“Terms of Endearment” Director James L. Brooks Says We’ve Been Watching It Wrong: ‘Nobody Realizes It’s a Comedy’ (Exclusive)

James L. Brooks is setting the record straight on Terms of Endearment.

Brooks, 85, spoke exclusively with PEOPLE about a common misconception surrounding his 1983 hit movie, which follows the tumultuous relationship between a mother and daughter. 

“Nobody realizes that it’s a comedy, watching it in that environment,” he says of viewers watching the movie from home. “When you’re in the theater, I swear to God. That was the most important thing in the world for me.”

The movie, which was directed, written and produced by Brooks, starred Shirley MacLaine as Aurora Greenway, a wealthy Texas widow, and Debra Winger as her rebellious daughter Emma.

A turning point in the movie is when Emma is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Despite the heavy theme, the film leaves viewers crying during one scene and laughing at the next, thanks to the witty dialogue and slapstick humor intertwined with the heart-wrenching storylines.

“You don’t do that storyline unless it’s a comedy, and you’ve got to clock laughs,” Brooks says. “I went crazy because at the time, cancer was a great fear word. So it became, ‘I gotta get a laugh with the word cancer.’ ”

Terms of Endearment, based on Larry McMurtry’s 1975 novel of the same name, also starred Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Jeff Daniels and John Lithgow.

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The movie won five Oscar awards, including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for Brooks, Best Actress for MacLaine and Best Supporting Actor for Nicholson.

Brooks also talks to PEOPLE about the rocky relationship between Winger and MacLaine, which has been long documented.

He says the mood on set felt like “when mom and dad are fighting, and that kind of frozen feeling you get in the pit of your stomach that you can do very little about it… it was a little like that.”

Brooks’ latest movie is Ella McCay, which he also wrote and directed. It stars Emma Mackey in the title role with Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Lowden, Ayo Edebiri and Woody Harrelson.

The movie follows Ella, a 32-year-old woman working as a lieutenant governor in an unnamed state in 2008. She finds herself thrust into a governorship role when her boss is elevated to a cabinet-level position in the U.S. federal government.

Before Ella McCay, the last movie that Brooks wrote and directed was 2010’s How Do You Know, starring Reese Witherspoon. The filmmaker also produced 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen and 2023’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Ella McCay is in theaters now.