The New Yorker Radio Hour - Bradley Cooper Contends for Best Actor in “Maestro”

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

“Maestro,” about the legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, is nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as Best Actor for Bradley Cooper—who is not only the film’s star but its director and co-writer.  Cooper’s movie focusses less on Bernstein’s musical triumphs, as a dominant figure in classical music for decades, than on his extremely complicated personal life.  Bernstein was married to the actress Felicia Montealegre, played in the film by Carey Mulligan, but lived as a proudly nonmonogamous bisexual.  “I had no desire to make a bio-pic,” Cooper tells David Remnick, of a man whose life is so well documented. Despite his track record as a box-office draw and critical success, Cooper endured a string of rejections from major studios when he shopped around a movie about classical music, shot largely on black-and-white film.  Academy nominations aside, for Cooper, the experience of getting to play Bernstein and actually conducting the London Symphony Orchestra—“the scariest thing I’ve ever done, hands down,” he tells David Remnick—was reward enough: he had been practicing conducting an orchestra since his early childhood.  The segment originally broadcast on November 24, 2023. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In his years in the movies, Bradley Cooper has already lived a few distinct lives. We first got to know him as a kind of charming lunkhead in ensemble comedies like wedding crashers and the hangover. Then came Bradley Cooper, the leading man, both a heartthrob on magazine covers, and an intense presence in films like, American sniper. In 2018, we saw a new Bradley Cooper emerge, the director, first with a star is born, and then

last year with Maestro. Maestro is a film about Leonard Bernstein, the conductor and the composer and teacher, someone whose skills ranged from the Broadway stage to the heights of classical music. It's a funny thing about this meaning business, in music anyway. When you say, what does it mean? What you're really saying is, what you're really saying is? What is it trying to tell you? What ideas does it make me have? Bradley Cooper stars as Bernstein opposite Carrie Mulligan,

who plays his wife, the actress Felicia Montalegra. Hello, I'm Lenny. Hello, Felicia. Bernstein, like that one. Montalegra. Montalegra. Montalegra Cone. Con. Montelagra Cone. Montelagra Cone.

Well, that's an interesting marriage award. Maestro is nominated for no less than seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay. I asked Cooper, when we spoke in November, what was the origin of his fascination? I would have to date it back to being a child and inundated with cartoons as a kid in front of the television, and Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny conducting. And we also simultaneously had a record player in the living room that would always have classical music. that was the first time I realized that you could move your hand up and down and sound comes out.

And I just became absolutely obsessed with that idea of power, quite honestly, and magical power. It must be narcotic. It really felt that way as a kid because I asked Santa Claus that coming Christmas for a baton. How old were you? I must have been in between six to eight. I don't know exactly when, but right around then. And I still remember when it showed up. And I kept it.

I just lost it last year. but I had it all the way through college. I kept it in my college dorm in grad school. It was sort of like a totem for me. And even in grad school, Ellen Burst and came and did a workshop for four weeks. And the assignment was create a character, and I created a, I wrote a monologue for a conductor. And so it was always something that was inside of me for, since I was a kid, and I spent hundreds of hours, David, conducting to music that I loved as a child. I mean, I'm not exaggerating that number.

So that when it rolled around seven years, six and a half years ago that Stephen Spielberg was going to perhaps do a biopic about Leonard Bernstein, he happened to know that little fact about my obsession with conducting and said, would you read this script and would you ever consider playing Bernstein? And he wasn't going to direct it. I said, listen, would you let me sort of investigate and see if there's a movie that I, a script that I could write, a story that I feel like I could tell that would allow me to enter into it and conduct? So there was an existing script at that point? There was an existing. By whom? By Josh Singer, who came on board and we wrote it together, the new script. But just to be clear, Leonard Bernstein, I'm older than you are.

He was a part of childhood for me. Right. And he was magnetic, like nothing else in the classical music realm. He was a rock star. Yeah, no question. And he acknowledged rock and roll and even brought in rock bands. Sure did. Yeah.

Yeah. So you're younger, you're watching it through, absorbing it through purely from records? You're talking about once I started doing research? But was you're a kid in getting interested in Leonard Bernstein. Just records. Ricardo Moody was the music director that filled off your orchestra back then. I was lucky enough that my parents took my sister and I a couple of times. We spent a vacation in Boko Raton, Florida, and Itzok Perlman happened to be staying in the room next door, and I'll never forget it.

And I just heard the violin all throughout the night and day when we were there. And I was just obsessed with what creature is making this in the other room. Incredible. Incredible. So years go by, and suddenly Stephen Spielberg has given you a blessing in the sense. And so what do you do next? And then the work began. I had to go and meet the three children, Nina, Alex, and Jamie, and try to convince them to

trust me enough to give me the rights to the music for however a long amount of years the contract would be. And I had no, and David, I had no story. There was no script. I showed them the movie, Starsborn, and I told them what I just told you. And I said, it's a very big fire burning inside me for a conductor. and I won't ever make a movie I don't believe in. And they said yes.

So at some point you have to find the story within the story, the narrative within the big sprawling biography, and clearly the center of the film is the relationship between husband and wife, and it's a very complicated one. Why did you go for that as opposed to some other aspect of Bernstein's life? One thing I realized right up the bat is,

first of all, I had no desire to make a biopic. You can make an incredible documentary, and some have been made already about this man because of just the sheer amount of primary footage out there. But I also wanted to do right by his impact. But because there's sound, picture, colors, production value, as well as story, all of these things that encompass a film, I thought that I could achieve conveying his achievements through other means than just story. For example, I thought, well, the whole movement. movie can be set to his music. Right away, I thought, I feel like I can take care away of that

tronch of his legacy by just having the whole movie be scored to his music. He also had a relationship to God was a big part of his life. And that early on, I started to see the visual aspect of the film. That's what excites me as about a filmmaker. That's where the 133 aspect ratio, which much of the film has, that's where that came, because I like this sort of vertical element to it. Explain what that aspect ratio is as opposed to other things. So that's more of a vertical. The either side of the frame if you're watching it is squeezed in

and you have more top and bottom. So it's almost like a television. As opposed to scope, which is sort of the westerns and you have more room on the left and right. And it's wonderful for a close-up as well, the 133. I'm just sort of

explaining how things start to ruminate inside me. It's always visual. I thought, oh, this is going to be depth. This is foreground, background, low to high. That's how the movie's going to breathe. So I want to be able to have him reach his hand all the way as high as he can with that baton and not have it be out of frame, quite honestly. Otherwise, I'd have to squeeze the image down. These are things that you're thinking about and many, many other things. And at the same time, we live in the real world. This is not a cheap movie. How much was the final budget in the end? We wound up going under what I had asked

Netflix. I think I asked them for 90 million and I think we were shy of that at the end. Which is an enormous amount of money for a movie that's half black and white shot on 35 millimeter black and white film, which David means that there's no going back. And no matter how successful you've been, both as a comic actor, as a serious actor, and then with a star is born, it's still a film about a dead classical music conductor. And I've got a figure that you probably have the experience. That half is in black and white, which is a huge thing for the studios. How many knows did you get? And just to be clear, it's $90 million. It's all that money.

The budget was so high because we shot live music with live orchestras and because we went on locations. I didn't know how to make the movie in any other way. Everybody said no, the answer is. I think I went, you know, it started at Paramount. They said no. Warner Brothers said no. Apple said no.

I don't think we ever made it to Sony. And Scott Stuber at Netflix, I sat down with him. he looked at me, he said, this is absolutely nuts. But your enthusiasm is infectious, and I trust filmmakers that I believe in. You're not chopped liver. You're Bradley Cooper at this point, and you're going into some of the biggest offices in L.A. and what is the language you get for no? What does it sound like? Well, I think I have to set the stage for you about who I am first. Just as an example, My mother and I just put ourselves on tape last weekend

so that we can hopefully get another T-Mobile Super Bowl commercial. So I think maybe that'll shatter your idea of like, I'm trying to make a commercial. That is, I'm literally not making that up. America's largest 5G network. T-Mobile has price locked. Okay, whoa.

Smile. They look like a clam. I think I know. I'm doing. So I have no problem asking and pitching something that I believe in. And no is something that you become so well acquainted with that Warner Brothers was a tough no. That was the one that heard a little bit. Just because I had made a Stars born there, an American sniper and Joker. And I just thought, oh, trust me, guys. And like, even if it doesn't work, I don't think it'll look bad on you because I have been so successful for you in the past on projects that were very also risky, a fourth remake of a movie.

So what was their explanation for no? What's the rationale? I think it was nothing other than logical, you know? That will take that. I don't, it makes sense what they're saying. You know, it's a huge budget. It's a subject matter that no one will be interested in, and we just can't, we can't justify it. So I wanted to, before we talk about a series of scenes in the film, I want to talk about a scene that's not in the film, because writing is often a process of leaving things out as well as. I'm so glad you're bringing that up. You're making this. So one of the most famous incidents in Bernstein's public life and Felicia's public life is a moment at the height of this, I forget what the year is, the Black Panthers are in town and they're going to have a benefit.

and the benefit is at the Bernstein's. They host it. And all the swell people of New York are there. And it becomes immortalized first in the New York Times and then much more famously, Tom Wolfe writes a piece called Radical Sheik. And the Bernstein's look, just to put a quick tag on it, ridiculous.

They seem like silly people in a way that's now familiar, you know, trying to be, down and trying to be hip and and coming off absurdly and I don't think my understanding is from reading about Bernstein is that Felicia in particular ever quite recovered from Tom Wolfe's

piece it was really tough on her in particular it's not in the film tell me about that it's obviously something you must have thought about oh and wrote so you wrote the scene of that party We did have, yeah, that party was that party for a long time. And again, the movie tells you what it wants. The spine of the film was always going to, is their relationship.

And the thing that was so clear to us was there can be only one villain. I don't want to have another outside incident that brings them together. The villain is part of Lenny. He's the villain. He's the thing that I wanted to focus on breaking up their marriage or the caustic element of this dynamic. And it really deluded his accountability for her state

by introducing that into this narrative what this movie was about. And that's why I ultimately took it out. And also because I wanted, in terms of people have asked about, you know, you're jumping timeline, that switch from black and white to color, which would have been when that scene would have occurred

was all about their lifestyles having been stressed by this agreement that they made. If you add in another villain of a Tom Wolfe sitting there, it becomes, it's not as strong. It just wasn't as strong, and I'm off the spine. Tell us what the marital agreement was, for those who haven't seen the film or read lots of biographies. Two people who were absolutely enthralled with each other on so many levels, culturally, artistically, cerebrally, soulfully, and were open about expressing who they were. Part of that was Felicia knowing all of Lenny, this dragon, who also found men sexually attractive as well as women and would pursue that. And she went into this marriage knowing all of those things. So at the time, that was a very

unorthodox thing. And for many people, it wouldn't make it even any sense. But to her and to him, this was just part of what it is to accept a fully human, and one of the most moving scenes is there comes a point when one of the daughters finds out or hears rumors and she goes to Bernstein and asks him about these rumors and on the advice of Felicia, in fact, maybe the insistence, he lies, he tells her it's not true. Yeah, pivotal scene for both characters, both Felicia and Lenny.

And in fact, in terms of what occurs, you know, sometimes when you're acting, that scene, if you recall that scene, his daughter has spent the summer at Tanglewood, and there are these rumors that he has been having extramarital affairs with men. And she's upset by it. She shared that with her mother. And her mother told him, go outside and tell Jamie that that's not true. So he goes out there to try to justify and he talks about jealous. and tells this tale that's kind of hilarious. Enlightened or shed some sort of understanding on what could have happened. But I can only imagine that it was burned on by jealousy, darling. Jealousy of whatever it is that I do. And it's plagued me all my life, and I apologize we're plaguing you now. And then she just asked point blank to her father, all the rumors true. And he says, no, darling.

And then she says, I'm so relieved. And when she says I'm so relieved, you see on his face this disappointment, oh, why are we teaching our daughter something that we ourselves don't believe in? Absolutely. And he is so strong, Leonard Bernstein, and was so strong in the making of this movie, that what actually is occurring and why I stay on that shot for so long is because me, Bradley, as Leonard Bernstein, in that moment, it was as if Lenny was screaming inside me saying, tell her the truth.

And I started to think, honestly, David, I was like, I'm going to tell her. I'm going to tell her. And then I started to think, well, if I tell her, I'm going to have to rewrite and reshoot so much of the movie. And I started going through in real time that's on film, going through what I'll have to do. And in the end, I thought, it's impossible.

And then he goes, and you can see his head shake for a second. Like, that's me going through it. And then he goes, okay, let's just go. Amazing. One of the incredible things to me, there's another moment where they have an argument on Thanksgiving. This is an incredible scene. At Thanksgiving Day at the Dakota,

as balloons are floating by the window, Snoopy or I forget what it was. Snoopy. And the argument begins with this tremendous cross-talk. You're actually kind of not following what one is saying to the other except in emotion. And then the dialogue settles down. and they say, as couples can, the most hurtful things imaginable to each other.

You're letting your sadness get the... Oh, stop it. Let me at least finish. Let me finish what I'm going to say. I think you're letting your sadness get the better of you. It's nothing to do with me. It's about you, so you should love it. You want to be sleepless and depressed and sick.

You want to be all of those things so you can avoid fulfilling your obligations. What obligation? To what you've been given, to the gift you've been given. Please. My God. The gift comes with burdens if you had any idea. Oh, the burden of fading honesty and love. I'm sorry to just admit it, but that's the truth. Above all, you love people.

I do love people. I do love. Well, that wellspring of love, the complications arise in your life. That's exactly right. Wake up. Wake up. Take off your glasses. And you think, if you didn't know the story, that's it. No marriage can survive that exchange, despite Snoopy coming by the window, which is a great touch. Not long after, we have Leonard Burruby.

Einstein conducting the climactic passages of Mahler's second symphony at a cathedral in England, and his first instinct after the booming applause is to rush off the stage and into her embrace, which she gives back totally. That to me is the spine. That is the spine of the whole film. And again, she's, I mean, I hope you heard some of it, because it's really, she was really laying into him, at the beginning. But it's all about... But it's fast and furious. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like life, not like a script. Yeah. And that is her laying into him not about, we've just

watched him have an extramarital affair that he has brought into their home and into his artistry, which is the huge betrayal for her, at least in her mind. I think she's been heartfully betrayed for years. But she still cannot articulate it. That argument is about her saying to him, you're not fulfilling your gifts that you've been given. And it's just the... And you're going to end up. And you're going to end up a lonely old queen. But she doesn't say you've crushed me.

How dare you? You've betrayed... She doesn't say anything to that. And it's not until you get to the part when she has her realization. And she says, I used to envy my children who would wait once so longingly for his attention. And she would always say to herself, I don't need, I don't need. but I do. I'm the one who's been a fool. And then we have the scene where he's conducting,

which is really lying. That's me conducting the London Symphony Orchestra because that was the only way to achieve that magic that he was able to achieve. And the hope is, as an audience member, there's no hate in his heart, because clearly I didn't see any hate in his heart, and there's no way she would have loved him, because that's what she attacks him for at the Thanksgiving Day parade party. She says it's hate. You just, you're up there showing people, that they'll never hold a candle to you, that you are so much better than them.

And then when we're watching him conduct, it's the exact opposite. It's exaltation. He's the angel that God asked to come down in the beginning of the movie because he can be a crystal and can ingest all of that light, all of that power of the music, and then beam it out to all of us in the audience, and then me then making a movie. He was able to stand in the center of the sun and not only not, burn but reflect it back to us in a way that we could appreciate it and not burn ourselves. So that's why when he rushes off and he's crying in her dress, I love when he leaves and you

just see the sweat stains on her blue dress. And then she says to him, there's no hate in your heart. And that's the pure love they had for each other. I've got to ask you about conducting in the Ely Cathedral in England with a full orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and a full chorus. You're conducting Mueller. I mean, that's got to be a childhood fantasy come true. Yes, sure is. You know, some kids dream of hitting the ball out of Yankee Stadium. That's it. You got to do that. So what was the experience like? How does the filming work? Well, I knew I was going to do that piece of music six years ago. So I started working on it then. And there's a wonderful recording of that performance. And I was able to get the raw footage where it's

just seeing his conducting. And then I just spent, you know, all of the time I could. number one, going to the New York Phil three or four times a week, just watching conductors. The L.A. Phil, the Philadelphia Orchestra, became very close with Gustavo Dutamel and Janique Segan. Those are two of the very top conductors working

today. And then Janique, who's been just a whole part of Lenny in this film, I had an earpiece, and he was counting tempo for me when I was doing it, because I was conducting them. That is live. But the problem was, I couldn't really hear it, because

the music so wow I could really hear it and we shot that over one day we were only going to shoot that one day and I messed it up the entire day I kept getting behind the tempo and the minute you lose tempo you're it's over so what happens the music stops you have to no they keep playing because they're the best orchestra in the world but it's not it's not the same it's not the same and I know it and and so the camera knows and the audience knows it I went to bed that night the next morning I I texted the sound mixer, Steve Morrow, and asked him if we had it, which I think if you're getting a call from your filmmaker, do you have it? And you're the sound mixer. That's not a very optimistic sign. And he said, I think we do. And because I always would show up before crew call, really,

a couple minutes, at least 20, because I'd been in the makeup chair. I walked into the empty Ely, and it was at Lenny's sort of saying, me, just do it one more time, do not give up. And so the 75 orchestra members of the London Symphony Orchestra brought everybody. back one shot. And for whatever reason, David, all of that prep for six years came to me effortlessly and I was able to let go and conduct the orchestra. So much so the timpinsus came running afterwards. You know, yesterday everything you did was absolute. This is the one you have to use. And I was like, I know, I know. Yeah. And I said, no. He said, no, you actually conducted us there, Lenny. And I said, I know, yeah, that's what's going to be in. And that was it. And you'd have to ask Lenny,

but I think he'd be very happy. I hope he wouldn't. Wow, that's incredible. It was really incredible. I'll never forget it. The scariest thing I've ever done by far. I mean, not even close. Singing at the Oscars live, performing at Glastonbury, nothing even comes close. My conversation with Bradley Cooper continues in a moment.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm speaking today with Bradley Cooper, the director, star, and co-screenwriter of Maestro. Cooper's performance playing the conductor Leonard Bernstein is nominated for an Academy Award. The film itself is also up for Best Picture and other awards. Even as he gained huge success as an actor,

both in comedies and serious roles like The Elephant Man, Cooper told me that all along he wanted to get behind the camera. The old cliche was true. I mean, I didn't allow myself to dream as big as I really wanted to dream when I was a kid, So acting is what I thought I wanted. But the truth is it wasn't just what Hopkins and Hurt did and The Elephant Man. It was what David Lynch was doing in The Elephant Man.

It was the sound design. That's what really got me excited. And it wasn't until I spent years in this business. And as I was on these sets, acknowledging that all I really think about is how they're making this movie. That's all I really care about. That's what it gets me excited. And I was lucky enough to work with filmmakers who saw that in me and invited me very much into their process. I mean, there's so many times I'd be with an actor and they said, wait a second,

you're in the editing room? How did you ever get let in the editing room? And I think the reason was because these filmmakers realized that, oh, this is a like-minded person. They're not just thinking about their performance. So it became sort of an organic evolution that then led me to, and also quite honestly, frustration that these directors who I really love just don't want to work with me. and I'm 40 years old, and I can't just sit around and wait and do movies that I actually think that aren't what I want to be doing. What directors don't want to work with you and why? Well, I don't, you'd have to ask them why.

But, you know, I mean, any actor will have a list of directors that just don't. You know, at that time, you know, like I had written David Fincher an email years ago, never heard a response. Martin Scorsese. At that time, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantia. I mean, I could go on and on. Are you, you work with one of the most difficult people. You did three films with David O. Russell, who called.

couldn't be more difficult. Well, it's not about being... Famously. Yeah, well, I love David, and we had an incredible time together. Hopefully, I'm not coming across anyway, being, you know, not acknowledging how lucky I've been with the people I have gotten to work with. I'm just speaking to the fact that they were other people, and I just got to a point where I just thought, let me try to do it myself.

It's always what I wanted to do anyway. Are you done with fun? In other words, if a kind of fun comic role came along, it was three months of your time, it's not Hangover Five, but something of a similar spirit. Well, I would do Hangover Five. It would be four first, but yeah. Well, I want to get ahead of ourselves. You would do that in a flash and not just to pay the bills.

I would probably do Hangover Four in an instant. Yeah, just because I love Todd, I love Zach, I love Ed so much. I probably would, yeah. Okay, I think we just made do Hangover Four is coming around the corner. I don't think Todd's ever going to do that. But real quick, just to just to end, you know, you said the word fun. if there was just something fun, there's nothing more fun that I've ever experienced than Maestro and a Star is born. This is me having fun. It is. I wouldn't do it if it wasn't. But the higher fun. I don't know what you mean. Comedy?

I mean one is just less consuming and exhausting. Yeah, I just didn't see it as exhausting. You don't have too many maestros in you. There's only one life to live. That's correct. And I also realize that. And I'd rather make, if I'm if I'm lucky, enough to have another idea come in that I'm willing to exert this much energy. If I could do it two more, three more times in my life, I'd be very lucky. I find it hard to believe that you can inhabit the personality, the voice, the intelligence of a Leonard Bernstein. Think about him, walk around in his shoes and even his nose for five or six years. Do that all with total consumption and passion and focus and then walk away from it. How do you move on from an experience like that. How do you take the mask off and then just move on? You don't move on. That's the beauty about

what I get to do. Chris Kyle lives inside me. I mean, Joseph Merrick's right here in my wall. There's Lenny. I don't think they ever go away. There were many months where I sort of talking with a bit of a thing when I would do. I was like, that's not really my voice. But no, these are like experiences, like your time in Russia. I don't think that's, that's, that's, I assume those four years will always be inside of you. It's true. It's the same exact thing. Bradley Cooper, thank you so much. Thank you.

Bradley Cooper is the director of Maestro, and he stars in the film alongside Carrie Mulligan. Both of them are nominated for Oscars, and it's up for Best Picture as well. I spoke with Bradley Cooper in November of last year. I'm David Remnick, and this is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for listening to the show this week, and I hope you'll join us next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production. of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbeths of Tuneiards

with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Walton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, and Louis Mitchell, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistants from Mike Cutchman, Michael May, David Gable, and Alejandra Decker. And we had additional help this week from Jared Paul. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supporting. in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.