Video Interview: James L. Brooks

This is an amazing find. Approximately 5 hours of interviews with James L. Brooks. He's had a prolific writing and directing career, both in TV -- "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (1970-1977), "Rhoda" (1974-1975), "Taxi" (1978-1980), and "Lou Grant" (1977-1982), all of which Brooks co-created -- and movies including Terms of Endearment (1983), Broadcast News (1987), I'll Do Anything (1994), As Good As It Gets (1997), Spanglish (2004). Oh yes, there's that humble little TV show -- "The Simpsons" -- on which Brooks is credited as an E.P. with 431 episodes.

The videos are from the fantastic "TV Legends" series by the "Archive of American Television." Their YouTube channel is here.




Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Since we can't embed the video, here's a clip from "The Charlie Rose Show" in which Brooks and Matt Groening discuss how it took four years to write the script for The Simpsons Movie (2007).