Albert Brooks

Real Life

Real Life

Decades before reality television reigned supreme, there was Albert Brooks’s debut feature, Real Life, a brilliantly deadpan, stylistically innovative satire about the perils and pitfalls of trying to capture the truth on film. The writer-director plays “Albert Brooks,” a narcissistic Hollywood filmmaker who plans to spend the year in Phoenix embedded with Warren and Jeanette Yeager (Charles Grodin and Frances Lee McCain) and their two children, deploying an arsenal of cutting-edge equipment (including the over-the-head Ettinauer 226XL camera) to capture an American family’s ordinary day-to-day. Chronicling the project’s disastrous fallout, as the meddlesome Albert can’t help getting too close to his subjects, this pioneering mockumentary is more relevant than ever amid today’s media landscape.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1979
  • 99 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • English
  • Spine #1231

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Albert Brooks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • New interview with Brooks
  • New interview with actor Frances Lee McCain
  • 3D trailer directed by Brooks
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic A. S. Hamrah

    New cover based on an original theatrical poster

Purchase Options

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Albert Brooks, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • New interview with Brooks
  • New interview with actor Frances Lee McCain
  • 3D trailer directed by Brooks
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic A. S. Hamrah

    New cover based on an original theatrical poster
Real Life
Cast
Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks
Charles Grodin
Warren Yeager
Frances Lee McCain
Jeanette Yeager
Lisa Urette
Lisa Yeager
Robert Stirrat
Eric Yeager
Matthew Tobin
Dr. Howard Hill
J. A. Preston
Dr. Ted Cleary
David Spielberg
Dr. Jeremy Nolan
Julie Payne
Dr. Anne Kramer
Johnny Haymer
Dr. Maxwell Rennert
Norman Bartold
Dr. Isaac Steven Hayward
Harry Shearer
Pete the cameraman
Charles H. Reid
Assistant surgeon
Nudie Cohn
Horse owner
Jennings Lang
Martin Brand
Dick Haynes
Councilman Harris
Mort Lindsey
Mort Lindsey
Clifford Einstein
Role reversal family
Harold Einstein
Mandy Einstein
Karen Einstein
Leo McElroy
Jim Sanders, Channel 5
James L. Brooks
Driving evaluator
Credits
Director
Albert Brooks
Produced by
Penelope Spheeris
Written by
Albert Brooks
Written by
Monica Johnson
Written by
Harry Shearer
Executive producer
Norman Epstein
Executive producer
Jonathan Kovler
Director of photography
Eric Saarinen
Editor
David Finfer
Music
Mort Lindsey
Art direction
Linda Spheeris
Art direction
Linda Marder
Sound
Michael Moore
Makeup
Kathryn Logan
Script supervisor
Betty Goldberg
Computer graphics
Mark Jaffe
Additional photography
Frederick Elmes
Special effects
Dick Albain
Special props
John Crawford

Current

Real Life: A Young, Honest Guy Like Himself
Real Life: A Young, Honest Guy Like Himself

A brilliant satire, inspired by a 1973 PBS documentary series that gave rise to the reality-television genre, Albert Brooks’s first feature film examines the ethical dilemmas of combining cheap entertainment and sociological experiment.

By A. S. Hamrah