Albert Brooks Finds a New Use for His Character's Backstory One of the scene-stealers at the New York Film Critics Circle dinner on Monday was the best supporting actor winner, Albert Brooks, whose kudos began with an impromptu shout-out from Aaron Sorkin. "At the beginning at my writing career, I did not think that I would ever be writing movies," Mr. Sorkin said, as he accepted his award for co-writing the "Moneyball" screenplay. "I'm not somebody who can write action, make things explode or do the kinds of things that a screenwriter really has to be able to do to have that kind of commercial success," he continued. But seeing two of Mr. Brooks" movies, "Modern Romance" and "Lost in America," helped convince him he had the chops. "I can't believe that I get to accept an award on the same night that Albert's going to," Mr. Sorkin gushed. "First of all, I'm still knocked out by what Aaron Sorkin said," Mr. Brooks said when he took the stage. "I feel so guilty now for selling my Academy copy of "The Social Network."" The rest of his speech was equally full of zingers. He was fascinated, he said, by performers who claim not to read reviews. "If you have a living relative," Mr. Brooks said, "you are going to know what the review is." Then he told a story about his mother, and ended by thanking his wife. The Bagger spoke with Mr. Brooks, who is also up for a Golden Globe this weekend, a few hours before the critics ceremony, not long after he had done a Q&A about "Drive." Mostly he gets asked about the distance between the comic roles he's known for and playing Bernie Rose, a small-time crook with a big penchant for violence. He said he didn't find audiences" incredulity at his role in "Drive" an insult. "People are busy," he said. They don't have time to think what I can do. But, Mr. Brooks said that aside from his own movies, he had always wanted to play the baddie. "In down times, the parts that I've wanted are those kind of parts, because I knew I could play them interestingly," he said. The "Mission: Impossible" installment featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman as the bad guy came to mind. "I got a hold of that script and I really wanted that part and the guy directing the movie said, "I'm a big fan but I just don't see it."" "It took a Danish guy," the director Nicolas Winding Refn, to see his potential. "They came to me, I went to his house - he was in Los Angeles," Mr. Brooks continued, adding, "Some of it was awkward, some of it was pleasant. And they offered me the part the next day. Mr. Brooks added that he later found out that along with Ryan Gosling, who stars, he had been Mr. Refn's first choice all along. "They can't tell you that before you come," Mr. Brooks added, "because then they can't pay you nothing." Mr. Refn has a reputation as a bit of an oddball - for one thing, he made "Drive" without even knowing how to drive - but Mr. Brooks had high praise. "He doesn't seem like he knows what he wants, but in the end he knows exactly what he wants, done to the volume of the gunshot," Mr. Brooks said. He looks like he's being infiltrated by you, but he isn't. These movies that he makes are very precise, they look like wristwatches. Part of the precision on the set of "Drive" involved Mr. Gosling staying in character as a guy who didn't talk much. Mr. Brooks trained with a knife expert for some of his big scenes. "I worked just to handle knives like you handle them, because the truth is I don't like knives," he said. I'd cut one of my testicles off if I carried a knife like that. Mr. Brooks goes to great lengths to prepare for his roles, writing out lengthy backstories for his characters. "I find it's helpful just to know about things in your mind," he said. You can put it away. Because that's what real people do. Real people walk into a room knowing where they've been the day before and what's happening to them. It makes the present easier, if you know the past. For Bernie, he imagined his history, from a background as a small-time film producer and illegal exporter of cars to his divorce, even deciding that he had two strippers he saw regularly. "I even did some things where I wrote a letter from Bernie to his ex-wife just to see what it would sound like," Mr. Brooks said. Did he even go so far as to imagine the stripper's names? No, he said. If I wrote too much my wife would've left me. But you just gave me a great idea - "No, those names and numbers and addresses, that was Bernie!" What about this voicemail? "Oh, I asked her to leave it for Bernie."" He laughed. God, I wish I was doing Bernie in a series. I could get away with so much.