James L Brooks is in a ruminative mood. “Mike Nichols had this wonderful thing he used to say when anybody was making a movie: who’s your buddy? By that, he meant that person who watches your back, who you can say anything to, hear anything from. It’s the person who shares the insanity that you have to feel when you’re making a movie, the kind of madness that any film deserves on the part of the director.”
Brooks is trying to describe the role he played on Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, the new adaptation of the Judy Blume novel, written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, and for which Brooks is credited as a producer. “Empathically, I can share the madness a little,” he says. He’s worked with Craig before, producing her debut feature The Edge of Seventeen – and was reportedly a key element in persuading Blume to allow Craig to adapt her book for the screen.
