It's a little bit funny...

Sony Pictures is refusing to release a new film by Albert Brooks and it's been picked up by Warner Bros. I'm more agnostic about Brooks than some comedy fans. I know there are people who think he's one of the funniest writer/directors alive. But I tend to prefer him as an actor in other people's work. Movies like Finding Nemo, the interesting but finally too sentimental My First Mister, and especially Broadcast News (my fave). They show, in my view, a talent for acting beyond comedy (though most of them are very funny).

Writing for and directing himself, the neurotic neediness of his comic persona tends to be exacerbated for me. On a completely unrelated matter, a co-worker once compared me to Brooks. To this day, I'm not sure whether she meant it as a compliment.

That said, his own films almost always have interesting and funny ideas in them, especially Defending Your Life and Lost in America. And the new one does sound promising.

...the real problem with Hollywood isn't simply its glorification of sex, money and lame old TV shows. It's that our Ivy League-educated studio elite often don't know the difference between crass and class. How's this for an example: Sony Pictures, the studio that made "European Gigolo," has refused to release "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," an inspired new film by Albert Brooks about a comedian — Brooks, playing himself — who is recruited by the U.S. government to go to India and Pakistan to find out what makes Muslims laugh.

The movie makes fun of comedians' neurotic neediness and State Department ineffectuality, but seems to steer clear of anything that would insult Muslims. Still, in a June 30 letter to Brooks, Sony chairman Michael Lynton said that he wouldn't release the film unless Brooks changed the title. Lynton wrote: "I do believe that recent incidents have dramatically changed the landscape that we live in and that this, among other things, warrants changing the title of the film." Sony insiders say Lynton was alarmed by the violent reaction in the Muslim world to Newsweek's May 9 story, since retracted, about a Koran being flushed down the toilet by interrogators at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.