James Lawrence Brooks (born May 9, 1940) is an American filmmaker. He is the founder of Gracie Films and co-created the sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi, as well as co-developed The Simpsons. He also directed the films Terms of Endearment (1983), Broadcast News (1987), and As Good as It Gets (1997). In a career spanning six decades, Brooks received numerous accolades including three Academy Awards, 22 Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award.
Brooks started his career as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the CBS News broadcasts. He then moved to Los Angeles in 1965 to work on David L. Wolper's documentaries. He wrote for My Mother the Car and My Friend Tony and created the series Room 222. Grant Tinker hired Brooks and producer Allan Burns at MTM Productions to create The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. Brooks and Burns then created two successful spin-offs from Mary Tyler Moore: Rhoda (a comedy) and Lou Grant (a drama). Brooks left MTM Productions in 1978 to co-create the sitcom Taxi (1978–1983).
Brooks moved into feature film work when he wrote and co-produced Starting Over (1979). His next film was the acclaimed Terms of Endearment, which he produced, directed, and wrote, winning Academy Awards (for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay) for all three roles. He subsequently earned acclaim for his films Broadcast News and As Good as It Gets. He received mixed reviews for I'll Do Anything (1994), Spanglish (2004), and How Do You Know (2010), and negative reviews for Ella McCay (2025). Brooks also produced the directorial debuts of Cameron Crowe—Say Anything... (1989)—and Wes Anderson, Bottle Rocket (1996).
In 1986, Brooks founded Gracie Films, a film and television production company. Although he did not intend to do so, Brooks returned to television in 1987 as the producer of The Tracey Ullman Show. He hired cartoonist Matt Groening to create a series of shorts for the television show, which led in 1989 to The Simpsons. It won numerous awards and is still running after over 37 years, becoming the longest-serving American primetime television series and the longest-serving American animated series and sitcom. Brooks also co-produced and co-wrote The Simpsons Movie (2007). Brooks has received 62 Emmy nominations, winning 22 of them.
James Lawrence Brooks was born on May 9, 1940, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, and raised in North Bergen, New Jersey. His parents, Dorothy Helen (née Sheinheit) and Edward M. Brooks, were both salespeople (his mother sold children's clothes; his father furniture). The Brooks family was Jewish; Edward Brooks changed his surname from Bernstein and claimed to be Irish. Brooks's father abandoned his mother when he found out she was pregnant with him, and lost contact with his son when Brooks was twelve. During the pregnancy, Brooks' father sent his wife a postcard stating that "If it's a boy, name him Jim." His mother died when he was 22. He has described his early life as "tough" with a "broken home, [and him being] poor and sort of lonely, that sort of stuff," later adding: "My father was sort of in-and-out and my mother worked long hours, so there was no choice but for me to be alone in the apartment a lot." He has an older sister, Diane, who helped look after him as a child and to whom he dedicated As Good as It Gets.
Brooks spent much of his childhood "surviving" and reading numerous comedic and scripted works, as well as writing. He sent comedic short stories out to publishers, and occasionally got positive responses, although none were published, and he did not believe he could make a career as a writer. Brooks attended Weehawken High School, but was not a high achiever. He was on his high school newspaper team and frequently secured interviews with celebrities, including Louis Armstrong. He lists some of his influences as Sid Caesar, Jack Benny, Lenny Bruce, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, as well as writers Mark Twain, Paddy Chayefsky and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Brooks dropped out of a public-relations program at New York University. Through his sister, who knew a secretary at CBS, he obtained a hosting job at the network's New York office — a position that typically required a college degree. For two weeks he filled in as a copywriter for CBS News and was given the job permanently when the original employee never returned. Brooks went on to become a writer for the news broadcasts, joining the Writers Guild of America and writing reports on events such as the assassination of President Kennedy. He moved to Los Angeles in 1965, to write for documentaries being produced by David L. Wolper, something he "still [hasn't] quite figured out how [he] got the guts to do," as his job at CBS was secure and well-paid. He worked as an associate producer on series such as Men in Crisis, but after six months he was laid off as the company was trying to cut back on expenses. Brooks did occasionally work for Wolper's company again, including on a National Geographic insect special.
Failing to find another job at a news agency, he met producer Allan Burns at a party. Burns got him a job on My Mother the Car where he was hired to rewrite a script after pitching some story ideas. Brooks then went on to write episodes of That Girl, The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons before Sheldon Leonard hired him as a story editor on My Friend Tony. In 1969 he created the series Room 222 for ABC, which lasted until 1974. Room 222 was the second series in American history to feature a black lead character, in this case high school teacher Pete Dixon played by Lloyd Haynes. The network felt the show was sensitive and so attempted to change the pilot story so that Dixon helped a white student rather than a black one, but Brooks prevented it. On the show Brooks worked with Gene Reynolds who taught him the importance of extensive and diligent research, which he conducted at Los Angeles High School for Room 222, and he used the technique on his subsequent works. Brooks left Room 222 as head writer after one year to work on other pilots and brought Burns in to produce the show. The Television Academy Foundation would point out that Room 222 "broke new narrative ground that would later be developed by the major sitcom factories of the 1970s, Grant Tinker's MTM Enterprises and Norman Lear's Tandem Productions" and also noted how the show even preceded Lear's 1970s sitcoms when it came to discussing "serious contemporary issues."
Brooks and Burns were hired by CBS programming executive Grant Tinker to create a series together with MTM Productions for Tinker's wife Mary Tyler Moore which became The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Drawing on his own background in journalism, Brooks set the show in a newsroom. Initially the show was unpopular with CBS executives who demanded Tinker fire Brooks and Burns. However the show was one of the beneficiaries of network president Fred Silverman's "rural purge"; executive Bob Wood also liked the show and moved it into a better timeslot. Brooks and Burns hired all of the show's staff themselves and eventually ended it of their own accord. The Mary Tyler Moore Show became a critical and commercial success and was the first show to feature an independent-minded, working woman, not reliant on a man, as its lead. Geoff Hammill of the Museum of Broadcast Communications described it as "one of the most acclaimed television programs ever produced" in US television history. During its seven-year period it received high praise from critics and numerous Primetime Emmy Awards, including for three years in a row Outstanding Comedy Series. In 2003 USA Today called it "one of the best shows ever to air on TV". In 1997 TV Guide selected a Mary Tyler Moore Show episode as the best TV episode ever and in 1999, Entertainment Weekly picked Mary's hat toss in the opening credits as television's second greatest moment.
With Mary Tyler Moore going strong, Brooks produced and wrote the TV film Thursday's Game, before creating the short-lived series Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers in 1974. He and Burns moved on to Rhoda, a spin-off of Mary Tyler Moore, taking Valerie Harper's character Rhoda Morgenstern into her own show. It was well received, lasting four years and earning Brooks several Emmys. The duo's next project came in 1977 in the shape of Lou Grant, a second Mary Tyler Moore spin-off starring Edward Asner as Grant, which they created along with Tinker. Unlike its source, however, the series was a drama. James Brown of the Museum of Broadcast Communications said it "explore[d] a knotty issue facing media people in contemporary society, focusing on how investigating and reporting those issues impact on the layers of personalities populating a complex newspaper publishing company." The show was also critically acclaimed, twice winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series and also a Peabody Award.