All the Choices - Albert Brooks - Interview

Film Comment, July, 1999 by Gavin Smith

What about your work in I'll Do Anything?

I wish you could have seen the musical [version]. That was the greatest thing in the world, and it broke my heart that the movie came out like it did. The irony of that movie is, the very thing it was about is what it succumbed to. I mean, here's a movie whose whole being is about testing and succumbing to the testing, and that's exactly what happened to Jim. I understand why, but the ambition was so great, if he had stuck to it, in my opinion, it certainly wouldn't have done any worse, and in the long run it would have been a really important movie.

Did you do a good job with the singing and dancing?

You weren't going to buy my albums and make out to them, but I was sort of in the Rex Harrison vein. I sold a song and I did it within the character. I had the title song, "I'll Do Anything." People were lined up to see the preview of that terrible movie that my character produced, and he was going up and down the line singing, "I'll do anything to make you like me." And then there was a song called "There Is Lonely," after he got the opening weekend grosses; it was so funny to sing that kind of song to that subject. We worked a solid year. As I look back, I got to study with Twyla Tharp, who did the choreography. Where would I have ever gotten that chance? That was a thrill.

Is it true your character was modeled on producer Joel Silver?

Well, he never spoke to me again, so it must have been.

With thanks to Laura Rizzo (whose Albert Brooks website is at http://members.aol. com/shmuggs) and Kent Jones.