I saw Real Life, Albert Brooks’ first movie, last week, and was quite impressed. The film, which was inspired by the American Family documentary in the late 70s, was a very sly parody of the whole notion of reality TV, and was incredibly prescient – it predicted, quite correctly, that the producers of such programming would be tempted to “tweak” the reality in order to make it more “entertaining.” It is also the forefather to the great mockumentary work such as This is Spinal Tap and Best in Show (Harry Shearer, a key player in both these films, co-wrote Real Life).
It’s on DVD, and I highly recommend it to anyone who can see it. For your viewing entertainment, here’s the trailer, which shows absolutely no footage from the movie, but is fantastic in its own right.