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This great Hollywood director won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay for the same film, Terms of Endearment, which placed him in an elite group of seven directors who have done the same thing.

His next film, Broadcast News, was nominated for seven Oscars.

In fact, he's directed nine different actors in Oscar-nominated performances.

He then went on to direct the stellar As Good As It Gets, which won two Academy Awards for its stars, Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt.

He followed that up with Spanglish, a heartfelt romantic comedy, which featured funny man Adam Sandler.

But when you mention The Simpsons, the longest running comedy series in television history, you have to give credit to this man, who was responsible for bringing it to worldwide success.

- Hi, I'm Jim Brooks, and welcome to Hollywood's Best Film Directors.

Today we're at my house in West Los Angeles.

I've lived here, I think, seven years, and every reason I bought the place will not be apparent in this shot.

I grew up in North Bergen, New Jersey, which was a very different town then.

It's gotten yuppified since.

So at the time I grew up, we lived in a third story, five story building.

We were in the third floor of a walk up.

Very lower middle class housing.

But from my window, because they hadn't built up the cliffs that overlook New York yet, now they're filled with apartment houses.

From my window, if I leaned on our sofa, I was able to see the New York skyline.

And either, depending on what mood I was in, either vowed someday I'll lick you New York, or oh my god, you'll always lick me New York.

You're not gonna believe this.

I was an unpopular kid in high school.

It's like, I swear to God it's true.

Not only that, I was a very unpopular kid who, because I was sort of gutsy and got really big celebrities to interview for our 300 kids in the high school for our high school paper, because I don't know, I was pushy in a certain way.

So that not only was there this kid they didn't like, but there was this kid they didn't like whose picture was always on the front page of the high school paper.

More than any athletic hero, more than people who set records, my picture was there because they always took a picture of the celebrity with the high school kid who interviewed him.

I was a mystic of sorts, a mother who sacrificed to send me to college and I screwed up college because it was my first taste of a good life.

And I think the first fun I had was in college, and I sort of went nuts with that.

And as a result, I was out of college after a year and a half with no prospects.

I was fired from a number of menial jobs.

My sister's best friend was the secretary to the person who hired the page boys, the pages, you know, for CBS, which have a variety of tasks, sort of the host for tourists and stuff at CBS.

And I got that job and most people who had that job were college graduates, some from very good colleges, but again it was an experience with the first sophisticated people I'd ever been around.

Great variance in human beings.

I came from a very small atmosphere that was supposed to be a stepping stone.

It was not for me.

And, you know, people would step.

I didn't step.

And suddenly I'm two years and still wearing that cape uniform in the winter.

And it was getting, you know, what's going to happen.

And they used, they got, then I was picked as a vacation replacement for a Jessica System copy boy at CBS News, one of the legendary news organizations in the history of mankind.

I don't think there's any exaggeration in that term.

And I was there, and there all the Jessica Systems were top Ivy League graduates.

That's the only way you got that.

But the person, weirdly and wildly, the person I replaced for his two weeks vacation did not return.

So they just kept me.

And that was my foothold.

After the Mary Tyler Moore show, after the Rotor show, after the shows we did there, after Luke Grant, we did three shows there.

After Phyllis, I mean, I was tied in with five shows that we did there.

And then there were other shows.

And then it was no longer exactly that atmosphere.

And I wanted to chase that atmosphere again, because I love that small atmosphere.

So myself and three colleagues started a new company, and that led to Taxi, which I think was... I've been doing primarily women's stories for all these years, and Taxi was a male-oriented show.

[laughing] I love the show and it was again sort of a miracle of timing because there was a barrier that you could not imagine.

I don't think it ever took place in popular arts to this extent.

If you worked in television, you did not work in movies.

It was so true.

A few actors slipped over but nobody else.

It was the kiss of death.

It's bizarre to talk about it now, but it was absolutely rigid.

So at the time I was doing television at Paramount, we had this perfect world.

Plus we were the underdog because on the other side of the lot, they were doing movies.

The big guys were doing movies.

But on our side of the lot, and it was ghettoized.

It was a side of the lot where our stages were and our offices were.

Ron Howard was there, Rob Reiner was there, Tom Hanks was in a television show, Robin Williams was in a television show, Penny Marshall was in a television show.

So we had the perfect world because we had this beautiful working thing and we were the underdogs and it was shaking our fist at the big guys on the hill, which is perfect.

And that wall came down.

And I think there was a rush of a group of us who was at Paramount that, you know, that went forward when the wall came down.

Okay, now... Does it bother you I'm staying in someone's chair?

Michael Eisner is sort of a legendary figure in motion pictures and television.

And he has an ambling, amiable, sort of doofus-y kind of affect.

And he has a steel trap super brain.

So I used to, whenever I dealt with him, I had a mantra to myself, "This guy is so much smarter than you, this guy is so much smarter than you, this guy is so much smarter than you."

"Because he could outfox, outdo anything with you, he's brilliant, he's brilliant."

"And he said, 'I'll make your movie,' and I said, 'Write it down,'" "'cause he could go so many ways off that."

"And he wrote down, 'I will make your movie for a budget,'" "'I think is four and a half million dollars,'" "and I went away, and four years later, I was still without a movie," "because it budgeted out to nine million dollars," "and there was almost no way to get it to four and a half."

"You could maybe get in the ballpark," "if you did it all in California."

"And I thought this was such a story about Americana," "that, you know, you're defeating the purpose the minute you don't go out there."

And so I went around sort of begging money for a period of time.

And, uh, and Grant Tinker, who my old boss at the Mary Tyler Moore show at this time, was the head of NBC.

And he pre-bought a picture that couldn't amount to anything for television.

And that was a million dollars.

And I think he also invested, somebody else invested a million dollars.

We got there by bit by bit by bit.

The budget was nine and a half after we got Jack, because Jack had to get paid.

You know, so I was close, and then the minute you got Jack, which you weren't going to turn down, it became somewhat more expensive.

It took me a long time to find the right person for the part, Shirley.

It took me a long time to get to her.

I spent maybe six months with every woman who had achieved anything in motion pictures at the age who was then the age of about 50.

So it's like six months of meeting great women, you know, and Shirley was the woman.

Deborah was the star of the moment.

I offered it to two actresses before Deborah and failed to get either one.

And then Deborah said yes and then started to walk away and the whole thing fell apart because the minute you get the star of the moment, then everybody gets that fixated in their minds.

If you don't have it now, you need the star of the moment.

And then she agreed to do it.

And she was very instrumental in getting Jack to read the script.

Jack Nicholson to read the script.

I don't know whether we would have gotten it to him without her, though I knew him slightly.

And then for six months, getting ready for the movie, because Deborah, great, she has a great brain.

And it was like the world's greatest associate producer, like super associate producer.

You couldn't imagine having anybody on your side.

She had a reputation for being very difficult, and I questioned her directly about it.

So it was very difficult at times.

But all the time this was happening, there was a dedicated actress.

There was somebody sleeping on the set, almost eccentrically dedicated, rather than in a hotel room, of trying to soak it up, of being faced with a first-time director, by the way, we have to give her that.

And it had been very volatile, and it was very, you know, and Jack was on everybody's side, which was great.

Jack was a great supporter of mine throughout the filming.

Cut.

Get your ass out of my face.

Then we rebuilt.

I remember we won all these Academy Awards.

It was really sort of like one of those extraordinary things.

And I remember when I won, I paid fitting tribute to Deborah.

Fitting tribute to her.

Key, just this picture couldn't have happened without her and with all, everything.

And she was brilliant because almost everybody in the picture, she was nominated for the Academy Award.

Shirley won it.

So everybody around us was holding a statue except Deborah.

And we took a group picture and she was so great because she came into the picture and held an imaginary iceberg.

After Terms of Endearment, which was my first movie and which was surreal in the level of success.

The thing is with these things is they'll let you do whatever you want to do next.

And I just kicked around.

It was a really nice period of my life because I cut myself some slack.

And I didn't have anything.

So I went to the convention and I just was talking to people.

And I sat down with a prominent, very young reporter at the time.

And I was a young filmmaker and we sat down and she just told me a little about her life and that basically became the storyline.

The two guys that she was involved with and what they represented to me as it was, you know.

And I was meeting other people too who were so... And the one thing I had in mind was a new kind of heroine for a picture.

Let's do a little track back.

Because I can always start at the end of the move.

Oh yeah, sure.

You know, we were still post-feminist.

We were still getting tired of that.

And trying to catch the new woman became whatever I did, I wanted to take my shot at that.

And that became Broadcast News.

I got this script called Old Friends by Mark Andrus, and it had been through development hell.

I don't know how many people giving notes and something so good about it.

And it was really good.

And Mark came in to meet with me.

You know, I was the last sailor in line, I think, on a brutal night in some faraway port for him.

He was pretty beaten up, worked out about it.

But we began talking and I, with his blessing, took a crack at it so that when I think about it now and I think the way he thinks about it, is that it was a writing team that never was in the room together, you know, that worked like this.

I sat down basically to give him an idea of what I think should be done.

And then a year later I was sending him what I'd done and he cared for it and we did it.

Great, great, great.

Great.

You know, if we're talking about pre-production, this is the truth about movies as I know it.

The truth about making movies is how many people, if they don't do their job right, can change the movie.

And with the actors, it becomes such a massive truth.

Here is where actors are truly co-authors, because just changing the casting means that you have a different movie.

I've had it happen with absolute truth, no exaggeration.

I mean objective truth.

I don't mean my slant of the truth, that there was a part in a picture that was for a while uncastable and if it wasn't, and if there wasn't a happy ending to it, the picture, we wouldn't be talking about the picture.

And in broadcast news it was the Holly Hunter part where she came in after an eight month hunt and if she hadn't come in the movie wouldn't be, we wouldn't be talking about it.

And in as good as it gets the Greg Kinnear role where just almost any actor of that age you could think of I spoke with at a certain point.

It's amazing how many and Greg Kinnear was an odd choice that Gary Marshall, another director, had worked with and at a certain point suggested that I see, because Gary had just done a picture with him.

And if not for Greg, we wouldn't be talking.

There's no question in my mind that we wouldn't be talking about As Good As It Gets or it wouldn't be anything like this conversation.

I have to tell you... No, no, no, no, no, no.

Jack was great because it was great that he was going to do it.

When he finally said he'd do it, and I had no... Just I think there might have been a phone conversation, because Deborah was the go-between.

And then he showed up to shoot, to start shooting.

I'd already been shooting a movie for a few weeks.

I knew him a little bit.

And, you know, I mean, Jack's the guy.

And we sat down at the table and they read all their parts together, Shirley and Jack, read all their scenes together.

And it was spellbinding, the relationship.

And I just turned to him at the end and I said, "You son of a bitch," because he'd broken our heart at the end.

And then he was, man, he was great because his instruction to me was, "You can say anything to me."

And then he'd come up to me after a day's shooting.

That's my first picture.

And he'd say, "You want to know the worst direction you gave today?"

And he'd tell me.

And then he'd say, "You want to know the best direction you gave today?"

And he was just great to me.

He was great.

And what he had, remarkably, when anybody's at the pinnacle of their career, especially an actor, where-- especially with a first-time director, just the ability to trust, the ability to-- when you know so much more than the guy behind the camera, when you know so much more-- and I think he directed pictures at this point as well-- to trust-- still trust that person to be your judge and to tell you what to do.

What a-- you know, what-- but in order-- but to really act, it means that you lose self-consciousness.

So if you're trying to outguess that person, you can't do your best job.

Jack's whole being is to do the acting performance.

And to do it, you've got to trust that guy, even if he's not worthy of it.

Keep rolling and do another one.

And do it quick just a little.

The same reading, but just do it a little quicker, the words.

I had written a movie for television which somebody directed and it was, you know, as movies are, it was that kind of experience.

It was, you know, did work afterwards.

It was a battle to get it so that it worked.

I think it was a pretty good movie at the end of it.

And then somebody hired me to adapt a book called Starting Over.

And I wrote a draft and I had been fired without them notifying me.

And they had taken another writer.

And then a year later, I got the rights to the book myself and had that draft and worked on it.

The studio was fine with making the movie, Paramount.

So I got to go after whatever director I wanted, and the director I wanted was Alan Pakula for a lot of reasons.

And he agreed to do it.

It was so funny because we went through so much casting on the movie.

I had written it hoping for Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton.

And Jill Kleeberg was great and I had wanted Cher.

But Alan had been besotted at a lunch with Candace Bergen, who was nominated for Academy Award for the part, as was Jill, and came back with her and she was great.

And then Burt Reynolds became the guy which I, you know, Robert Redford had flirted with it, but I didn't understand how the guy could be that good-looking and preserve the story and Bert did a competent job and then the first day that I was on the stage and I was producer and writer as the actors were doing my speeches I would be doing facial things which where they were starting to look at me as I react you know I was just that transparent and this went on I think for I like to think two days but it was probably one day and Alan barred me from the set as honestly and nicely as you possibly could he said Jim when you're directing a picture you don't need to know everything but you need the illusion that you do and Alan later was my advocate and got me the opportunity to adapt terms of endearment she looked like one of the people who was a model for the part she read with Bill Hurd who was one the leading man one of the greatest looking men alive would also one of the best actors alive there was nothing in Holly that said got him with Bill Hurd nothing she was an actor and he was an actor and she had that right away and scenes that had been ordinary suddenly took fire and just in just in her reading and she was cast immediately and this was two three days before we began rehearsals on the picture here we were doing this nine and a half million dollar movie and we were going coming up against the holiday a crew holiday in New York which would be a four-day weekend and we were supposed to wrap the picture before that four-day weekend to not incur the cost of carrying the crew and she wouldn't come to work and I caught so everybody who's beating me up about cost I called everybody and say get her to work and she was not coming to work and and it soon became apparent that for some reason I was responsible for not coming to work I mean which I think is sort of true today on a certain level and I went to her hotel and I knocked on the door and she said who is it and I said Jim and she says I'm not going to see you and I said I have to use the bathroom and she said nice try and that was the whole piece and I forget the end of this eventually she came back eventually we finished the movie.

For Spanglish I had it in my mind the story was better if it was a drop-dead beautiful woman and we were looking for a drop-dead beautiful woman who was Hispanic and we looked for a very long very long time a very complicated part and she came in you know the toast of Spain raining beauty of her time then and now as we speak and she took the flight from Spain to Los Angeles which is four million hours long and arrived there and had eight hours on the ground before she had to go back and continue the movie she was shooting and that's how we found Paz.

I really think that if that if somebody like me does a Hispanic heroine they got to really do their homework and feel great dedication to the cause of representing that and I did my homework and I felt that tremendously and then I was doing a very edgy white Los Angeles kind of woman who was who was and hysteric and the other day I this rarely happens to me you know I'm going through some papers and I see the script for Spanglish and I read and I went immediately to the last pages I think because I think I after all this I forgotten how I ended it and you know I had very self-serving emotional reaction because I cried at the end just you know very detached from it personally as representative of me just seeing in the movie what the kids said at the end and what that said about that culture.

First day of filming on terms of endearment Shirley came in and started doing the part with a Texas accent which she'd worked on and it just wasn't right to me and we were filming and we came back the next day and did the same scene and I put in an off camera line that said that she was from Boston and she didn't make any sense of a Texas accent.

It's a privilege to do a picture based on an idea and a reason that you want to do.

It's just a privilege that's greater and greater and greater as it becomes a rarer and rarer privilege to have.

Gee, I had this, you know, I like to do this film.

And so that's always true because I think everything I've done is because I just wanted to do it.

And then somebody let me.

You have a very specific romantic relationship with every picture you've done.

And it's dishonorable not to continue the romance in memory, I think.

[MUSIC PLAYING] The Simpsons is everybody's dream date.

And it's the dream date that becomes real because it never ends.

You know, it's the date that goes on forever.

It's so great.

All these shifts and everything like that.

And we, you know, our point of pride is that if you go on the 20th Century Fox lot and see everybody working on a TV show, and you'll say, "Which is the new show?"

You'll very likely pick The Simpsons, if you just come from Mars or something.

Because we have that kind of work and trying to protect what we've achieved and keep on challenging ourselves consciously, you know.

Just, you know, so that we're all serving something so much bigger than any of us.

It just gives us blessing.

And people have put their lives on that show.

People, you know, people are on the writing staff now who were, you know, seven years old when they were watching it.

Every once in a while, something, you know, it doesn't happen.

Maybe it happened 12 times in my life where somebody's there's a quote that has a ring of truth and I just it just becomes part of my life.

And there are two quotes that I think govern my attitude towards work and the way I look at this stuff.

And one, I think it's George Bernard Shore, "If you're going to tell the truth, make them laugh or they'll kill you."

That's that quote.

The greatest thing anybody can do if they're operating and writing in the popular culture is to say, to hit something.

We are saying to people, you're not alone.

[music]