Rounding Out Our Albert Brooks' Collections, Part 1: Real Life

Thanks to two recent Criterion 4ks, we now have almost every Albert Brooks film in HD.  ...At least the films he wrote and directed.  If you're looking to complete a collection of every film he's acted in, that's a much more formidable project.  But for his proper directorial work, yeah, we've got Real Life and Mother restored on BD and UHD in semi-special editions.  And then that just leaves Looking For Comedy In the Muslim World, which is still DVD-only; and with that title, there's a good chance it'll stay that way.

1979's Real Life is Brooks' first film outside of the shorts he made for the first year of SNL.  And the way he plays this cynical, satirical take on himself - filmmaker become truly mad scientist - it feels like a direct extension of those.  The experiment he undertakes here is just the next step from that one where he decides to perform open heart surgery for television.  In this case, he's doing a play on the infamous PBS documentary series, An American Family, that purported to document the real, every day life of a suburban family, though it apparently had a destructive effect (they ended up getting divorced by episode 9).  It only ran for one season.

Here, Brooks plays himself as a filmmaker looking to expand on the idea, and find a greater truth, by also including the filmmakers in the movie they're making.  But far more important than truth is the possibility of winning an Academy Award, getting written up in The Journal of American Psychology and who knows, maybe even a Nobel.  Charles Grodin is perfect as the head of the psycho-scrutinized household; but really the whole cast is spot on.  So is every line of dialogue and every moment in this ingenious comedy that is so much more than a send up of any old program (although, honestly, I recommend going back and catching American Family, too, even all these decades later).

Real Life has had a pretty nice DVD from Paramount since 2001: anamorphic widescreen, not exactly a special edition, but a few nice extras.  But we've been waiting for an HD option for a while now, and Criterion is really looking out for us Brooks heads.  If you missed it, they've already given us top shelf releases of Lost In America, Defending Your Life and Broadcast News.  And now they've hitting us up with these new 4k editions.

1) 2001 Paramount DVD; 2) 2024 Criterion BD; 3) 2024 Criterion UHD.

Paramount's DVD is ever so slightly pillarboxed to 1.75:1, which admittedly, we always knew couldn't be exactly right.  Criterion's new restoration puts it in its proper 1.85:1 aspect ratio, though comparing the framing, we see the difference is really very subtle.  Again, Paramount's DVD was already quite good.  But Criterion's new 4k scan from the original 35mm negative (with HDR10 on the UHD) is obviously in a whole new league.  The 2001 SDR transfer was never equipped to capture and render actual film grain, but it's here and glorious on the UHD (and to a lesser extent on the BD).  The colors aren't vastly different, but the contrast has been normalized and we can certainly see detail, like on James Brooks' lab coat above, that's washed out in the DVD's whites, returned to the picture on the new discs, giving the film a much more complete, lifelike image.  Now it really feels like we're watching an honest to gosh movie.

And while both discs feature the original mono audio in Dolby Digital with optional English subtitles, Criterion naturally bumps it up to a lossless track (LPCM).

2001 interview

So, like I said, Paramount's DVD wasn't quite a special edition, but it had some important features.  It included the original teaser trailer, which is actually a wholly distinct short comedy film by Brooks... in 3D!  And then there's a new (at the time) on-camera interview with Brooks, detailing the story behind the project.

Disappointingly, Criterion doesn't retain Paramount's interview with Brooks (though yes, they have the trailer), but that's no big deal, since they conduct their own, brand new interview with him.  He says much of the same stuff in both, and this new one runs longer, but there are a few bits in the old one.  So both would have been ideally, but the new one is the better of the two.  We also get an interview with co-star Frances Lee McCain, who is kind of an unsung hero of this project.  And where the old DVD came with a basic insert listing the chapter stops, Criterion includes a fold-out booklet with an essay by critic A.S. Hamrah.

2024 interview

A little more would've been sweet (how about a chat with co-writer Harry Shearer?), but I can't be mad at this being the final, definitive edition of Real Life.  The DVD wasn't enough, but this is.  And besides, Criterion had their hands full with another Brooks restoration this month.  So come back soon for Part 2.