BROOKS RETURNS TO FORM

The legendary director of movies including Terms of Endearment finds humor and heartache in Ella McCay

- BY H. ALAN SCOTT

IT'S BEEN 15 YEARS SINCE OSCAR-WINNING director James L. Brooks has released a film, and his absence has been felt. The architect of classics like Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good as It Gets is back. He returns to form with Ella McCay, a story rooted in the messy human emotions of complicated relationships—a genre he has mastered, yet one that's become increasingly rare in modern cinema.

Brooks' decision to make Ella McCay wasn't sparked by a trend or franchise opportunity, but rather by an emotional irritation. “It was a reaction to so many films ending with, ‘I forgive you. OK, we're all OK,’” Brooks tells Newsweek. “So I had a little perverse reaction, you know? Because I think some things must be unforgivable for forgivable to mean anything. If you don't have unforgivable, what are you doing with forgivable? That's my theory.”

This theory forms the spine of the story, which follows Ella, played by Emma Mackey, a young politician who juggles being a trailblazer at the moment with trying to avoid a set of scandals that risk ruining it all—all largely created by the men in her life: her husband Ryan (Jack Lowden), father Eddie (Woody Harrelson) and former boss Governor Bill (Albert Brooks). She's supported throughout it all by her Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), and longtime secretary Estelle (Julie Kavner).

Typical of Brooks' films, his characters walk a razor's edge between comfort and trauma, with the writer/director often drawing from his own history. “I was raised around women,” Brooks says. “My father was not a good guy. And so I maybe carry still a grudge. He was a really bad guy. I think that you're always trying to catch the right heroine at the time, you know?”