Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, this is Sam. As you may have
Speaker 1: heard last week on the show, I sat with writer,
Speaker 1: journalist and editor of The New Yorker David Remnick. It's
Speaker 1: a conversation I've been wanting to have on Talk Easy
Speaker 1: since I started the program back in twenty sixteen. But
Speaker 1: when we were thinking about how to end twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three and who to end it with, I felt like
Speaker 1: David had the right mix of warmth, curiosity, generosity of spirit,
Speaker 1: and also a depth that felt fitting to close out
Speaker 1: what has been objectively, i'd say, a pretty difficult year.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard that episode yet, it's really one
Speaker 1: of my favorites. You can find that wherever you are
Speaker 1: listening to this right now. We talk about his latest
Speaker 1: dispatch from the Middle East, a region he's reported on
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. We talked about his early days running
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, the power of the written word, the
Speaker 1: longevity of musician Joni Mitchell, and somehow and probably so
Speaker 1: much more. To all those that have listened to it
Speaker 1: and have been sharing on social media, I just want
Speaker 1: to thank you for that. It is, as you know,
Speaker 1: challenging to make a weekly podcast and seeing those posts
Speaker 1: reading your kind words really does embolden us to keep
Speaker 1: moving forward and to keep making this program each and
Speaker 1: every Sunday. Along with running the magazine, David Remnick somehow
Speaker 1: hosts The New Yorker Radio Hour, a weekly program that
Speaker 1: covers news, politics, movies, and everything in between. And so
Speaker 1: this week I wanted to share a recent episode they
Speaker 1: did with actor and director Bradley Cooper. Cooper co wrote
Speaker 1: and directed the new film Maestro, where he started as
Speaker 1: legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. I saw the film
Speaker 1: last month in theaters, where it's still playing in select
Speaker 1: locations across the country if you can't make it out,
Speaker 1: though it is currently available to stream exclusively on Netflix.
Speaker 1: In the coming months, we're hoping to do another episode
Speaker 1: around Maestro, so keep your eyes open for that. But
Speaker 1: until then, Happy holidays to you and yours. And now,
Speaker 1: without further ado, I wanted to present this really lovely
Speaker 1: conversation from our friends at WNYC featuring Bradley Cooper and
Speaker 1: David Remnick on The New Yorker Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: Like nearly everyone my age, I grew up on rock
Speaker 2: and roll, Little Richard, the Beatles, The Stones, Aretha But
Speaker 2: in that heroic pantheon of mine, one figure stood out,
Speaker 2: the classical conductor, composer, and teacher Entard Bernstein. Bernstein was
Speaker 2: a personality as kaleidoscopic as any rock star on podiums
Speaker 2: from New York to Berlin, conducting Beethoven or Maler. He
Speaker 2: was as physical in his way as James Brown or
Speaker 2: Tina Turner. Bernstein wrote the music to West Side Story
Speaker 2: and other Broadway hits, and he was a vivid and
Speaker 2: accessible presence on television, leading the famous Young People's concerts.
Speaker 3: It's a funny thing about this meaning business in music anyway,
Speaker 3: when you say what.
Speaker 2: Does it mean, what you're really saying is what is
Speaker 2: it trying to tell you?
Speaker 4: What ideas does it make me have?
Speaker 2: Bernstein drew you into a long tradition of music that
Speaker 2: might otherwise have escaped your ears, And what a loss
Speaker 2: that would have been. Bernstein also had a personal life
Speaker 2: that was chaotic and for its time revolutionary. His marriage
Speaker 2: to a brilliant actress, Fulisia montaleg is the subject of
Speaker 2: Bradley Cooper's thrilling new film Maestro. Carrie Mulligan plays Felicia
Speaker 2: and Cooper plays Leonard. Bernstein. He also co wrote the
Speaker 2: screenplay and directed the film. I had the chance to
Speaker 2: watch Maestro with Bradley Cooper and then we sat down
Speaker 2: to talk about it at length. So let's let's get
Speaker 2: to it. This is an extraordinary performance and piece of
Speaker 2: writing and directing. And you have been living this for
Speaker 2: I don't know how many years. What is the origin
Speaker 2: story of Maestro.
Speaker 4: I would have to date it back to being a
Speaker 4: child and inundated with cartoons as a kid in front
Speaker 4: of the television and Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny conducting,
Speaker 4: and we also simultaneously had a record player in the
Speaker 4: living room that would always have classical music. And that
Speaker 4: was the first time I realized that you could move
Speaker 4: your hand up and down and sound comes out. And
Speaker 4: I just came absolutely obsessed with that idea of power,
Speaker 4: quite honestly, and magical power.
Speaker 2: It must be narcotic.
Speaker 4: It really felt that way as a kid, because I
Speaker 4: asked Santa Claus that coming Christmas for a baton. I
Speaker 4: don't think I knew you. I must have been in
Speaker 4: between six to eight. I don't know exactly when, but
Speaker 4: you know, right around then, and I still remember when
Speaker 4: it showed up and I kept it. I just lost
Speaker 4: it last year, but I had it all the way
Speaker 4: through college. I kept it in my college dorm. In
Speaker 4: grad school, it was sort of like a totem for me.
Speaker 4: And even in grad school, Eland Burston came and did
Speaker 4: a workshop for four weeks and the assignment was create
Speaker 4: a character, and I created I wrote a monologue for
Speaker 4: a conductor. And so it was always something that was
Speaker 4: inside of me for since I was a kid, and
Speaker 4: I spent hundreds of hours David conducting to music that
Speaker 4: I loved as a child. I mean, I'm not exaggerating
Speaker 4: that number. So that when it rolled around seven years
Speaker 4: six and a half year years ago that Steven Spielberg
Speaker 4: was going to perhaps do a biopic about Leonard Bernstein,
Speaker 4: he happened to know that little fact about my obsession
Speaker 4: with conducting and said, would you read the script and
Speaker 4: would you ever consider playing Bernstein? And he wasn't going
Speaker 4: to direct it. I said, listen, would you let me
Speaker 4: sort of investigate and see if there's a movie that
Speaker 4: I a script that I could write, a story that
Speaker 4: I feel like I could tell that what allowed me
Speaker 4: to enter into it and conduct.
Speaker 2: So there was an existing script at that there was
Speaker 2: by whom by Josh Singer who came on board and
Speaker 2: we wrote it together the new script. But just to
Speaker 2: be clear, Leonard Bernstein, I'm older than you are. He
Speaker 2: was a part of childhood for me, and he was
Speaker 2: magnetic like nothing else in the classical music realm.
Speaker 4: He was a rock star, no question.
Speaker 2: And he acknowledged rock and roll and even brought in
Speaker 2: rock band or did yeah. Yeah, So you're younger, you're
Speaker 2: watching it through, absorbing it through purely from records.
Speaker 4: You're talking about once I started doing.
Speaker 2: Research, But was your a kid and getting a kid
Speaker 2: and just records.
Speaker 4: Ricardo Moody was the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra
Speaker 4: back then. I was lucky enough that my parents took
Speaker 4: my sister and I a couple of times. We spent
Speaker 4: a vacation in Boca Raton, Florida, and it's Doc Pearlman
Speaker 4: happened to be staying in the room next door, and
Speaker 4: I'll have you forget it, And I just heard the
Speaker 4: violin all throughout the night and day when we were there,
Speaker 4: and I was just obsessed with, Who's what creature's making
Speaker 4: this in the other room.
Speaker 2: Incredible, incredible. So years go by, and suddenly Steven Spielberg
Speaker 2: has given you a blessing. That's right, sense, and so
Speaker 2: what do you do next?
Speaker 4: And then the work began. I had to go and
Speaker 4: meet the three children, Nina, Alex and Jamie and and
Speaker 4: try to convince them to trust me enough to give
Speaker 4: me the rights to the music for however a long
Speaker 4: amount of years the contract would be and I had
Speaker 4: no and David, I had no story, there was no script.
Speaker 4: I showed them the movie starsborn, and I told them
Speaker 4: that what I just told you, and I said, it's
Speaker 4: a very big fire burning inside me for a conductor,
Speaker 4: and I won't ever make a movie I don't believe
Speaker 4: in And they said yes.
Speaker 2: So at some point you have to find the story
Speaker 2: within the story, the narrative within the big, sprawling biography.
Speaker 2: And clearly the center of the film is the relationship
Speaker 2: between husband and wife, and it's a very complicated one.
Speaker 2: Why did you go for that as opposed to some
Speaker 2: other aspect of Bernstein's life.
Speaker 4: One thing I realized right off the bat is, first
Speaker 4: of all, I had no desire to make a biopic.
Speaker 4: You can make an incredible documentary, and some have been
Speaker 4: made already about this man. Because of just the sheer
Speaker 4: amount of primary footage out there. But I also wanted
Speaker 4: to do right by his impact. But because there's sound, picture, colors,
Speaker 4: production value, as well as story, all of these things
Speaker 4: that encompass a film, I thought that I could achieve
Speaker 4: conveying his achievements through other means than just story. For example,
Speaker 4: I thought, well, the whole movie can be set to
Speaker 4: his music. Right away, I thought, I feel like I
Speaker 4: can take care away of that transh of his legacy
Speaker 4: by just having the whole movie be scored to his music.
Speaker 4: He also had a relationship to God was a big
Speaker 4: part of his life, and that early on, I started
Speaker 4: to see the visual aspect of the film. That's what
Speaker 4: excites me is about a filmmaker. That's where the one
Speaker 4: three three aspect ratio, which much of the film has,
Speaker 4: that's where that came because I like this sort of
Speaker 4: vertical element to it.
Speaker 2: Explain what that aspect ratio is as opposed to.
Speaker 4: So that's more of a vertical that either side of
Speaker 4: the frame if you're watching it is squeezed in and
Speaker 4: you have more top and bottom a almost like a
Speaker 4: television as opposed to scope, which is sort of the Westerns,
Speaker 4: and you have more room on the left and right,
Speaker 4: and it's wonderful for a close up as well. The
Speaker 4: one three three. I'm just sort of explaining how things
Speaker 4: start to ruminate inside me. It's always visual. I thought, oh,
Speaker 4: this is going to be depth. This is four ground
Speaker 4: background low to high. That's how the movie's going to breathe.
Speaker 4: So I want to be able to have him reach
Speaker 4: his hand all the way as high as he can
Speaker 4: with that batona, not have it be out of frame,
Speaker 4: quite honestly, otherwise it's have to squeeze the image.
Speaker 2: These are things that you're thinking about and many many
Speaker 2: other things. And at the same time, we live in
Speaker 2: the real world. This is not a cheap movie. How
Speaker 2: much was the final budget?
Speaker 4: In the end we wound up going under what I
Speaker 4: had asked Netflix. I think I asked them for ninety million,
Speaker 4: and I think we were shy of that in the end,
Speaker 4: which is an enormous amount of money for a movie
Speaker 4: that's half black and white, shot on thirty five millimeters
Speaker 4: black and white film, which David means that there's no
Speaker 4: going back.
Speaker 2: And no matter how successful you've been both as a
Speaker 2: comic actor, as a serious actor and then with the
Speaker 2: Star is Born, it's still a film about a dead
Speaker 2: classical music conductor. And I've got a figure that you probably.
Speaker 4: Black and white, which is a huge thing for the studios.
Speaker 2: How many no's did you get?
Speaker 4: And just to be clear, it's ninety million dollars. It's
Speaker 4: all that all that money. The budget was so high
Speaker 4: because we shot live music with the live orchestras, and
Speaker 4: because we went on locations. I didn't know how to
Speaker 4: make the movie in any other way. Everybody said no.
Speaker 4: The answer is I think I went. You know, it
Speaker 4: started at Paramount. They said no. Warner Brothers said no.
Speaker 4: Apple said no, I don't think we ever made it.
Speaker 4: To Sony and Scott Stuber at Netflix. I sat down
Speaker 4: with him. He looked at me. He said, this is
Speaker 4: absolutely nuts. But your enthusiasm is infectious. And I trust
Speaker 4: filmmakers that I believe in.
Speaker 2: You're not Chopplivery, You're You're Bradley Cooper at this point,
Speaker 2: and you're going into some of the biggest offices in
Speaker 2: la And what is the language you get for no?
Speaker 2: What does it sound?
Speaker 4: Well? I think I have to set the stage for
Speaker 4: you about who I am. First, Just as an example,
Speaker 4: my mother and I just put ourselves on tape last
Speaker 4: weekend so that we can hopefully get another T Mobile
Speaker 4: Super Bowl commercial. So I think, I think maybe that,
Speaker 4: I think maybe that'll shatter your idea of like I'm
Speaker 4: that is, I'm literally not making that up. America's largest
Speaker 4: five gen network, T Mobile has price locks, k no
Speaker 4: clam I think I know what I'm doing about. So
Speaker 4: I have no problem asking and pitching something that I
Speaker 4: believe in and know is something that you've become so
Speaker 4: well acquainted with. That Warner Brothers was a tough no.
Speaker 4: That was the one that hurt a little bit, just
Speaker 4: because I had made of stars born there an American
Speaker 4: sniper and joker, and I just thought, oh, trust me, guys,
Speaker 4: and like, even if it doesn't work, I don't think
Speaker 4: it'll look bad on you, because you will. I have
Speaker 4: been so successful for you in the past on projects
Speaker 4: that were very also risky, a fourth remake of a movie.
Speaker 2: So what was their explanation for now? What's the rationale?
Speaker 4: I think that I think it was nothing other than logical.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't, I don't. I don't it makes
Speaker 4: sense what they're saying. You know, it's a it's a
Speaker 4: huge budget. It's a subject matter that no one will
Speaker 4: be interested in, and we just can't we can't justify it.
Speaker 2: I'm talking today with Bradley Cooper about Maestro, his film
Speaker 2: about the conductor Leonard Bernstein. A few months ago, when
Speaker 2: stills from the film were first circulating the Internet in
Speaker 2: its way as usual, blew up with a controversy over
Speaker 2: the prosthetic that Cooper wears on his nose, the shnaws
Speaker 2: that he used to portray Bernstein. So the first thing
Speaker 2: that I heard about this film was this business of
Speaker 2: the makeup and jew face and oh my god, should
Speaker 2: a non Jewish guy be playing a Jewish guy? And
Speaker 2: is the nose too big? And so on. I'll reserve
Speaker 2: judgment it was it a serious conversation about prosthetics or
Speaker 2: it didn't seem all that striking to me.
Speaker 4: Well, what you're speaking of actually came out after we
Speaker 4: had made the movie, right, So I had already gone
Speaker 4: through the entire process of the film. And in terms
Speaker 4: of the LENNI looking like Lennie, I knew whether I
Speaker 4: had to age in order to tell this love story.
Speaker 4: And then he has such a beautiful, iconic face. I thought, well,
Speaker 4: let's when I work with an master artist like Kazu,
Speaker 4: let's create a hybrid where people can really enter into
Speaker 4: the into the illusion of Lenny. Because I'm going to
Speaker 4: do the voice anyway. And I have a big nose.
Speaker 4: Not that that was ever something, but I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: our face, our foreheads, our noses, our eyes, the way
Speaker 4: our eyes are, our ears, it's all. It's all very
Speaker 4: workable to create a sort of middle ground. And by
Speaker 4: the way, the prosthetic for the nose was like a
Speaker 4: silk curtain. That's about the differences behind those and his really,
Speaker 4: but we had to and it was a little and
Speaker 4: it's wider and he'd a deviated septum. Now, that said
Speaker 4: David oddly enough to me, Alex Bernstein sent me a letter.
Speaker 2: This is his son, the middle child.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he said, you know, we want to we
Speaker 4: want to write a letter responding to this.
Speaker 2: No one had ever really responding to the press criticism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't mean any of you, but I had
Speaker 4: heard about it. Yeah, And but I read the letter
Speaker 4: and then I called him. I'll never forget it, and
Speaker 4: he said hey, And I said, hey, it's Bradley. I
Speaker 4: just on and I couldn't talk, and I started weeping
Speaker 4: profuse like really weeping, very hard, and he started crying,
Speaker 4: and then we just hung up, and I.
Speaker 2: Realized you were moved out of gratitude to it him.
Speaker 4: I just never first of all, I didn't I think
Speaker 4: I didn't realize how much maybe that hurt, that that's
Speaker 4: how people were seeing about the movie, but also just
Speaker 4: that act of kindness from them, from the children.
Speaker 2: My conversation with Bradley Cooper about Maestro continues in a moment.
Speaker 2: Cooper was on the Hollywood A List of Stars as
Speaker 2: a comic and serious actor when he made his debut
Speaker 2: as a director with a Star Is Born, the twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen version, in which he co starred with Lady Gaga,
Speaker 2: and since that film, he's been working single mindedly, obsessively
Speaker 2: on Maestro, a film about Leonard Bernstein and his marriage
Speaker 2: to the actress Felicia Montelegro.
Speaker 4: Hello, I'm Lennie. Hello Felsa Bernstein, like that one montalegra
Speaker 4: monteleegra montalegra cone con mantellegra cone. Well, that's an interesting
Speaker 4: marriage of words.
Speaker 2: Felicia is played by Carrie Mulligan, and Mulligan gets top
Speaker 2: billing in the credits. Now, it's not a conventional biopic
Speaker 2: of Bernstein. The film centers on the marriage, and it
Speaker 2: explores his creative, voracious, consuming, and selfish nature as someone
Speaker 2: who was capable of astonishing work and also and self destructiveness.
Speaker 2: You probably won't remember the first time we met, and
Speaker 2: we've only met a couple of times, but the first
Speaker 2: time we met, you had on your iPhone the voice
Speaker 2: that you wanted to use speaking voice for a Star
Speaker 2: is Born.
Speaker 4: For Jackson Mane. Yeah, I had Sam Elliott's voice, right.
Speaker 2: I started putting it down the paper when we were
Speaker 2: at home. Oh, it just sort of fell out of me,
Speaker 2: I guess. And you were playing this for me and
Speaker 2: then how you would do it, and it was totally
Speaker 2: fascinating to me. Now Here, you don't want to do
Speaker 2: a caricature, and you don't want to do an impersonation, right,
Speaker 2: but you I'm telling you, it is the most uncanny thing.
Speaker 2: But the voice, the kind of liquid, low, aristocratic and
Speaker 2: yet swingy Leonard Bernstein voice.
Speaker 3: And I remember, particularly when we got to the Skarzow
Speaker 3: which is in seven for a Time and the little
Speaker 3: tricky is out really I mean, but then it seemed
Speaker 3: tricky those.
Speaker 2: And it changes during the course of the film, just
Speaker 2: as he does physically.
Speaker 4: It initially starts with how I hear and see the
Speaker 4: movie there. I always saw it as one musical element,
Speaker 4: and part of that music is the interplay between the characters,
Speaker 4: at them speaking, the music of their the melody of
Speaker 4: their conversations, particularly between Felicia and Lenny, because I had
Speaker 4: access to these wonderful audio tapes, and that's part of
Speaker 4: why I started to focus on wanting to make a
Speaker 4: movie about the two of them. Was just the melody,
Speaker 4: the intoxicated melody of their conversations, and particularly him, he
Speaker 4: spoke melodically. I also knew early on that in order
Speaker 4: to tell this story about their relationship, it was going
Speaker 4: to have to take place over a period of time.
Speaker 4: So if you're going to do that, he sounded different
Speaker 4: from years of smoking, getting older, his voice completely changed.
Speaker 4: So I knew early on, like back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: right away when I even began to think about this,
Speaker 4: that I needed to start working immediately. So Tim Monic,
Speaker 4: that is the guy who I work with all the time,
Speaker 4: and we started working on all these three separate voices.
Speaker 4: When he's in his twenties, when he's in his fifties,
Speaker 4: and then when he's in his.
Speaker 2: Late sixties, he's a dialogue coach.
Speaker 4: He's a dialect coach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so can when you are about to do a scene,
Speaker 2: do you have to then put on the headphones, hear
Speaker 2: the voice, and then get into it. So here's what
Speaker 2: can you put it on as a party trick.
Speaker 4: Here's what's great about having prep. The only way that
Speaker 4: I know how to do this is I have to
Speaker 4: bank Lenny way before I start shooting, Otherwise I'd be terrified. David,
Speaker 4: So Leonard Bernstein, that character that that that you see
Speaker 4: in the film was banked maybe six months before we
Speaker 4: started shooting. So when I go through hair and makeup
Speaker 4: in the morning before crew call, Lenny's there, it's me,
Speaker 4: but I'm speaking like him. Everything's him. So I direct
Speaker 4: the whole day as him. And I do that just
Speaker 4: because that's the only way I know to be absolutely
Speaker 4: free and I'm not even thinking about anything. If I
Speaker 4: had to go and put headphones and listen, I excuse
Speaker 4: my language, absolutely fucked because all of my energy, David
Speaker 4: also is to the filmmaking and to the other actors.
Speaker 4: So there's never a moment ever where I'm even thinking
Speaker 4: about what I sound like and what's fun about that, because,
Speaker 4: as you mentioned, there's all these different voices, and the
Speaker 4: crew is like, you know, and the way we would
Speaker 4: shoot a day would depend on the energy of the Lenny.
Speaker 4: So like young Lenny, we have a lot of energy.
Speaker 4: We'd sort of race through the day Old Lenny. You know,
Speaker 4: there was you're sort of in third gear as we're
Speaker 4: making the movie, so it was like, oh, who's and
Speaker 4: then the crew and we were like, oh, we got
Speaker 4: young Lenny today. Oh that's great.
Speaker 2: So obviously the heart of the movie is this relationship
Speaker 2: between Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia. She goes into
Speaker 2: the marriage with her eyes wide open. She knows that
Speaker 2: her husband to be as gay or bisexual. He's been
Speaker 2: described in different ways. He's definitely not monogamous, and she
Speaker 2: thinks she's up for the task somehow. So how do
Speaker 2: you get to Felicia's internal life?
Speaker 4: Again, it starts off with the macro of the story,
Speaker 4: and the idea of what I got to know about
Speaker 4: Leonard Bernstein was that he was sort of a very
Speaker 4: consistent person, very consistent in his unorthodox way he lived
Speaker 4: his life. That's why in the beginning of the film
Speaker 4: when I sort of you know, I sort of placed him.
Speaker 4: He's up in the clouds, you know, like an angel
Speaker 4: that you know. Then God's calling him to go down
Speaker 4: to the people to do to give his gift. Right,
Speaker 4: That's what that first scene's about. And in that he's
Speaker 4: playing the bongos on David Oppenheim's butt. That is the
Speaker 4: same guy who then is dancing with William to shout
Speaker 4: at the end of the movie, William the Young Conductor.
Speaker 4: He does not change the entire film. Felicia does has
Speaker 4: an awakening and understanding of who she is and what
Speaker 4: her plight is when she.
Speaker 2: Let's slow this both both of these things down because
Speaker 2: we've seen it. But you're saying Bernstein is the same
Speaker 2: throughout his life.
Speaker 4: It's almost like he's the antagonist. She's the protagonist in
Speaker 4: some ways.
Speaker 2: But and what is the it there? In other words,
Speaker 2: he's this just absolutely consumed and consuming personality, and his
Speaker 2: ambitions are limitless. He wants to well, he states it.
Speaker 4: I mean, he states it to us the viewer at
Speaker 4: the beginning of the film, and her I refuse to
Speaker 4: be one thing. The world wants us to be only
Speaker 4: one thing, and I find that deplorable, and I find
Speaker 4: you very attractive, Felicia, right after we had just seen
Speaker 4: him banging the drums of a guy's butt, You're like, oh, okay.
Speaker 2: In other words, he could be musically voracious, sexually voracious.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: Jerry Robins just said five minutes ago your show Pony
Speaker 4: here is a composer, not a conductor, and we just
Speaker 4: saw him composing Manfred and now he's playing the piano
Speaker 4: with Aaron Copeland. So the hope is, in the very
Speaker 4: beginning of the movie, you're bombarded by who this man is.
Speaker 4: And then she comes on to the stage, comes off
Speaker 4: the bus, huge close up, and she grounds him. The
Speaker 4: movie slows down, it gets tethered by her, and then
Speaker 4: she says to him, you are a dragon and then
Speaker 4: kisses him and he takes that as you see me
Speaker 4: and you still want me?
Speaker 2: What did Felicia do for Leonard Bernstein's creative life? How
Speaker 2: are we meant to understand that in the film?
Speaker 4: Well, Number one, what I just what I just sort
Speaker 4: of articulated about the hope of what the audience feels
Speaker 4: from that first ten minutes of the film is that
Speaker 4: she tethers him, and then tethering him he can focus.
Speaker 4: He composed quite a bit of material in those years
Speaker 4: that they were those sort of glory years, and and
Speaker 4: he he had a tremendous amount of frustration and lament
Speaker 4: that he hadn't composed more as he got later in life.
Speaker 4: Halfway through the movie he says, you know, I haven't.
Speaker 4: When you add it up, it's not that much. And
Speaker 4: you see that he's a bit downtrodden even then.
Speaker 2: Because he's disappointed that he was not the composer of
Speaker 2: classical music that would have put him on the same
Speaker 2: level as Mallros.
Speaker 4: Where I landed and what I used was he was
Speaker 4: so excited about life. He was given so many gifts
Speaker 4: and let's just say those are little fires he gets
Speaker 4: to start, and he just had all of these fires
Speaker 4: all burning at the same time. That takes a tremendous
Speaker 4: amount of energy. A family, an extramarital, intimate relationships, conducting, composing, teaching,
Speaker 4: all of these things. And we we didn't even really
Speaker 4: go to the social activism that he did in the movie.
Speaker 4: And I think that has a tremendous amount of impact
Speaker 4: on him throughout his life. I don't think it was
Speaker 4: just composing. I think if you asked him, he would
Speaker 4: have definitely said, I wish I was a better father.
Speaker 4: I think there are many I think he would have said,
Speaker 4: I wish I was a better husband, I wish I
Speaker 4: was a better boyfriend. I think all of those things
Speaker 4: suffered because he was given so many talents.
Speaker 2: Not to be cheap or reductive about this, but do
Speaker 2: you relate to any of that? Absolutely tell me about that.
Speaker 4: I think that you know, I have a lot of passions.
Speaker 4: I love doing so many different types of things, and
Speaker 4: as I've gotten older, I mean the thing that really
Speaker 4: struck me, like when I made A Star is Born.
Speaker 4: I was only really able to make that movie with
Speaker 4: absolute freedom because I had been sober for so many
Speaker 4: years that I could go into this mindset the sole
Speaker 4: place for twenty years, right, yeah, fearlessly. It'll be twenty
Speaker 4: years in August, so it was about like seventeen sixteen
Speaker 4: years at the time, but a long time. This movie
Speaker 4: that you were speaking of, I made absolutely fearlessly, and
Speaker 4: I knew I had to because that's a huge element
Speaker 4: in Bernstein's music. It is fearless. I think that in
Speaker 4: the last three to four years, I've arrived than by
Speaker 4: the grace of God, to a place of actually having
Speaker 4: self esteem and feel very comfortable in my skin. So
Speaker 4: I do feel, as arrogant as this may sound, that
Speaker 4: because I have had the benefit of living in the
Speaker 4: time period that we are living in now, and there's
Speaker 4: such an awareness to mental health and taking care of yourself,
Speaker 4: that I feel like I'm in a place of contentment
Speaker 4: soulfully that maybe he never arrived at because of many factors.
Speaker 2: What brought you to that place.
Speaker 4: Just tremendous work, you know, just relentless work.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour and I'm
Speaker 2: speaking with Bradley Cooper about his film Maestro. It opened
Speaker 2: in theaters this week. So I wanted to before we
Speaker 2: talk about a series of scenes in the film, I
Speaker 2: want to talk about a scene that's not in the film,
Speaker 2: because writing is often a process of leaving things out
Speaker 2: as well as making this so true, So one of
Speaker 2: the most famous incidents in Bernstein's public life and Felicia's
Speaker 2: public life is a moment at the height of the
Speaker 2: I forget what the year is. The Black Panthers are
Speaker 2: in town and they're going to have a benefit, and
Speaker 2: the benefit is at the Bernstein's. They host it and
Speaker 2: all the swell people of New York are there, and
Speaker 2: it becomes immortalized, first in the New York Times and
Speaker 2: then much more famously, Tom wolf writes a piece called
Speaker 2: radical chic and the Bernstein's look, just to put a
Speaker 2: quick tag on it, ridiculous. They seem like silly people
Speaker 2: in a way that's now familiar, you know, trying to
Speaker 2: be down at, trying to be hip and coming off absurdly.
Speaker 2: And I don't think my understanding is from reading about
Speaker 2: Bernstein is that Felicia in particular, ever quite recovered from
Speaker 2: Tom Wolfe's piece. It was really tough on her in particular.
Speaker 2: It's not in the film tell me about that. It's
Speaker 2: obviously something you must have thought about.
Speaker 4: Oh and wrote, so you wrote, you wrote, yeah, so
Speaker 4: I know the originally party we we did have, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that that that party was? Was that party for a
Speaker 4: long time and it and again the movie tells you
Speaker 4: what at once the spine of the film was always
Speaker 4: going to is their relationship. And the thing that was
Speaker 4: so clear to us was there can be only one villain.
Speaker 4: I don't want to have another outside incident that brings
Speaker 4: them together. The villain is part of Lenny. He's the villain.
Speaker 4: He's the thing that I wanted to focus on breaking
Speaker 4: up their marriage or or or or the caustic element
Speaker 4: of the the of this dynamic, and it really deluded
Speaker 4: his accountability for her state Bye bye by introducing that
Speaker 4: into this narrative with this movie was about, and that's
Speaker 4: why I ultimately took it out, and also because I
Speaker 4: wanted to, you know, in terms of people have asked
Speaker 4: about you know, you're jumping, you know timeline, that switch
Speaker 4: from black and white to color, which is would have
Speaker 4: been when that scene would have occurred, was all about
Speaker 4: their lifestyles having been stressed by this agreement that they made.
Speaker 4: If you add in another villain of a tom Wolf
Speaker 4: sitting there, it becomes it's not as strong. It just
Speaker 4: wasn't as strong. And I'm all as spine.
Speaker 2: Tell us what the marital agreement was. For those who
Speaker 2: haven't seen the film or read lots of biographies.
Speaker 4: Two people who were absolutely enthralled with each other on
Speaker 4: so many levels, culturally, artistically, cerebrally, soulfully, and were open
Speaker 4: about expressing who they were part of that was Felicia
Speaker 4: knowing all of Lenny, this dragon who also found men
Speaker 4: sexually active as well as women, and would pursue that,
Speaker 4: And she went into this marriage knowing all of those things.
Speaker 4: So at the time that was a very unorthodox thing,
Speaker 4: and for many people it wouldn't make it even any sense.
Speaker 4: But to her and to him, this was just part
Speaker 4: of what it is to accept a fully human.
Speaker 2: And one of the persons. One of the most moving
Speaker 2: scenes is there comes a point when one of the
Speaker 2: daughters finds out or here's rumors, and she goes to
Speaker 2: Bernstein and asks him about these rumors, and on the
Speaker 2: advice of Felicia, in fact, maybe the insistence he lies.
Speaker 2: He tells her it's not true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the pivotal scene for both characters, both Felicia and Lenny,
Speaker 4: and in fact, in terms of what occurs, you know,
Speaker 4: sometimes when you're acting that scene, if you recall that scene,
Speaker 4: his daughter has spent the summer at Tanglewood and there
Speaker 4: are these rumors that he has been having extramarital affairs
Speaker 4: with men, and she's upset by it. She shared that
Speaker 4: with her mother, and her mother had told him go
Speaker 4: outside and tell Jamie that that's not true. So he
Speaker 4: goes out there to try to justify and he talks
Speaker 4: about jealousy and tells this tale that's kind of hilarious.
Speaker 3: Lightened a shed some sort of understanding on what could
Speaker 3: have happened. So but I can only imagine that it
Speaker 3: was burned on by jealousy, Darling, jealousy of whatever it
Speaker 3: is that I do, and it's plagued me all my life,
Speaker 3: and I apologize, we're plaguing you now.
Speaker 4: And then she just asked point blank to her father,
Speaker 4: are the rumors true? And he says no, darling, and
Speaker 4: then she says, I'm so relieved. And when she says
Speaker 4: I'm so relieved, you see on his face this disappointment
Speaker 4: of why are we teaching our daughter something that we
Speaker 4: ourselves don't believe in? Absolutely, And he is so strong,
Speaker 4: Leonard Bernstein, and was so strong in the making of
Speaker 4: this movie that what actus is occurring and why I
Speaker 4: stay on that that that shot for so long is
Speaker 4: because me Bradley as Leonard Bernstein in that moment, it
Speaker 4: was as if Lenny was screaming inside me, saying, fucking
Speaker 4: tell her the truth. And I started to think, I
Speaker 4: honestly David. I was like, I'm gonna tell her. I'm
Speaker 4: going to tell her, and then my b I started
Speaker 4: to think, well, if I tell her, I'm going to
Speaker 4: have to rewrite and reshoot so much of the movie.
Speaker 4: And I started going through in real time that's on film,
Speaker 4: going through what I'll have to do, and in the
Speaker 4: end I thought it's impossible. And then and then he
Speaker 4: goes and you can see his head shake for a
Speaker 4: second like that's me going through it, and then he goes, Okay,
Speaker 4: let's just go.
Speaker 2: And that's really one of the incredible things to me.
Speaker 2: There's another moment where they have an argument on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: This is an incredible scene a Thanksgiving day at the
Speaker 2: Dakota as balloons are floating by the window, Snoopy or
Speaker 2: I forget what it was, Snoopy, and the argument begins
Speaker 2: with this tremendous cross talk. You're actually kind of not
Speaker 2: following what one is saying to the other except in emotion.
Speaker 2: And then the dialogue settles down and they say, as
Speaker 2: couples can the most hurtful things imaginable to each other,
Speaker 2: you're letting your sadness.
Speaker 3: Let me finish, let me finish what I'm going to say,
Speaker 3: I think you're letting your sadness get the better to
Speaker 3: do with me.
Speaker 4: It's about you, so you should love it. You want
Speaker 4: to be sleepless and depressed and sick.
Speaker 2: You want to be all of those things so you
Speaker 2: can avoid fulfilling your obligation to what you've been given.
Speaker 2: To the given. Please, the gift comes with burdens of faith.
Speaker 4: But that's the truth. You love people that well spring
Speaker 4: of love. The complications arise in your life.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Wake up, take off your glasses and
Speaker 2: you think, if you didn't know the story, that's it. No,
Speaker 2: no marriage can survive that exchange, despite Snoopy coming by
Speaker 2: the window, which is a great touch. Not long after,
Speaker 2: we have Leonard Bernstein conducting the climactic passages of Maller's
Speaker 2: Second Symphony at a cathedral in England, and his first
Speaker 2: instinct after the booming applause is to rush off the
Speaker 2: stage and into her embrace, which she gives back totally.
Speaker 2: I that to me is the spine.
Speaker 4: That is the spine of the whole film. And again
Speaker 4: she's I mean, I hope you heard some of it,
Speaker 4: because it's really she was really laying into him at
Speaker 4: the beginning, but it's.
Speaker 2: All fast and furious, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 2: like life, not like a script.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that is her laying into him, not about
Speaker 4: we've just watched him have an extramarital affair that he
Speaker 4: has brought into their home and into his artistry, which
Speaker 4: is the huge betrayal for her, at least in her mind.
Speaker 4: I think she's been heartfully betrayed for years, but she
Speaker 4: still cannot articulate it. All that argument is about her
Speaker 4: saying to him, you're not fulfilling your gifts that you've
Speaker 4: been given, and it's just the and you're going to
Speaker 4: end up and you're going to end up a lonely
Speaker 4: old queen. But she doesn't say, you've crushed me. How
Speaker 4: dare you? You've betrayed? He doesn't say anything to that.
Speaker 4: And it's not until you get to the part when
Speaker 4: she has her realization and she says, I used to
Speaker 4: envy my children who would wait once so longingly for
Speaker 4: his attention. And she would always say to herself, I
Speaker 4: don't need, I don't need, but I do. I'm the
Speaker 4: one who's been a fool. And then we have the
Speaker 4: scene where he's conducting, which is really lying. That's me
Speaker 4: conducting the London Symphony Orchestra because that was the only
Speaker 4: way to achieve that magic that he was able to achieve.
Speaker 4: And the hope is as an audience member, there's no
Speaker 4: hate in his heart because clearly I didn't see any
Speaker 4: hate in his heart, and there's no way she would
Speaker 4: have loved him, because that's what she attacks him for
Speaker 4: at the Thanksgiving Day parade party fight. She says, it's
Speaker 4: hate you just you're up there showing people that they'll
Speaker 4: never hold a candle to you, that you are so
Speaker 4: much better than them, And then when we're watching him conduct,
Speaker 4: it's the exact opposite. It's exultation. He's the angel that
Speaker 4: God asked of come down to the in the beginning
Speaker 4: of the movie, because he can be a crystal and
Speaker 4: can ingest all of that light, all of that power
Speaker 4: of the music, and then beam it out to all
Speaker 4: of us in the audience, and then me then making
Speaker 4: a movie. He was able to stand in the center
Speaker 4: of the sun and not only not burn, but reflect
Speaker 4: it back to us in a way that we could achieve,
Speaker 4: appreciate it, and not burn ourselves. So that's why when
Speaker 4: he rushes off and he's crying and in her dress
Speaker 4: that I love. When he leaves and you just see
Speaker 4: the sweat stains on her blue dress, and then she
Speaker 4: says to him, there's no hate in your heart. And
Speaker 4: that's the pure love they had for each other.
Speaker 2: I've got to ask you about conducting in the Ely
Speaker 2: Cathedral in England with a full orchestra, the London Symphony
Speaker 2: or and a full chorus. You're conducting, Maller, I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean that's got to be a childhood fantasy come true.
Speaker 4: Yes, sure is.
Speaker 2: You know some kids dream of hitting the ball out
Speaker 2: of Yankee Stadium.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 2: You got to do that. So what was the experience, Like,
Speaker 2: how does the filming work?
Speaker 4: Well, I knew I was going to do that piece
Speaker 4: of music six years ago, so I started working on
Speaker 4: it then, and there's a wonderful recording of that performance,
Speaker 4: and I was able to get the raw footage where
Speaker 4: it's just seeing his conducting. And then I just spent
Speaker 4: you know, all of the time I could number one,
Speaker 4: going to the New York phil three or four times
Speaker 4: a week just watching conductors. The La Phil. The Philadelphia
Speaker 4: Orchestra became very close with Castavo Dudamel and Yanique Sagan, and.
Speaker 2: Those are two of the very top conductors working today.
Speaker 4: And then Yanique, who's been just a whole part of
Speaker 4: Lenny in this film. I had an ear piece and
Speaker 4: he was counting tempo for me when I was doing it,
Speaker 4: because I was conducting them that is live. But the
Speaker 4: problem was I couldn't really hear it because the music's
Speaker 4: so loud, I couldn't really hear it. And we shot
Speaker 4: that over one day. We were only going to shoot
Speaker 4: that one day, and I messed it up the entire day.
Speaker 4: I kept getting behind the tempo, and the minute you
Speaker 4: lose tempo, it's over.
Speaker 2: What happens when the music stops. You have to know
Speaker 2: they get.
Speaker 4: Playing because they're the best orchestra in the world. But
Speaker 4: it's not it's not the same. It's not the same,
Speaker 4: and I know it, and so the camera knows and
Speaker 4: the audience knows it. I went to bed that night.
Speaker 4: The next morning I texted the sound mixer, Steve Morrow
Speaker 4: and asked him if we had it, which I think
Speaker 4: if you're getting a call from your filmmaker, do you
Speaker 4: have it, and you're the sound mixer, that's not a
Speaker 4: very optimistic sign and he said, I think we do.
Speaker 4: And because I always would show up before crew call,
Speaker 4: really a couple of minutes at least twenty because I
Speaker 4: had been in the makeup chair, I walked into the
Speaker 4: empty ely and it was at Lenny Sert saying me,
Speaker 4: just do it one more time, do not give up.
Speaker 4: And so the seventy five orchestra members of the London
Speaker 4: Symphony Orchestra brought everybody back one shot, and for whatever reason, David,
Speaker 4: all of that prep for six years came to me
Speaker 4: effortlessly and I was able to let go and conduct
Speaker 4: the orchestra so much so the Timpaness came running afterwards.
Speaker 4: You know yesterday everything you did was absolute shit. This
Speaker 4: is this is the one you have to use. And
Speaker 4: I was like, you, I know, yeah, and I said no.
Speaker 4: He said no, you actually conducted us there, Lenny, and
Speaker 4: I said, I know, yeah, that's that's what's going to
Speaker 4: be in And that was it. And you'd have to
Speaker 4: ask Lenny, but I'm you know, I think he'd be
Speaker 4: very happy. I hope he would.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 4: It was really incredible. I'll never forget it. The scariest
Speaker 4: thing I've ever done. By far. I mean not even close.
Speaker 4: Singing at the Oscars live performing at Glastonbury, nothing even
Speaker 4: comes close.
Speaker 2: Bradley Cooper. He conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a
Speaker 2: recreation of a famous concert by Leonard Bernstein for his
Speaker 2: new film Maestro. The film Maestro has been getting some
Speaker 2: love from the critics and it's going to be a
Speaker 2: heavy contender, I think for the awards season. Bradley Cooper
Speaker 2: stars in the film as Leonard Bernstein. He directed the
Speaker 2: film and he co wrote it with Josh Singer. Cooper's
Speaker 2: path to being a filmmaker of note was hardly a
Speaker 2: straight line. He became known first as a beloved actor
Speaker 2: in some decidedly broie comedies, playing a jerk in wedding
Speaker 2: Crashers and more of a straight man in the Hangover films.
Speaker 4: Doctor Price STU, you're a dentist. Okay, don't try and
Speaker 4: get fancy.
Speaker 2: It's not fancy.
Speaker 4: If it's true he's a dentist, don't get too excited.
Speaker 4: And if someone has a heart attack, you should still
Speaker 4: call nine one one.
Speaker 2: Cooper went on to some really serious roles in films
Speaker 2: with directors including David o'russell and he might not like
Speaker 2: me mentioning it, but at the same time, he shows
Speaker 2: up quite often on lists of sexiest men alive. Still
Speaker 2: all along, Cooper told me he wanted to get behind
Speaker 2: the camera. He fulfilled the cliche of I always wanted
Speaker 2: to direct, and he did so with a bang. He
Speaker 2: debuted as a director on A Star Is Born.
Speaker 4: I mean, I didn't allow myself to dream as big
Speaker 4: as I really wanted to dream when I was a kid.
Speaker 4: So acting is what I thought I wanted. But the
Speaker 4: truth is, it wasn't just what Hopkins and Hurt did
Speaker 4: in The Elephant Man. It was what David Lynch was
Speaker 4: doing in The Elephant Man. It was the sound design.
Speaker 4: That's what really got me excited. And it wasn't till
Speaker 4: I spend years in this business and as I was
Speaker 4: on these sets acknowledging that all I really think about
Speaker 4: is how they're making this movie. That all I really
Speaker 4: care about. That's what it gets me excited. And I
Speaker 4: was lucky enough to work with filmmakers who saw that
Speaker 4: in me and invited me very much into their process.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's so many times I'd be with an
Speaker 4: actor and they said, wait a second, you're in the
Speaker 4: editing room. How did you ever get let in the
Speaker 4: editing room? And I think the reason was because these
Speaker 4: filmmakers realized that, oh, this is a like minded person.
Speaker 4: They're not just thinking about their performance. So it became
Speaker 4: sort of an organic evolution that then led me to
Speaker 4: and also, quite honestly, frustration that these directors who I
Speaker 4: really love, just don't want to work with me. And
Speaker 4: I'm forty years old and I think I can't just
Speaker 4: sit around and wait and do movies that I actually
Speaker 4: think that aren't what I want to be doing.
Speaker 2: So what directors don't want to work with you? And why?
Speaker 4: Well I don't you'd have to ask them why. But
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, any actor will have a list
Speaker 4: of directors that just don't you know at that time,
Speaker 4: you know, like I had written David Fincher an email
Speaker 4: years ago, never heard a response Martin Scorsese at that time,
Speaker 4: Paul Thomas Anderson quent terran im, I could go on
Speaker 4: and on.
Speaker 2: Are you work with one of the most difficult people?
Speaker 2: You did three films with David or Russell, who couldn't
Speaker 2: be more difficult?
Speaker 4: Well it's not about famously, Yeah, Well I love David
Speaker 4: and we had an incredible time together. Hopefully I'm not
Speaker 4: coming across anyway being you know, not acknowledging how lucky
Speaker 4: I've been with the people I have gotten to work with.
Speaker 4: I'm just speaking to the fact that there were other
Speaker 4: people and I just got to a part point where
Speaker 4: I just thought, let me try to do it myself.
Speaker 4: It's always what I wanted to do. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Are you done with fun? In other words, if a
Speaker 2: kind of fun comic role came along, it was three
Speaker 2: months of your time, it's it's not Hangover five, but
Speaker 2: something of a similar spirit.
Speaker 4: Well, I would do Hangover five. It would be four first.
Speaker 2: But yeah, well I want to get ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 2: You would do that in a flash, and I would.
Speaker 4: I would probably do Hangover for it in an instant. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just because I love Todd, I love Zach, I love
Speaker 4: Ed so much, I probably would.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, I think we just made dudes Hangover four.
Speaker 2: It's coming around the corner.
Speaker 4: I don't think Todd's ever going to do that, but
Speaker 4: real quick, just to just to just to end, you know,
Speaker 4: you said the word fund if there was just something fun,
Speaker 4: There's nothing more fun that I've ever experienced than Maestro
Speaker 4: and a star is born. This is me having fun.
Speaker 4: It is, Oh, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it
Speaker 4: if it wasn't.
Speaker 2: But the higher fun I don't know what you mean comedy.
Speaker 2: I mean one is just less consuming and exhausting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it don't have too many maestros in you. There's only
Speaker 2: one life to live.
Speaker 4: That's correct. And I've really I also realized that, and
Speaker 4: I'd rather make I'm if I'm lucky enough to have
Speaker 4: another idea come in that, I'm willing to exert this
Speaker 4: much energy. If I could do it two more, three
Speaker 4: more times in my life, I'd be very lucky.
Speaker 2: I find it hard to believe that you can inhabit
Speaker 2: the personality, the voice, the intelligence of a Leonard Bernstein.
Speaker 2: Think about him, walk around in his shoes and even
Speaker 2: his nose for five or six years, do that all
Speaker 2: with total consumption and passion and focus, and then walk
Speaker 2: away from it. How do you move on from an
Speaker 2: experience like that? How do you take the mask off
Speaker 2: and then just move on?
Speaker 4: You don't move on. That's the beauty about what I
Speaker 4: get to do. Chris Kyle lives inside me. I mean,
Speaker 4: Joseph Merrick's right here, in my wall, there's Lenny. I
Speaker 4: don't think they ever go away. There were many months
Speaker 4: where I sort of talking with a bit of a thing.
Speaker 4: When I would do I was like, that's not really
Speaker 4: my voice. But no, these are like experiences like your
Speaker 4: time in Russia. I don't think that's that's I assume
Speaker 4: those four years will always be inside of you. It's true,
Speaker 4: it's the same exact thing.
Speaker 2: And how did it shape the way you think about
Speaker 2: what's next? Or does it put a stall on it?
Speaker 2: Do you become much pickier and more selective?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I just know that I feel like
Speaker 4: I have my tools are sharper. You know. I may
Speaker 4: have a few more tools now as I go into
Speaker 4: the next adventure, which is exciting.
Speaker 2: Do you know what that next adventure is, am I
Speaker 2: I thought you might. And it's not a Metallica biopic. Ooh,
Speaker 2: there you go. I know you have a special effect.
Speaker 4: I need to keep my hearing, David a thread, and
Speaker 4: you've had hearing issues in the past, and I don't
Speaker 4: think Metallica would be as much as I do love them.
Speaker 2: Sometimes people when they begin their careers in either comic
Speaker 2: roles or writing comically and then they quote unquote get serious.
Speaker 2: Look back at the comic work with some I don't know, diminishment.
Speaker 2: I wonder how you feel about it, because those movies
Speaker 2: were antique, wonderfully funny.
Speaker 4: I mean, my hope, David, is that there's a lot
Speaker 4: of humor in this movie, and there's a lot of
Speaker 4: jokes and stars born and you know, all the filmmakers
Speaker 4: that I am of love. Stanley Kubrick was hilarious, hilarious,
Speaker 4: So humor is and I find that humor is a
Speaker 4: When my father was dying and I was holding him
Speaker 4: and my mother and I just had a tuna fish sandwich.
Speaker 4: That's why it's in the movie where she says you
Speaker 4: smell like tuna fish. I remember holding my father, who
Speaker 4: was you know, was unconscious at the time, my mother saying,
Speaker 4: your breath smells like tuna fish. And I just thought, Mom,
Speaker 4: he doesn't know. And you know, there's humor everywhere, So
Speaker 4: I love comedy. In fact, they're the same thing. Really,
Speaker 4: it's storytelling. It's storytelling.
Speaker 2: The film began in some ways with permission from the family,
Speaker 2: and then you present the film to the three children,
Speaker 2: and they're very painful things that the film towards the
Speaker 2: very end, Lenny is both bereft and pathetic, and you
Speaker 2: dramatize this by him coming on to in a very clumsy,
Speaker 2: sloppy way to a young director at Tanglewood. And I
Speaker 2: think that stands for a lot of things, because I
Speaker 2: think we know that there were many such incidents. How
Speaker 2: did the kids react to the film and you showed
Speaker 2: it to them for the first time in all its
Speaker 2: in all its glory and a times pain.
Speaker 4: You'd have to ask them, but my instinct is they'd
Speaker 4: say that if they had not seen anything or talked
Speaker 4: about anything until the last version of the film, I
Speaker 4: think it probably would have been pretty traumatic. But because
Speaker 4: they had been such a part of it at every turn,
Speaker 4: I would send them clips and they would come and
Speaker 4: see chunks of the film. So it was a gradual
Speaker 4: sort of digestion of the whole experience.
Speaker 2: But were they inhibiting in any way? Did they their
Speaker 2: living presence and their permission for the film in any way,
Speaker 2: say you know what, if I do that, that's too far.
Speaker 2: It's a betrayal of them. Biographers have this problem. They
Speaker 2: have never you didn't have that problem.
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously, if you see the film.
Speaker 2: Bradley Cooper, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Thank you. That was really awesome.
Speaker 2: Maestro, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Cooper and Kerrie Mulligan,
Speaker 2: is in theaters now