Real Life (1979)
Directed by Albert Brooks
Written by Albert Brooks, Monica Johnson, Harry Shearer
Starring Albert Brooks, Charles Grodin
Release Date March 2nd, 1979
Published November 13th, 1979
Real Life requires a little context. In 1972 PBS launched what many consider the very first reality show. American Family was a day in the life series about the Loud Family. The show chronicled the day to day life of an everyday American family. The series was a social experiment and became the progenitor of an industry that is now a staple of American television programming. Real Life is Albert Brooks' response to the phenomenon that was American Family, a reality movie. Brooks meta concept is both a critique of American Family and the notion of cameras being able to capture reality.
In Real Life, Albert Brooks stars as Albert Brooks, television star and filmmaker. Brooks wants to capture real life in the first ever reality movie. He plans to spend the next year living in Phoenix, Arizona, in a home directly across the street from the family who will star in his reality movie, the Yeager family, headed up by Dad, Warren Yeager, and his deeply depressed wife, Jeanette (Frances Lee McCain). For one year, cameras will follow the Yeager's everywhere as they gather footage for Brooks' documentary.
And things proceed from there. The social experiment is being monitored by doctors working for a family research firm who have ways of measuring mental health down to examining the way someone holds a mug. From the start, the experiment appears to be a disaster. On the second day of the experiment, after a fight with her idiot husband, Jeanette decides to leave and go stay with friends, leaving the cameras behind. Brooks himself has to go and win her back to the project, though this is fraught with Jeanette believing that Albert is coming on to her, something she's receptive to.
Read my full length review at Geeks.Media
