck?" [Laughs] It's a good joke.

[Q] Playboy:Entertainment Weekly decided that you were the fifth funniest living person. People who know you wanted a recount.

[A] Brooks: Hey, I'm glad I was five instead of 80. But what does it mean? If you look in the Bible under Armageddon, one of the signs that the world is ending is excessive numbers of lists and awards shows. Another sign is awards being given for performances on other awards shows. It's like brothers and sisters having children together--same thing. It's entertainment blood incest.

[Q] Playboy: But didn't you once say that the Bible could not possibly be true?

[A] Brooks: Here's my theory: You know that game Telephone, where you tell a person one thing, and by the time it's been passed on to the seventh person, it's all crazy? I mean, I'm sure that Moses had a rowboat, stuck it in the water and kept a little bit of water from getting on his shoe. And some guy said, "Hey, did you see what Moses did? He was able to keep his shoes dry." And the next guy said, "Hey, did you hear about Moses--he didn't even get wet!" And the next guy said, "Moses went into the ocean without getting wet." And the next guy said, "Hey, did you hear? Moses walked into the ocean and didn't get a drop on him!" And by the sixth guy, the water had parted and Moses had walked eight miles into the Red Sea.

You see it in your own life--facts get screwed up from one person to another. The Bible has been passed along by so many people, everybody has to embellish it a little bit. One guy said, "The Crusades had to be a little more interesting than this. Why don't we make a plague here? If six people got sick, I'm sure it must have been 600!"

[Q] Playboy: Let's get back to your Armageddon. Doesn't The Muse open with an awards ceremony?

[A] Brooks: Yes, the Humanitarian Awards. My character wins one for screenwriting. Maybe my favorite line in the movie is when the little girl playing my daughter asks, "What's a humanitarian, Daddy?" And he says, "Someone who's never won the Oscar."

By the way, we were in a restaurant last night and that guy Roberto Benigni and his wife came in. He's the scariest guy of all on awards shows.

You don't want to see people being that grateful for a statue. It makes art dirty. It's all wrong. You shouldn't be working just for that. I mean, Jesus Christ, when you see him act like that, it makes you think, God, my life is fucked if I don't win. It's the first time I've ever really thought. Oh my God! I have nothing! But I did say to my wife, "If he gets on his knees and kisses Whoopi Goldberg's feet, I will kill my child. I will sacrifice my own child."

[Q] Playboy: Which brings us to one of history's most criminal Oscar upsets: You lost the Best Supporting Actor award to Sean Connery in 1988, when you were nominated for your role in Broadcast News. Did you feel robbed?

[A] Brooks: I remember that before the Oscar, the Los Angeles Times published a poll taken at the Ivy, a big Hollywood restaurant. According to the poll, I bad won. Also, when Sean Connery did his Barbara Walters interview and talked about beating up women. I thought, Hmm, I have a shot here. He won anyway. You know who probably voted for him? Women. You can't beat 'em, you can't be beat without 'em.

[Q] Playboy: Can you reveal the acceptance speech you never got to make?

[A] Brooks: God, if I ever win I might still use it. I was going to say thank you and everything, and then I was going to say, "You know, they keep warning all the nominees to keep it short because there are 6 billion people watching all over the world, and I understand that, and I just hate to use this platform for anything personal, but--I lost a green sports jacket in the Copenhagen airport. If anyone has found it, please call."

[Q] Playboy:The Muse is, in a sense, the first film in which you get to make fun of Hollywood and the people who run it.

[A] Brooks: Certainly, if the movie has any theme, it's that anybody can run this place. As a filmmaker, I believe that every time you drive by a studio, every car in that parking lot is there to keep you from doing what you want to do. There are a lot of highly paid people inside whose jobs are to say things. If they don't say anything, they don't feel like they're justifying their jobs. Quite frankly, I wrote this film for Paramount and they didn't choose to make it. The words I heard were "too inside"--which drives me crazy. This thing "inside." This will go on long after I'm no longer on this earth. They say: "People won't get it." And I say, "They won't get it because you won't give it to them, and if you won't give it to them, they'll never get it." That's the truth.

People aren't stupid. At some point you have to show them another thing. And they always like other things. I said, "How did Seinfeld become the number one show in the world? According to you, it wouldn't even be allowed on the air in Alabama. There would be a warning: Jews are on TV. Turn off set." And, by the way, this movie is not about show business, really. Once the muse shows up to save my career, she moves into my house and it becomes a domestic farce.

[Q] Playboy: Pauline Kael once compliment you by writing that your curly hair reminded her of brains worn outside of your head.

[A] Brooks: You thought that was a compliment? I had to wear a goddamned hat for two months afterward!

[Q] Playboy: You must hate to hear the term cult following, but your fans do seem to be extraordinarily devout. They repeat lines from your films like mantras.

[A] Brooks: You know nothing!

[Q] Playboy: What?

[A] Brooks: That was a line from Modern Romance. I used to hear that one a lot: "You know nothing!" Yes, my cult--like Jim Jones, you get a glass of Kool-Aid with every screening. Listen, you have to cherish all your fans, because that's all you've got. You can't work in a void.

[Q] Playboy: So how did you decide that your muse should look like Sharon Stone?

[A] Brooks: Hey, I'm not stupid! You pick Dame Edna! Actually, October Films gave me a dream list of names that would help them worldwide. Sharon's name was at the top. I knew her a little bit and she'd always had this reputation for being funny, which she is. She can make fun of herself, which is always a good thing, and she has a light, airy quality that people haven't seen. So I thought, Wow, this is new! She could do this. She was my first choice.

[Q] Playboy: What's the sexiest thing you saw her do during your time together?

[A] Brooks: Take her clothes off.

[Q] Playboy: That works.

[A] Brooks: But let me tell you something: It was her idea. And this is why I like her. There's a scene in the movie that calls for awkwardness--she's going to share a bed with my wife, played by Andie MacDowell. I thought she should wear something slinky. But she said, "I really have to be naked here, I think, for this to work." And I'm thrilled she did it, because it got me a PG-13 rating for brief nudity. So when it comes on HBO, it'll say brief nudity, and that's always exciting. Unless people think it's me.

[Q] Playboy: You did a nude scene in Modern Romance. You said the movie might have made more money if you had shaved your back.

[A] Brooks: That's what studio research told us. And, by the way, now the studio's research department will shave your back. They have a whole division. They'll do everything. They have a barber, a tailor--everything.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have muses? Who do you bounce your ideas off of?

[A] Brooks: One of the reasons I married my wife is that she's got this wonderful brain and a great sense of humor. I talk to her about everything. Also, I used to be really close--like talking daily--to Jim Brooks, who gave me those roles in Broadcast News and I'll Do Anything. When I wasn't in As Good As It Gets, I stopped talking to him. Better put me in the movies, Jim, if you want to be my friend.

Over the years I've written all but one of my movies with Monica Johnson, the sister of comedy writer Jerry Belson. She found me through Penny Marshall, and I thought she had great comedic sensibilities. She innately understands the Albert Brooks "character" in these films. And she's a woman, which is always a good thing when you write. She makes me laugh. And she's a great laugher, too. I could never write with someone who didn't laugh well.

[Q] Playboy: Is laughter better than sex?

[A] Brooks: Gee, I always thought it was the same thing.

[Q] Playboy: You reportedly once told the actor Elizabeth Perkins that when you're in love, you completely lose your sense of humor. Does that sound right?

[A] Brooks: No, that was another one of my great hit-on lines. That naive little girl! I don't know--I'm sure it was true the evening I said it.

[Q] Playboy: Of course, Modern Romance stands as one of the greatest contemporary portraits of futile, neurotic love---

[A] Brooks: The best way I can describe it is that when you're in love, you completely lose your sense of humor. Can I just add this: A woman is like a diving board. You'll only find her at one end of the pool.

[Q] Playboy: Which means?

[A] Brooks: I don't know. I've lost my sense of humor.

[Q] Playboy: You've had relationships with at least two of your leading ladies--Kathryn Harrold and Julie Hagerty.

[A] Brooks: Oh, sure. You're paying these people a lot of money to like you. It works out to something like seven grand a day. You ought to get a little smooching out of it.

[Q] Playboy: There was a great date-from-hell scene in Mother, in which you have nothing in common with the woman. This comes from experience?

[A] Brooks: I had plenty of those dates. In the six months before I met my wife, I had sort of given up on even attempting mental communication with new women. I went with one woman to see While You Were Sleeping--that movie with Sandra Bullock. In the car on the way home, she said to me, "I think that's the funniest movie I've ever seen." And I really debated whether just to drive off Mulholland and kill us right then, or to drop her off first and take eight sleeping pills. It was cute, but the funniest movie somebody ever saw?

[Q] Playboy: There's a movie-date lesson in there somewhere.

[A] Brooks: Yeah--never to go a comedy with someone you're not sure of. It's a dangerous thing. It's pretty safe to go see a drama, but comedy is the most specific art form there is. What people laugh at tells so much about them that you can be very disappointed, especially if you do it for a living.

[Q] Playboy: Obviously, Kimberly Shlain, the woman who became your wife, has better taste in funny movies.

[A] Brooks: She was a huge fan. Why would she want to meet me if she didn't really like my movies?

[Q] Playboy: Which means the ending of Mother was personally prophetic: After giving up on relationships, you accidentally meet a woman who appreciates you and is on your wavelength. Your life imitated your art.

[A] Brooks: I really believe there's some sixth sense, like dogs have, that you attract people much better when you aren't looking for them. What was that great line Jim Brooks wrote for me in Broadcast News? "Wouldn't this be a great world if desperation and insecurity made us more attractive?" Well, the world doesn't work like that. And you don't attract people who are good for you. So I had reached a point in my life where I said, "OK, I'm just going to ride out this journey alone." I had finally given up worrying, Who am I going to meet? And then, within about two months, I met my wife.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Brooks: We were set up by my friend Paul Slansky and his wife. She is in the computer world and Kimberly is too. Kimberly is a brilliant artist and painter who transferred her talent to the computer, creating websites, among other things. I will say this--our relationship has never been problematic. It's all been easy. I haven't seen a shrink for a dozen years, but when I did all he ever said was that things should be easy, not hard. Especially in the beginning.

[Q] Playboy: Did you make a great proposal?

[A] Brooks: I don't think it was necessarily a proposal. We were sort of living together and she basically said, "I don't want to do this anymore. It's wasting my time. Either shit or get off the pot." So I did. By the way, I'm God's mule. I have a hard time budging and would never do anything if someone didn't make me. But this was the woman I wanted to make me. I realized, This is OK, you're the perfect woman. Go ahead and push me and I'll move.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a reason your baby son, Jacob, has the same name as the suicidal tiger you voiced in Dr. Dolittle?

[A] Brooks: That was coincidental! I didn't name him after a cartoon character. I'm a better father than that. I didn't even realize it until afterward.

[Q] Playboy: Describe the upside of becoming a father when you're in your 50s.

[A] Brooks: Having a child when you're a little older--I'm not talking Tony Randall older--is the coolest thing in the world. The concerns you have when you're 30 about your career and stuff are huge. There's just something great about getting past that period so you can really devote your attention to someone and mean it. I don't know what else there is to do on earth. I guess the downside is that we're already looking at high schools with wheelchair ramps.

[Q] Playboy: How well did you perform in the delivery room?

[A] Brooks: I cried. When the head popped out, I just wept.

[Q] Playboy: You gave up singlehood during maybe the randiest presidency in history. Did you have any favorite passages from the Starr report?

[A] Brooks: My child is not old enough to ask a lot of questions. But I think it might have been uncomfortable if you had a kid around five years old. The president should not be responsible for the word head coming up at dinner. That should come from the father. When I'm ready to tell my kid what head is, I'll tell him. I don't want the president telling him. "Daddy, what is being on your knees in the Oval Office?" "Well, that's a kind of Muslim prayer. . . ."

[Q] Playboy: How did you learn about sex?

[A] Brooks: I certainly don't recall any parental conversations. I guess you learn from your friends. The first time anything profound happened was in the shower when I was very young. I remember that my mother had like 16 lady friends over, and I ran downstairs and said that I was in the shower and I don't know what happened--but this white stuff came out! They were all shocked: "Honey, don't do it again." I said, "What, no more showers?" Well, I was in the shower about eight times a day for the next three years.

[Q] Playboy: What were the circumstances of how you, um, became a man?

[A] Brooks: I think this is the way it happened: About nine of us went to a prostitute in downtown Los Angeles and brought a case of liquor and we each got four minutes. We just wanted to get that moment over with and that's really all it was, man. She was an older, tired person. And one after another we just went in and came out and then it was done. It was one time only. And then, in high school, I knew this older woman who was a nurse--it was one of those Summer of '42 stories.

[Q] Playboy: How much older was she?

[A] Brooks: When you're 15, anybody in her 20s seems like Jennifer O'Neill. She must have been at least ten years older. It was great. And I never told anybody about it. I didn't want anyone to catch on and think, I want to get a nurse too. I didn't have to go through the begging that my friends did with high school girls.

[Q] Playboy: You were raised in a house with two older brothers--Cliff, the oldest, is an advertising bigwig, and Bob is best known as TV's Super Dave Osborne. Did they pick on you much?

[A] Brooks: Bob, my middle brother, picked on me a lot. It was just his nature. He was very big and wanted to be the ruler. He always used to threaten me. He would say, "I'll break your neck." Then I was in the hospital with a separated shoulder from football and was next to a kid whose neck was broken. And I saw how horribly serious that was. I said to Bob, "That's a terrible threat. That's paralysis!"

[Q] Playboy: Are you still afraid of him?

[A] Brooks: No, we got that all out about 12 years ago. I had anger left in me. I used to have dreams of wanting to beat him up and stuff. But when we got all of this out on the table, he apologized. Then the dreams stopped.

[Q] Playboy: Do you remember the first laugh you ever got?

[A] Brooks: The first was probably in third grade, I don't really remember. But there was a huge moment in my life at a Beverly Hills High School talent show. The parents and the students all participated--parents like Carl Reiner and Robert Merrill. I was the emcee. And I just killed. I remember one Chinese student who did a big dance with those long streaming things. One of my jokes was, "Wasn't she wonderful? Actually, there was a terrible accident early this afternoon when she rehearsed--a 707 landed on the football field."

[Q] Playboy: Weren't you also the one who read bogus class announcements at the beginning of the school day?

[A] Brooks: Yes, my teacher made a deal with me that if I behaved, she'd give me five minutes of stand-up every day. So I read the bulletins and made up stuff about what was going to happen. I was always getting laughs in school. Before that, when I was six, I remember Eddie Cantor came to the house--he used to work with my father. I had just gotten home from a Cub Scout meeting and my father asked about it. And I mispronounced a word. I said. "We had cookies and apple schnider." Cantor liked that: "Hey, Parky, your kid's funny!" Apple schnider--the Jewish fruit drink.

[Q] Playboy: Your father, Harry Einstein, played Parkyakarkus, Cantor's radio sidekick of sorts. Describe his comedy.

[A] Brooks: Well, he was a Greek-dialect comedian, so it was a lot of malapropisms. Parkyakarkus was a character he had been doing locally in Boston back in the Thirties. Eddie Cantor heard him and brought him out to Hollywood. He worked on the Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson radio shows. Then he got his own show, Meet Me at Parky's, which ran about seven years. One bit I always remember from that show: My dad was slowly typing up the menu for his restaurant and misspelling everything. Roast: R-U-S-T. Beef: B-I-F. His assistant at the restaurant came in and said, "All right, Parky, I'm in a hurry. Just give me the menu and give it to me quickly! I have a lot to do." He said "OK, you want it quickly? We're going to have sirloin steak and tenderloin steak, good piece lamb chop, great big pork chop, nice fried onions, fresh peeled scallions, french-fried potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes; string beans, baked beans, hup beans, too; cookeral, hookeral, chicken stew; mickerel, pickerel, haddock, tripe; lobster, oyster, shrimp or pike; hot pies, cold pies, soft pie, mud pie, ickleberry, bermberry, stroomberry, too; stiff cream, whipped cream, plain cream, no cream; squashed-up apple, coconut; custard, mustard, ketchup, chili, salt and pepper and piccalilli. Twenty-five cents!"

I memorized that from a record when I was seven and never forgot it. I try to check in with it every three years to see if my brain is still reasonably intact. I can just imagine being 80 and trying: "We're gonna have, oh, damn it--I know it was food! Oh well.'

[Q] Playboy: Who decided to name you Albert Einstein?

[A] Brooks: My mother blames it on my dad, but I don't know for sure.

[Q] Playboy: You spent most of your childhood almost expecting your father to die. It happened when you were 11?

[A] Brooks: Eleven and a half. He was only 54. But for as long as I could remember, I was always paranoid that my father was going to die. I knew a sick person was in my house. When he was young, he had a disease where the spinal cord and the vertebrae fuse together. In the Thirties, he underwent like 25 operations and wasn't expected to live. Then doctors were positive he'd never walk. But he did walk, just slowly, and he gained a lot of weight. Ultimately, he died of a heart attack.

[Q] Playboy: Not that it's any consolation, but his was sort of a legendary show business death.

[A] Brooks: Onstage, literally. He was performing only occasionally and, on this night, he was on a dais of performers at the Friars Club to honor Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The night before, I had helped him with his routine, working a wire recorder for him. I didn't go to the roast, but he got up and was brilliant. He talked extravagantly and sincerely about them, then missed their names--"my closest friends in the world, Miss Louise Bowls and Danny Arnaz!" It was elegant, they screamed, he sat down, put his head on the table and passed on. Right there. They stopped the dinner, took him backstage, cut him open and shocked him with a lamp cord. But that was it. What always impressed me was that he finished. He didn't die in the middle of a line. That's what makes you believe in something.

[Q] Playboy: Was the funeral funny?

[A] Brooks: More than the actual funeral, I remember that all the comedians came to our house afterward. Milton Berle tried to cheer us up by putting a cigar up his nose. I'll never forget that.

[Q] Playboy: What about your parents? Did they know you were funny?

[A] Brooks: I don't recall that my mother ever thought I was funny. That's why I wrote Mother. which is what the whole movie was about. I know she's proud of me and I can make her laugh today. But for most of my life, it. didn't matter how funny I was or how funny anybody told her I was--she was very serious about wanting me to have another business to fall back on. But I still wanted her approval. I would call her after every Carson appearance--"What did you think?" And she would always, always have the same answer: "Oh, it was wonderful! What did Johnny think?"

And I'd say, "Well, you saw the show--did you hear the audience laughing?"

"No, no, I just wondered---"

"What--did Johnny secretly hate me even though they were laughing? No, he likes me!"

So one day I actually planned this whole strategy. I'd been waiting for this moment--I did the show, the audience was laughing its head off and, as ever, she said, "What did Johnny think?" And I sounded very depressed: "I don't want to talk about it. Things are not good."

"What happened?"

"Well, Johnny came into the dressing room and said, 'You'll be the last Jew to ever appear on my show!' "

"What!?"

Now, of course, my mother was furious: "Don't, ever do that show again! If he's anti-Semitic---"

I said, "I'm just kidding."

[Q] Playboy:Mother, obviously, was your desperate cry for acknowledgment from her. But those issues had to have been resolved before you wrote it, correct?

[A] Brooks: You can't make that movie unless you've resolved the issue. Just like in the movie, it happened in a day for me--a day preceded by 16 years of trying to make that day happen. Because it's a movie, you can't show 16 years of analysis to figure it out. Maybe not everybody is lucky enough to have one huge moment. But those moments do exist. All of a sudden the authority is gone and the frailty surfaces. Some people go to their graves hating their parents, which would be terrible. At some point, my life became too complicated to worry about any one person's opinion anymore. I no longer associated my mother's love with her ability to laugh at my work.

[Q] Playboy: So how did your mother react to Mother?

[A] Brooks: She saw it a couple of times. The first time she saw the movie, she said, "You know, one or two lines reminds me of us." I said, "One or two lines? You think you operate the phone correctly?" Then I showed her the movie again about four weeks later--it was exactly the same with, like, one extra sound effect. She was cute. During at least 14 scenes, she'd say, "Was that in the first version? Honey, that's wonderful! I didn't see that before."

"Yes, Mother, it's the same movie."

"Really?"

[Q] Playboy: Before Debbie Reynolds got the role of Mother, you considered hiring Nancy Reagan. Did you actually meet with her?

[A] Brooks: Three or four times, on her patio. When I went to see her, she said she just loved the script, which blew me away. I worked very hard with her on a couple of scenes that I asked her to commit to memory--one where we were on the telephone and the one in the market. It was fun. Everyone thought I had offered the part to her, but we never got that far. She was so flattered that I was even there and she would have loved to act, but she just didn't feel she could leave her husband to do that. Plus, if anything had happened to him, it would have stopped the movie. She said, "I know you're going to get someone else and it's going to kill me."

[Q] Playboy: Was Ronald there?

[A] Brooks: I saw him walking around.

[Q] Playboy: You met the Reagans at a Washington dinner party during the making of Broadcast News. We heard that you told him a famous "old man" joke that night.

[A] Brooks: Yes. He had had his prostate surgery a month earlier and I was sort of asked to cheer up the old guy. I don't know that many jokes, but I told him one about an 80-year-old Jewish man who goes to a doctor. Since Reagan was in his 70s, I made the guy much, much older--like 95. In the joke, the old guy says, "Something's wrong with me, doctor--I don't know what it is." The doctor says, "OK, I'm going to need a stool sample, a urine sample and a semen sample."

And the old guy says, "Here, take my underwear."

He laughed.

[Q] Playboy: Did he relate to it?

[A] Brooks: I never got that far. I didn't follow it up with, "You know what I mean, don't you?"

[Q] Playboy: Since you're often considered a West Coast Woody Allen, we were wondering if you've crossed paths lately? Last we heard, you both appeared on the same Merv Griffin show 25 years ago--and that was it.

[A] Brooks: Well, that was almost it. We both did Merv's show in Las Vegas, after which Woody came up to me and said, "You're a funny man, Brooks!" That's all he said. Then I tried to phone him after Annie Hall to tell him it was brilliant, but he wouldn't take my call. A couple of years ago, I heard from him. He wanted me to play Harry in Deconstructing Harry.

[Q] Playboy: You're kidding.

[A] Brooks: He'd gone through a few people before my name came up and he wrote me a nice letter. He said, "If you like the script, please come to New York." But I just felt the script was too much in his own distinct voice and rhythm. It was, you know, Woody Allen. I wrote back that it was insane that he didn't do it himself, which he ultimately did. I would certainly love to work for him, but not as him.

[Q] Playboy: Has the are of Woody's career taught you anything?

[A] Brooks: Yes--to stay out of your daughter's room. I think Woody Allen's a genius. Certainly, when starting out, I used his name in more studio meetings than anybody--"It's like what Woody Allen does." Of course, I stopped that after his ninth film in a row didn't make any money. But I feel one of the secrets to loving Woody Allen is to not know too much about him. He kept the press away more than anyone who had ever lived. After seeing his movies, I would drive home wondering, "Was that really him?" It was like a little game. But once the details of his life were dumped on us, the game was over. Suddenly, we saw this brilliant filmmaker--whom we'd never seen--denying all this junk. It was sad.

[Q] Playboy:Real Life was released in 1979 and now, 20 years later, your sixth film is finished. What takes you so long?

[A] Brooks: Well, there would have been more if I could have gotten the financing easier. Out of those 20 years, a good eight were spent raising the money! I knew that as soon as I put the words The End on a script, I would have to go through all these minefields that I hate more than the world. Even for this movie. The Muse was written right after Mother--which means it could have been finished and released more than a year ago. Paramount passed on it, so it took longer. It's hard to go through the humiliation of 20 people saying no before one person says yes.

[Q] Playboy: How humiliating has it gotten?

[A] Brooks:Lost in America was maybe the worst--I went for two years trying to raise the money. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Ninety-nine percent of these potential investors just want to meet people in show business. You go out to dinner with them and you pick up the check. You meet with these big fat guys from Texas and they're listening to your idea--"So then they go to Vegas and she loses the money--" And one of the Texas guys interrputs: "Yeeeahh, um, Allll-buht, do you know any hookers?" I learned, by the way, to start out every meeting by saying, "Hello, I don't know any hookers. Now let me pitch this story."

[Q] Playboy: Your films have had completely original comic premises. Can we explore the inspirations for each? For instance, Real Life has been echoed by The Truman Show and Ed TV, but you got there first.

[A] Brooks: Echoed? Jon Bon Jovi's end title song for Ed TV was called Real Life. I mean, come on! When Monica Johnson heard that, she called me in tears. But I suppose it's actually a good thing--maybe it reminded people. Real Life didn't make any money, but at least The Truman Show got some Oscar nominations out of the subject. The important thing is that Real Life still holds up.

Obviously, I was glued to the set during the 12-hour PBS documentary An American Family, about the Louds. But what really inspired Real Life was the Margaret Mead quote that crawls before the movie: "It is, I believe, as new and as significant as the invention of drama or the novel . . . a new way in which people can learn to look at life, by seeing the real life of others interpreted by the camera." When I read that, I thought, Wow! So I more or less played myself--comedian Albert Brooks--bringing cameras into the home of Charles Grodin and family and running their lives.

[Q] Playboy:Modern Romance?

[A] Brooks: I lived that relationship with a real woman. Thank God I got out of it, because there was something missing. A Modern Romance relationship is all about being physical, not mental. A man in his 20s doesn't drive around a woman's house 400 times and act like a fool just to have a conversation with her. We all do it to have sperm come out of our dicks. It's hormones and the dawning of your sexuality. We're too young to know that sexuality should be connected to the rest of you. That takes life experience to understand. It's very hard for a young person to integrate sexuality with the rest of his being.

[Q] Playboy: Before the movie was released, didn't Columbia want you to insert a scene in which your character consults a shrink?

[A] Brooks: Yes, that came after a test screening in San Francisco--probably not the best city in the world to test a film about heterosexual love problems. The head of the studio, Frank Price, called me into his office--and it was as if I had killed his child. He chased me around his desk reading all these test cards to me. They were all about my character: "He's got a Porsche and a good-looking girl--what's his problem?"

I told him, "I don't know his problem. I'm not being facetious. I really don't know! I can demonstrate the behavior, but I can't explain it."

"Well, add a psychiatrist scene. Explain it that way."

"But I don't know how to explain it."

Of course, I understand it now. But I couldn't have made that movie if I had understood it at the time.

[Q] Playboy: How about Lost in America?

[A] Brooks: I always loved the idea of making a lifelong decision and finding out four days later that it was wrong. You know, burning your bridges and then having to eat shit. Here is this successful married couple who sell their house, buy a Winnebago, hit the road, lose everything in a week and realize they've made a mistake. So the concept was all about backing up and eating shit. We all do it in little ways. I wanted to see it big.

[Q] Playboy:Defending Your Life?

[A] Brooks: I got so tired of those heaven movies with clouds and angels and spirits that come back and whisper in your ear. I never believed in it. I wanted to present another idea about dying. so I just racked my brains till I came up with something. I thought, What if coming back is not a good thing? What if death is like college? Your goal in college is not to get bad grades and then go back to do your sophomore year all over again. You want to leave the college, to move ahead. So if earth were a college, you'd leave it and maybe go to some other place where people aren't fighting and calling each other names and burning down buildings. I still think this could be real.

[Q] Playboy: And The Muse?

[A] Brooks: The idea of something that inspires and helps creativity has always intrigued me. What is a muse? A muse is anything. Fifteen years ago, I had an idea about someone who follows a muse entity around the world in order to keep creating. That was an early version of this. If I make 11 more movies, or three more movies, I'd probably say that the ideas are already in my mind and have been. But maybe now that I have a child, that will inspire something in me. I hope so. I want new experiences.

[Q] Playboy: In The Muse you pay hilarious homage to the importance of your old friend Steven Spielberg. Not to give anything away about the movie, but there's a scene in his Amblin company headquarters----

[A] Brooks: Actually, Spielberg wouldn't allow that. We couldn't even say Amblin. He wouldn't hear of it. He said it's never been shown and will not be shown now. So I created the Spielberg Building, which is probably funnier. I hope he laughs at it. We did know each other when we were both just starting. We used to drive around Los Angeles eavesdropping on conversations over a CB radio. He's got home movies up the kazoo of me doing shtick for him. I remember the weekend Jaws opened, we drove around New York with [New York Times film critic] Janet Maslin and, I think, Marty Scorsese, filming these six-block-long lines of people waiting to see the movie. I swear to God, it was like the beginning of the new world! No one had seen this kind of thing since Martin and Lewis played the Paramount Theater. We all looked at each other and went, "Oh my God!"

[Q] Playboy: Moviegoing would never be the same. Did that affect you?

[A] Brooks:Star Wars officially changed everything. That was the moment the world changed, and it snuck up on me. I thought things were going the other way during the Seventies--Easy Rider, idea pictures. Meanwhile, George Lucas was secretly making this movie. When I saw Star Wars, a part of me died--because I didn't do that. And I knew that I never would do that.

[Q] Playboy: You had a peculiar relationship with Stanley Kubrick. How did his death hit you?

[A] Brooks: I cried. I swear to God. Just for a minute. He was the kind of guy you never thought would die, because you never thought he was alive anyway.

[Q] Playboy: You never actually laid eyes on the man, did you?

[A] Brooks: That's right! Therefore, why should he go? But he was truly the greatest filmmaker who ever lived. The biggest thrill I probably ever had in the film business was when he called me after seeing Modern Romance. He was so complimentary and said, "This is the movie I've always wanted to make!" I'm anxious to see Eyes Wide Shut, because, from what I understand, it's Kubrick's jealousy movie.

[Q] Playboy: But for a period there, you were talking with Kubrick regularly.

[A] Brooks: We started to correspond and carry on these conversations. I probably got a little too friendly. When The Shining came out, I saw Scatman Crothers on a talk show saying how many takes Kubrick made him do: "I had to walk into the Overlook Hotel 5500 times!" So I couldn't wait for my weekly call to Stanley--I thought I'd make him laugh with my Scatman imitation. He came on the phone and I started doing Scatman: "I had to walk into the Overlook fifffftyfi----" I never got any further. This man lost it: "Never use him! Don't ever work with him! He never knew his lines!" He started telling me secrets I didn't want to know: "I was in the editing room for 150 hours!" I said, "No, no, I just wanted to do the imitation----" It was one of the last conversations we ever had.

But he was so private. He would reach out for a minute, then close the door again. Years later, he called me about an idea he had for a comedy and asked what I thought of Steve Martin. And I was like: What--are you crazy? I mean, I'd give my right ball to work with you! Do I really have to recommend Steve Martin? What do I think? He's wonderful--go use him!

[Q] Playboy: You've been doing a lot of smaller roles in other people's films. Is that fun?

[A] Brooks: I enjoy it. In the next 20 years, I'd like the acting part of my life to get bigger. I'm telling you, it's hard to make these movies, whereas the acting is so much easier on my psyche. I've never been happy doing the business part of show business. I have to do it--you can't direct a movie without doing it. But it makes my stomach hurt. I'm now at an age where I'm growing into a certain kind of part. I tell my agents to look at the roles Gene Hackman's up for and think of me.

[Q] Playboy: You actually had a singing role in Jim Brooks' I'll Do Anything--which was shot as a musical but released without any music. Can you now sing some of what we missed?

[A] Brooks: I sing great on the page, by the way. Imagine Steve Lawrence here. I had two songs--remember, I played a desperate Hollywood producer. The first one is called There Is Lonely, which I sang after a terrible test screening. It goes, "There is lonely . . . then there is looonely." It was a funny idea--after geting bad scores, this guy was singing a death song. I sang the other one before a different preview at a big theater. I danced through the line of people waiting to get in, singing--"I'll do anything to make you like me, I'll do anything to make you smile. . . ."

[Q] Playboy: The music was written by Prince--before he was Formerly Known As. Was he watching you?

[A] Brooks: He was there one day, I remember my joke. There were 17 people around him and he was sitting a little higher than everyone else. He wore these long pink robes. Jim said, "Albert, do you know Prince?" And I asked, "Which one is he?"

[Q] Playboy: By the way, why haven't we seen a home video package of the short films you made for the first season of Saturday Night Live?

[A] Brooks: I own them all, but part of me feels I'm too young to do a retrospective. It scares me a little bit. I mean, those were the first films I ever made. Actually, a year earlier, I did Albert Brooks' Famous School for Comedians--which may have been the world's first infomercial--for PBS' Great American Dream Machine anthology. That was the first time I had ever taken a camera in hand and tried to put a film together. But doing the Saturday Night Live shorts--six of them over a short time--was like enrolling in the most amazing filmmaking course.

[Q] Playboy: Which happened because you turned down the offer to be the permanent host of SNL?

[A] Brooks: I was too wiped out as a performer to put myself through that live stress. I didn't even consider moving to New York. They came back to me three times, and finally--to chicken out, actually--I said, "You shouldn't have a permanent host, anyway. Every show has one host--you should get a different host every week."

[Q] Playboy: So you were the guy who started it all.

[A] Brooks: I really was. But because they didn't have anyone, talentwise, attached to the show yet, they still wanted to get me on board. So I suggested the short films. I served a purpose for SNL, and even did their first publicity. Back in May 1975, before the show debuted in October, before any of the cast were hired, Lorne Michaels and I did the press junket at Universal Studios. Writers were asking. "So. Albert, what's this show going to be?" And I said, "I have no idea, Lorne?" And he wasn't sure either. Nobody knew.

[Q] Playboy: Somehow your relationship with the show ended badly. Where did things go wrong?

[A] Brooks: Once the show took off and the Not Ready for Prime Time Players had started to become famous, having me out on the other coast was . . . I really wasn't needed anymore. I wasn't part of their group. And because I had contractual demands about when and how the films would run, I just became a pain in the neck. I was resented. Why should they have to give up eight minutes to someone who wasn't even there? It all came down to the fifth film, in which I performed open-heart surgery--it was 14 minutes long and Lorne was upset. It only aired because my friend Rob Reiner was hosting and said, "I went to school with Albert. I'll take his film." Lorne didn't want the problem anymore. The relationship was symbiotic while it lasted--it helped me, it helped them. I learned my craft and got out.

[Q] Playboy: But there's no denying that your feelings were hurt.

[A] Brooks: My feelings were hurt. I felt bad for a couple of reasons: I had been working pretty damn hard. I may not have been doing a live television show, but I was taking my responsibilities seriously and getting the job done. That first year, everyone under the sun except me got an Emmy for the show--I wasn't even mentioned. Maybe I hadn't worked one tenth as hard as the people in New York, but I was still in at ground zero and my spirit was there always. Somebody from NBC with their 4800 Emmys could have thanked me. They could have thrown one through my television set. That was not a happy moment.

[Q] Playboy: Let's explore your evolution in comedy, beginning with how you became a stand-up. It was hardly your dream, was it?

[A] Brooks: No young person wanted to be a comedian in the late Sixties. A comedian was a fat man with a cigar in a lounge. I wanted to be an actor. I left college at 19 and came back to Los Angeles and couldn't get work. One day, in front of my friends. I picked up this ventriloquist doll and did the world's worst ventriloquist's act--which became Danny and Dave, my first real bit. Everyone laughed--and they urged me to become a comedian. Because as an actor at 19 I was one of a thousand. But as a comedian at 19 I was one of maybe two.

My William Morris agent told me, "Look, we can't promise we can get you any acting parts right now, but you could get on television tomorrow. Just go and be funny and then all the acting parts will come. I promise." Of course, the acting parts didn't come. All that came was more stand-up comedy. And so I headed into a career that I really didn't want to have.

[Q] Playboy: But you did get on television tomorrow.

[A] Brooks: Just like that. This was 1968. The very first shot was a local show in Los Angeles called Keene at Noon, which immediately led to three shots on Steve Allen's syndicated Westinghouse show. From there I was offered my first network appearance, on Dean Martin's show, where I did Danny and Dave. They asked me to do six episodes of his summer show, so I had to come up with six new bits. I just stood in front of my mirror at home, then tried them all out on network television.

[Q] Playboy: You couldn't hone your material in clubs?

[A] Brooks: There were no clubs! I didn't play for a live audience, clubwise or concertwise, until after I'd been on television for three or four years.

[Q] Playboy: But those were your fearless years. As per legend, you were capable of making phone calls at the moment Ed Sullivan introduced you.

[A] Brooks: I did that, yes. I stood in the wings, talking to a friend--"Are we gonna be meeting people for dinner later?" And I heard Ed say, "And now, right here on our stage. . . ." My friend said, "Hang up! You're on!" I was way beyond fearless. Unnaturally so--and disconnected. I didn't have any emotions about the work.

[Q] Playboy: Von started opening for a lot of concert acts around that time. Any lingering nightmares?

[A] Brooks: I had a lot of unpleasant experiences. I opened for everyone from Neil Diamond to Richie Havens--but maybe the scariest was Sly and the Family Stone. We're talking 1971. I don't think I'm telling tales out of school to say that Sly had a drug problem back then. When you're doing a pound a day, you could call it that, right? He used a coke spoon to open the package and then he used a shovel!

So this was in Tacoma, Washington and there were like 12,000 people in the audience. I'm looking out there and I realize that nobody's wearing shoes. They're all barefoot and they're taking sleeping pills and reds--remember reds? I think any pharmacist will tell you: Reds and comedy, it's not a good mix. So I was worried. Then, just before the show, Sly's manager knocks on my door and asks, "How long is your act?"

And I said, "Well, normally I do like 30 minutes, but I'm a little concerned here. Maybe I should do 20 minutes?"

And he said, "What is the longest you can do?"

"Why?"

He said, "Sly is in Ohio."

Apparently, it wasn't that Sly missed the plane. He was at the airport--he was just trying to put luggage into his nose. So I got out there while Sly was somewhere over the Midwest. Somebody threw a beer bottle and hit my leg and I'm starting to bleed and I'm thinking, I don't like this . . . this is not the best profession . . . this is not so much fun.

[Q] Playboy: You finally found fear as a performer. How did you know that you had to stop performing?

[A] Brooks: When I made my first record, Comedy Minus One, in 1973, I went on the road as a headliner, playing all these clubs. I was getting farther and farther away from acting. And I was unhappy about it. But I wasn't smart enough at the time to know or admit it. Also, doing two and three shows a night was seriously stressing me out. Finally, it was the afternoon before I opened at a Boston called Paul's Mall and--I'll never forget this--I did a radio interview. Out of the blue, the disc jockey said to me, "You know, Albert, Jonathan Winters lost his mind. Do you think that's going to happen to you?" I said, "I think it's happening right now."

So that night at Paul's Mall, the singer Leo Sayer was opening for me. He had released an album with a picture of himself in a down suit on the cover. To show its support, his record company had loaded up the house with people in clown suits. It was a Fellini movie! And as I was walking to the stage--literally between one step and the next--my brain exploded. It was as if all that fear I had never experienced, all the things I never wanted to deal with--everything just tapped me on the shoulder and went, "Here I am!"

[Q] Playboy: How did you perform?

[A] Brooks: I didn't get to the stage. I collapsed without falling down. I went blank and had a real panic attack. For all those years of performing, I should have been a little nervous and wasn't. So now it was overload--all the circuits broke! I didn't perform right then. I went across the street to the hotel and I remember the bouncer followed me over. He said, "I'll make you a deal--you don't have to finish the week, but I have a full house in there now. Please, if you could just do this show."

I went back and got onstage and it was the most painful hour I've ever endured in my life. I was conscious of every word I was saying. I was outside looking in and narrating my own existence. The scariest thing in life is not so much the thing that's happening to you--it's that you don't understand what's happening. So I stopped doing stand-up after that night. I went home, and started seeing a shrink to figure out my life and try to understand what happened.

[Q] Playboy: Do you understand now?

[A] Brooks: I think it had everything to do with my childhood and the fact that my father was very sick. I knew he was going to die. I learned as a very young person to close off, to not be hurt. Unfortunately, when you're ten years old. you can't distance yourself from one thing without distancing yourself from everything. I was just emotionally disconnected. And that night in Boston, I plugged in. I reconnected. To this day, I have remnants of it. Even though I wrote Defending Your Life, which was about overcoming all fear, I probably still make decisions based on fears I never felt the first time around. But I'm not a machine. And I never could have become a decent writer without reconnecting.

[Q] Playboy: But you became kind of reclusive. We never see you on talk shows unless you have a new film to promote.

[A] Brooks: Well, I'm more natural now. I'm the way I should be--not a wreck but conscious that I'm going to perform. I remember that it was a big deal getting back on The Tonight Show right after the Boston experience. I had been sort of quiet for a while. So all the fear I never had was 50 times as much. I had to learn at that age how to process these emotions. But The Tonight Show, back then, was everything. I had done a lot of television before my first Johnny Carson show in 1972, but nothing more important. That made my life. I was doing that show like every six weeks for three years.

[Q] Playboy: Making Johnny Carson laugh was the greatest approbation in comedy, wasn't it?

[A] Brooks: God, when he laughed, you felt you were in some sort of secret club! I once caused him to get up and go grab the curtain to catch his breath--which I think happened only two or three times in 35 years. He was laughing so hard, he had to walk over there to collect himself.

[Q] Playboy: You and Carson shared an idol in Jack Benny. Tell us about the historic night you and Benny appeared on The Tonight Show.

[A] Brooks: It was certainly historic for me. I came out late in the show as a European animal trainer, Alberto, and his elephant Bimbo. Except the elephant had been lost on a train in Chicago and the only animal I could get was a frog. I said, "I will do my famous act and you'll just have to use your imagination." So I put this frog through all these elephant tricks and, to reward him, I'd give him 88 peanuts and bury him. The last trick I called "Find the Nut, Boy!" I said, "I'm going to blindfold the elephant and I'm going to hide a peanut and the elephant will find it!" And I took this blindfold and I draped it over the frog. So this little black handkerchief just hopped around onstage and people went really crazy.

Anyway, I came back to the panel just before the end of the show, when Johnny would wrap up by saying where his guests would be appearing. During the last break, Jack Benny leaned across me and told Johnny, "When we come back, ask me where I'm going to be, will you?" So they came back and the piano was tinkling and Johnny said, "OK, Jack, where are you going to be?" And Jack Benny said, "Never mind about me--this is the funniest kid I've ever seen!" And that was one of those profound moments in life when you learn that generosity is a good thing. He made like a god and it was mind-blowing.

[Q] Playboy: You saw Jack Benny just before he died.

[A] Brooks: Harry Shearer and I went to his office on a Monday and he died on Thursday. He had stomach cancer, but we didn't know he was that far gone. We had been working on my album A Star Is Bought, on which every cut was a different genre of radio. The idea was to have airplay on every conceivable kind of radio station.

One was an old-time radio show and we wanted Jack Benny to be in it. Between Harry and me, there were no two people our age on the planet who idolized a person more. So I said, "Mr. Benny, we're doing this album and we're re-creating this old radio----"

I never got any further. He said, "Radio! That's all they remember me for! I've done everything! I've done movies! I've done television!"

We're thinking, Oh my God . . . oh no, please don't be like this. I said, "Mr. Benny, I only know you from television! I just know you did radio. Believe me, I know you did everything."

I swear to God, I walked out of there thinking, What's the point? How do you win at this game? If Jack Benny feels like this four days before he checks out, how do you win? If anybody had the right to be calm and peaceful with his career, it was Jack Benny. But he must have gotten a dose of it in his last couple years when he was starting to fade out, and he felt it. And the truth is, people under 30 today don't even know Jack Benny. Or Bogart. Every day I'm more hugely aware of just how unimportant everyone is. In a way. it's almost comforting. When you take your life too seriously, you should know that it doesn't matter. It's just a matter of time before everyone is swept under the carpet.

[Q] Playboy: Even you? Is there a way you'd like to be remembered?

[A] Brooks: To be honest with you, I've never, ever, thought of that. And I'm glad I haven't. I guess I would let the work speak for itself. I guess I'm doing it right now: I'm preparing my memory. That's as much as I can do. So if somebody a hundred years from now sees a videotape of Lost in America and goes, "Jesus Christ, look what this guy was doing"--then that's all I could ever ask for.

[Q] Playboy: Poetically enough, we've noticed you've taken possession of Bob Hope's theme song, Thanks for the Memories, for talk show appearances.

[A] Brooks: That's right, and I still will. He's not using it now. By the way, I hope Bob Hope is at peace with what he's accomplished. I hope he's not walking around the golf course saying, "I used to entertain troops." I hope he's happy. But I'm taking his theme song. I love it. I don't want to let it die--it's too good. Besides, no one has said anything.