Writer/director/actor Courtney Davis joins to discuss the 1991 comedy-fantasy DEFENDING YOUR LIFE starring Albert Brooks, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, and Lee Grant. This was Brooks' fourth feature film as writer and director and his most ambitious comedy yet, depicting the afterlife as an efficient and religiously-unaffiliated destination called Judgment City, where highly intelligent bureaucrats prosecute, defend, and ultimately judge the lives of the recently dead. DEFENDING YOUR LIFE was a box office disappointment upon release, but has since grown in reputation as a singularly inventive and thought-provoking comedy of the '90s. In this episode, we render the definitive judgment on Brooks' pleasant purgatory, but not before some diversions into Universal Studios, The Fast and the Furious, Texas geography, Norman Mailer's Maidstone, Sizzler, remote education, social media woes, Don't Worry Darling, facing our fears, and much much more!
