Albert Brooks Predicted Ozempic. Now He’s Predicting President Ossoff

By the fifth sentence of Twenty Thirty, Albert Brooks already looks like a modern-day Nostradamus. At an 80th birthday party in the 2011 novel, everyone looks suspiciously good, due in part to “a new weight-loss drug” that “works almost 100 percent of the time, in everyone.”

Then come the computer watches, the self-driving vehicles and a generation of young people furious at their elders for living so long and consuming so much of the country’s wealth.

But the prediction that gave the director of Lost in America chills was the one about a Jewish president.

In the novel, a candidate named Matthew Bernstein, the son of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, wins the 2028 election and becomes America’s first Jewish president. Brooks, 79, was watching Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff’s final campaign speech when he thought of Bernstein. Ossoff also has a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. Brooks called a close friend.

“God damn it,” he remembers saying. “My entire book is going to come true.”

I’d read and loved Twenty Thirty, and Ossoff made me think of Bernstein, too. So I called Brooks to ask how much of the future he imagined in 2011 he thinks we’re already living in.

Albert, what made you give your president a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother?

When one parent is one religion and one parent is another, it sort of puts you in a third place. You come from two ends of a spectrum, and as a result, you experience more in life. And that’s what Ossoff is. In my opinion, he produces exactly the feeling as when Obama emerged. This guy talks to an audience as good as anyone I’ve ever heard.

The thing that gets him elected in the book is that his opponent is heard on a hot mic saying something antisemitic.

Right. So the only difference is that today that might be a plus.

Well, let me ask you that. There’s so much antisemitism now. How do you think that could affect someone like Jon Ossoff?

I’ve watched him speak many, many times now and it doesn’t come up. It doesn’t even go there. He is so captivating, in the way he explains to an audience why they’re feeling the way they do.

He doesn’t talk to people coming from a religious place. He talks to people about their pocketbook and about their Medicare and about stuff that they’re really concerned about.

Again, it was like when Obama emerged. The early questions were, “Well, could this happen? An African American?” But it never came up with Obama because he was so captivating and people were just interested in how, maybe, he was going to fix their lives.

Of course with Obama, race did come up, but he overcame that.

Obama came on the scene and talked to you differently than anyone else, and that’s why you listened. And he was really good — really good — at talking to people. That’s most of the game. If people are intrigued by you, they won’t lead off with “what’s your color” or “what’s your religion?” They will listen, because they want stuff to get fixed. People are desperate to have someone talk to them intelligently.

I find myself, like you, very drawn to him. Part of it is he’s very handsome — maybe he would be the most handsome president since Kennedy.

He looks like a movie star.

He really does. And then the way he communicates is very intelligent and like you said, compelling.

So you got the whole package. I mean, whoever says in politics that looks are a bad thing? If you’re blessed with looks, you’re way ahead of the game. You’re standing up there and people are looking at you. And then if God knows you can combine it with language, it’s potent. But this guy’s smart. That’s why I like him. I don’t feel insulted when he talks to me. I don’t feel he’s talking to me in cliches.

There is a war going on in your book between the young and the old. The young resent the old to the point of wanting to harm them.

If you go look at Europe now, you look at France, that revolution is on the ground. I am telling you it’s coming here. Because at some point, I don’t care how intelligent the politician is, I don’t think there’s an ability to solve the world’s money issues without many millions of people getting screwed.

It’s funny, all the discoveries now with AI, it’s all about, “Oh my God, maybe people could live to be 120.” And I have to laugh — because 25-year-olds don’t want to take care of 75-year-olds. You think they’re going to want to take care of 125-year-olds? “Hey, Bobby, I got some news for you! Because Grandpa can now live an extra 50 years, you’re going to have to work two more hours a week.”

What does a 25-year-old today have to look forward to compared with a 25-year-old a generation ago?

Right now, if you’re 25, you are guaranteed much less than when your father or your grandfather was 25, because they had the possibility of long employment. You could get a job for 30 years, you would get a pension, you would get a guarantee of healthcare, and that was your life. That’s how you built your foundation.

That’s all gone. I don’t know of anybody in their 20s that are looking for lifetime work. It’s gig to gig to gig. And what does that do? That makes healthcare really difficult.

And where does AI fit into all of this?

All we’re doing in my perception is we’re delaying the inevitable and hoping that something called AI will fix it. But in fact, AI is more likely to because more of it because no one has explained to me when all the robots are here, what people are going to be doing. “Hey, is this Bob? Bob, this is United Industries. Do you want to clean the robot’s wheels?” “Yes. What does that pay?” “Oh, not a lot, Bob. Like $20 a wheel.”

Remember that guy Andrew Yang who ran on universal basic income? Well, what does that even mean? “Hey, Seth, no more work, but relax. What do you got? 50 years left? I’ll give you 40 grand a year. Have fun, baby.” Because in my mind, you’d have to raise an entire population from zero to teach them how to live in that world. The people that are alive today don’t know how to sit for the rest of their lives and do nothing. It’s just not how we’re programmed.

Now the thing that hasn’t come true in the book, but will, hopefully not in my lifetime, is the “Big One” earthquake I talk about. An event so over the top that the country couldn’t respond.

Reading about the L.A. earthquake in your book, I couldn’t help thinking of the fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

And by the way, nothing is being done at a rate that anyone hoped for. I drove by there. There are some houses being rebuilt. This thing’s going to take a decade, minimum. We don’t do things quickly. That’s just the way it is. So that’s why in the book, when China offers to take half of the land in exchange for rebuilding, it was very appealing to the United States. Because God knows they build quickly.

I wrote this in 2010, published in 2011, and we’re what, about 15 years later, and this stuff looks more real to me today than it did when I wrote it.

Some of the other things you get right: You describe a Dick Tracy-style futuristic watch that sounds a lot like the Apple Watch.

Yeah.

And cars you get into and tell where to go.

Right. I also suggest health kiosks around a city. You would be diagnosed electronically, and then if it was more serious, you’d go to the hospital. These kiosks, I think, is something that will happen.

Well, you’re leaving something out though, which is that you give one drop of blood and it analyzes it and tells you what’s wrong with you. What does that remind me of?

Yes, Theranos. Right. Well, in my book, it worked.

You have one hell of a crystal ball.

I’ve been sensing this for many, many years. I didn’t write the book just by getting up one day. I wrote the book because I thought this is what I feel and I don’t know how else to express it. I would never have gotten a budget to make a movie this big, so I had to write it.

That’s my next question. So you did the great take on heaven in Defending Your Life. Would you do a futuristic film?

Well, the thing is, I presented this as a series and wrote with a friend of mine about four episodes. And right before COVID, FX bought it.

No kidding.

That’s right. But then sitting dead for three years where nobody was doing anything, it didn’t survive. And I feel bad about that. They committed to Shogun. Every day I watch programs on television and in my heart, I think this is still the big story. Until people can see it, I don’t think they comprehend it.

And that’s another thing you say in the book, that there’s no more legacy news outlets that you can trust. Everything is just splintered into a million pieces and you have to make up your own mind — which is where we live now, no?

Absolutely. I had this discussion the other day to someone just about truth and I said, “What is truth?” When something, a human event, happens, it’s real — and then forever it’s reflected and it’s talked about. And the more time goes by, the more the truth is completely gone.

But I’m telling you — this Ossoff made me go, “Holy moly, holy moly. Maybe my antenna was really working.”

So let’s get you on the record. You think Jon Ossoff is going to be president?

I do. I don’t know if it’ll be ’28 or ’32, but we’ll see how he does in the Senate. Let me just say this. I haven’t seen a person who so many people that I run into say, “Oh boy.” I’m just looking for someone who can help — who can undo some of the craziness because no candidate’s going to be able to snap their fingers and fix everything.