t's one of life's big questions, and if you believe what you see in
the movies, it's a place full of white fluffy clouds and friendly angels
pining for their life back on our Big Blue Marble. But that's not how
Albert Brooks sees it.
Twenty-five years ago — and less than a year after Ghost stormed the box office — Brooks wrote, directed, and starred in Defending Your Life,
the story of an ad man who buys himself a Bimmer for his 40th birthday,
then promptly drives it into a bus. The bulk of the movie happens in a
place called Judgment City, a pleasant enough pit stop for the dearly
departed that operates a lot like a Fortune 500 company.
Judgment City's purpose is defined in its name: It's here that the recently deceased come to find out whether they'll be advancing to heaven, or heading to hell (which is essentially going back to Earth, as a person, to make another go at that heaven thing). To determine that, individuals are assigned a "defender" (a lawyer, though they don't like to use that word) to help make a case for moving forward. Like any trial, there's also a prosecutor to make a case for the opposite. Helping both sides to make their respective arguments is video footage of the defendant's entire life, organized by precise age, which sounds much less painful than it really is. ("Who could survive it?," asks Brooks.)
It was a modest hit upon its release in 1991, but in the quarter-century since its debut, Defending Your Life has become a beloved cult-comedy classic, continually drawing in new audiences. Though it's grounded in comedy, Brooks' exploration of life after death has also proven to resonate on a spiritual level, especially with younger viewers who are just beginning to question what happens after "the end."
On the 25th anniversary of Defending Your Life's release, Rolling Stone asked the director to take us back to Judgment City and explore his own reasons for why the film has remained so relevant to today's audiences.
I don't know how, where, and why the idea for Defending Your Life began; the idea had been bouncing around for a while. Stories like that sort of have to bounce. They don't come out of nowhere. I went through my own period of life with sort of everything turning upside down, and wondering, why is it this way? I went from being unafraid at the beginning of my career, in my late twenties, [to] being like the Roadrunner; I looked down and I didn't see anything. You don't wake up one day and say, "Earth ain't the best place to be." That's a brewing type of feeling.
We'd all watched "heaven" movies forever, and they always bothered me. They were just like little children's fairy tales. So I began to think more clearly that, why would anything in the universe be different than what we already see? In other words, our best indication of this vast, mysterious place are the processes that are going on right in front of us. And we see the Darwinian theories working; we see survival of the fittest working. Even in making automobiles, the better automobiles are the ones that keep getting made, so why would anything be different than that?
It intrigued me that the whole universe would be run sort of like a business. I also liked not having Earth as a place that's the best place. You don't want to go back to Earth — and by the way, they weren't threatening to send you back as an animal. It was obvious you were going to have to go back as a person and try it all over again; that was failure. So this is an alternative, but it's at least an alternative that makes some weird kind of sense to me.
Judgment City's purpose is defined in its name: It's here that the recently deceased come to find out whether they'll be advancing to heaven, or heading to hell (which is essentially going back to Earth, as a person, to make another go at that heaven thing). To determine that, individuals are assigned a "defender" (a lawyer, though they don't like to use that word) to help make a case for moving forward. Like any trial, there's also a prosecutor to make a case for the opposite. Helping both sides to make their respective arguments is video footage of the defendant's entire life, organized by precise age, which sounds much less painful than it really is. ("Who could survive it?," asks Brooks.)
It was a modest hit upon its release in 1991, but in the quarter-century since its debut, Defending Your Life has become a beloved cult-comedy classic, continually drawing in new audiences. Though it's grounded in comedy, Brooks' exploration of life after death has also proven to resonate on a spiritual level, especially with younger viewers who are just beginning to question what happens after "the end."
On the 25th anniversary of Defending Your Life's release, Rolling Stone asked the director to take us back to Judgment City and explore his own reasons for why the film has remained so relevant to today's audiences.
I don't know how, where, and why the idea for Defending Your Life began; the idea had been bouncing around for a while. Stories like that sort of have to bounce. They don't come out of nowhere. I went through my own period of life with sort of everything turning upside down, and wondering, why is it this way? I went from being unafraid at the beginning of my career, in my late twenties, [to] being like the Roadrunner; I looked down and I didn't see anything. You don't wake up one day and say, "Earth ain't the best place to be." That's a brewing type of feeling.
We'd all watched "heaven" movies forever, and they always bothered me. They were just like little children's fairy tales. So I began to think more clearly that, why would anything in the universe be different than what we already see? In other words, our best indication of this vast, mysterious place are the processes that are going on right in front of us. And we see the Darwinian theories working; we see survival of the fittest working. Even in making automobiles, the better automobiles are the ones that keep getting made, so why would anything be different than that?
It intrigued me that the whole universe would be run sort of like a business. I also liked not having Earth as a place that's the best place. You don't want to go back to Earth — and by the way, they weren't threatening to send you back as an animal. It was obvious you were going to have to go back as a person and try it all over again; that was failure. So this is an alternative, but it's at least an alternative that makes some weird kind of sense to me.
0 comments:
Post a Comment