[music]

David Remnick: Nearly everyone my age, I grew up on rock and roll, Little Richard, The Beatles, The Stones, Aretha, but in that heroic pantheon of mine, one figure stood out. The classical conductor, composer, and teacher, Leonard Bernstein.

[music]

David Remnick: Bernstein was a personality as kaleidoscopic as any rockstar. On podiums from New York to Berlin conducting Beethoven or Mahler, he was as physical in his way as James Brown or Tina Turner. Bernstein wrote the music to West Side Story and other Broadway hits, and he was a vivid and accessible presence on television, leading the famous Young People's Concerts.

Leonard Bernstein: 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 is it trying to tell me? What ideas does it make me have?"

David Remnick: Bernstein drew you into a long tradition of music that might otherwise have escaped your ears, and what a loss that would've been. Bernstein also had a personal life that was chaotic and for its time, revolutionary. His marriage to a brilliant actress, Felicia Montealegre, is the subject of Bradley Cooper's thrilling new film, Maestro. Carey Mulligan plays Felicia, and Cooper plays Leonard Bernstein. He also co-wrote the screenplay and directed the film. I had the chance to watch Maestro with Bradley Cooper, and then we sat down to talk about it at length. Let's get to it.

This is an extraordinary performance and piece of writing and directing, and you have been living this for I don't know how many years. What is the origin story of Maestro?

Bradley Cooper: 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 & Jerry, and Bugs Bunny conducting. 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.

David Remnick: It must be narcotic.

Bradley Cooper: It really felt that way as a kid because I asked Santa Claus that coming Christmas for a baton.

David Remnick: [chuckles] How old were you?

Bradley Cooper: I don't think I knew-- I must have been in between six to eight. I don't know exactly when but right around then. 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 a totem for me. Even in grad school, Ellen Burstyn came and did a workshop for four weeks. The assignment was create a character, and I wrote a monologue for a conductor. It was always something that was inside of me since I was a kid, and I spent hundreds of hours, David, conducting to music that I loved as a child.

I'm not exaggerating that number, so that when it rolled around seven years, six and a half years ago, that Steven Spielberg was going to, perhaps, do a biopic about Leonard Bernstein, he happened to know that little fact about my obsession with conducting. He said, "Would you read this script? Would you ever consider playing Bernstein?" He wasn't going to direct it. I said, "Listen, would you let me investigate and see if there's 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?"

David Remnick: There was an existing script at that point?

Bradley Cooper: There was an existing--

David Remnick: By whom?

Bradley Cooper: By Josh Singer, who came on board.

David Remnick: I see.

Bradley Cooper: We wrote it together, the new script.

David Remnick: Just to be clear, Leonard Bernstein-- I'm older than you are, he was a part of childhood for me, and he was magnetic like nothing else in the classical music realm. He was a rock star.

Bradley Cooper: Yes, no question.

David Remnick: He acknowledged rock and roll and even brought in rock bands.

Bradley Cooper: He sure did.

David Remnick: Yes. You're younger. You're watching it through-- absorbing it through purely from records.

Bradley Cooper: You're talking about once I started doing research?

David Remnick: As you were a kid and getting [crostalk] Leonard Burnstein.

Bradley Cooper: I was a kid-- just records. Riccardo Muti was the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra back then. I was lucky enough that my parents took my sister and I a couple of times. We spent a vacation in Boca Raton, Florida, and it sucked. Perlman happened to be staying in the room next door, and I'll never forget it. 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.

David Remnick: Incredible. Years go by and suddenly Steven Spielberg has given you a blessing?

Bradley Cooper: That's right.

David Remnick: Make sense. What do you do next?

Bradley Cooper: 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 long amount of years the contract would be. David, I had no story. There was no script. I showed them the movie, A Star is Born, and I told them what I just told you. 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.

David Remnick: At some point, you have to find the story within the story, the narrative within the big sprawling biography. 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?

Bradley Cooper: One thing I realized right off the bat is, first of all, I had no desire to make a biopic. You can make an incredible documentary, and some had been made already about this man, because of just the sheer amount of primary footage out there. I also wanted to do right by his impact, but because they're 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 movie can be set to his music. Right away I thought, "I feel like I can take care way of that tranche of his legacy by just having the whole movie be scored to his music."

[music]

Bradley Cooper: He also had a relationship to God was a big part of his life. That early on, I started to see the visual aspect of the film. That's what excites me about a filmmaker. That's where the 1:3:3 aspect ratio, which much of the film has, that's where that came because I like the vertical element to it.

David Remnick: Explain what that aspect ratio is as opposed to [crosstalk].

Bradley Cooper: That's more of a vertical. Either side of the frame, if you're watching it, is squeezed in. You have more top and bottom, almost like a television, as opposed to scope, which is the Westerns and you have more room on the left and right. It's wonderful for a closeup as well, the 1:3:3. I'm just 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. 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."

David Remnick: These are things that you're thinking about and many, many other things. 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?

Bradley Cooper: We wound up going under what I had asked Netflix. I think I asked them for $90 million. I think we were shy of that in 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. [laughs]

David Remnick: No matter how successful you've been, both as a comic actor, as a serious actor, 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 had the experience--

Bradley Cooper: That half is in black and white, which is a huge thing for the studios.

David Remnick: How many noes did you get?

Bradley Cooper: 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." 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."

[laughter]

Bradley Cooper: "Your enthusiasm is infectious, and I trust filmmakers that I believe in."

David Remnick: You're not [unintelligible 00:09:20], you're Bradley Cooper at this point, and you're going into some of the biggest offices in LA. What is the language you get for no? What does it sound like?

Bradley Cooper: 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.

[laughter]

Bradley Cooper: I think maybe that'll shatter your idea of I'm--

[laughter]

David Remnick: You tried to make a commercial with Bradley and his mother.

Bradley Cooper: I'm literally not making that up.

[playback clip starts]

Bradley Cooper and Mother: America's largest 5G network.

Bradley Cooper: T-Mobile has price locked in the--

Bradley Cooper's Mother: Okay, wow. Smile. You look like a clown.

Bradley Cooper: I think I know what I'm doing. I've been--

[playback clip ends]

Bradley Cooper: I have no problem asking and pitching something that I believe in. No is something that you become so well acquainted with. Warner Brothers was a tough no. That was the one that hurt a little bit.

David Remnick: Why?

Bradley Cooper: Just because I'd made A Star is Born there and American Sniper and Joker. I just thought, "Oh, trust me guys. 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."

David Remnick: What was their explanation for no? What's the rationale?

Bradley Cooper: I think it was nothing other than logical. [laughs]

David Remnick: They will take it back.

Bradley Cooper: It makes sense what they're saying. It's a huge budget. It's a subject matter that no one will be interested in, and we can't justify it.

[music]

David Remnick: I'm talking today with Bradley Cooper about Maestro, his film about the conductor, Leonard Bernstein. A few months ago when stills from the film were first circulating, the internet in its way as usual blew up with a controversy over the prosthetic that Cooper wears on his nose, the schnozz, that he used to portray Bernstein. The first thing that I heard about this film was this business of the makeup and Jew face and, "Oh my God, should a non-Jewish guy be playing a Jewish guy? Is the nose too big?" and so on. I'll reserve judgment. Was it a serious conversation about prosthetics or-- it didn't seem all that striking to me.

Bradley Cooper: What you're speaking of actually came out after we had made the movie. I had already gone through the entire process of the film. In terms of Lenny looking like Lenny, I knew that I had to age in order to tell this love story, then he has such a beautiful iconic face. I thought, "When I work with a master artist like Kazu, let's create a hybrid where people can really enter into the illusion of Lenny because I'm going to do the voice anyway."

I have a big nose. Not that that was ever something, but I was like, "Our face, our foreheads, our noses, our eyes, the way our eyes are, ears, it's all very workable to create a middle ground. By the way, the prosthetic for the nose was like a silk curtain. That's the difference you see behind his nose. It's wider, and he had a deviated septum. Now, that said, David, oddly enough, to me, Alex Bernstein sent me a letter.

David Remnick: This is his son, the middle child.

Bradley Cooper: Yes. He says, "We want to write a letter responding to this." No one had ever really--

David Remnick: Responding to the press criticism and so-called [crosstalk]

Bradley Cooper: I don't read anything, but I've heard about it. I read the letter, and then I called him. I'll never forget it. He said, "Hey." I said, "Hey, it's Bradley. I just want-- I couldn't talk. I started really weeping very hard. He started crying, then we just hung up. I realized--

David Remnick: You were moved out of gratitude toward him?

Bradley Cooper: First of all, I think I didn't realize how much maybe that hurt, that that's all people were seeing about the movie, but also just that act of kindness from them, from the children.

[music]

David Remnick: My conversation with Bradley Cooper about Maestro continues in a moment.

[music]

David Remnick: Cooper was on the Hollywood A-list of stars as a comic and serious actor when he made his debut as a director with A Star is Born, the 2018 version in which he co-starred with Lady Gaga. Since that film, he's been working single-mindedly, obsessively, on Maestro, a film about Leonard Bernstein and his marriage to the actress, Felicia Montealegre.

[playback clip starts]

Speaker 1: -he need no introduction.

Leonard Bernstein: Hello, I'm Lenny.

Felicia Montealegre: Hello, Felicia.

Leonard Bernstein: Bernstein, like that one.

Felicia Montealegre: Montealegre.

Leonard Bernstein: Montealegre?

Felicia Montealegre: Montealegre Cohn.

Leonard Bernstein: Cohn? Montealegre Cohn? Well, that's an interesting marriage of words.

[playback clip ends]

David Remnick: Felicia is played by Carey Mulligan, and Mulligan gets top billing in the credits. Now, it's not a conventional biopic of Bernstein. The film centers on the marriage and it explores his creative, voracious, consuming, and selfish nature as someone who was capable of astonishing work and also a certain self-destructiveness. You probably won't remember the first time we met, and we've only met a couple of times, but the first time we met, you had on your iPhone the voice that you wanted to use, speaking voice, for A Star Is Born.

Bradley Cooper: For Jackson Maine, yes. I had Sam Elliott's voice.

David Remnick: Right.

Sam Elliott: I started putting them down in paper when we were at home. I don't know. Just, sort of, fell out of me, I guess.

David Remnick: You were playing this for me, and then how you would do it, it was totally fascinating to me. Now, here you don't want to do a caricature and you don't want to do an impersonation. I'm telling you, it's the most uncanny thing. The voice, the kind of liquid, low, aristocratic, and yet swingy Leonard Bernstein voice.

[playback clip starts]

Sam Elliot: I remember particularly when we got to the [unintelligible 00:16:10] which was in 7/4 time, and it was a little tricky. It's not really, but then it seemed tricky in those days.

[playback clip ends]

David Remnick: It changes during the course of the film, just as he does physically.

Bradley Cooper: It initially starts with how I hear and see the movie. I always saw it as one musical element. Part of that music is the interplay between the characters and them speaking the melody of their conversations, particularly between Felicia and Lenny, because I had access to these wonderful audiotapes. That's part of why I started to focus on wanting to make a movie about the two of them was just the melody, the intoxicated melody of their conversations, and particularly him. He spoke melodically.

I also knew early on that in order to tell this story about their relationship, it was going to have to take place over a period of time. If you're going to do that, he sounded different from years of smoking, getting older. His voice completely changed. I knew early on, back in 2017, right away when I even began to think about this, that I needed to start working immediately. Tim Monich, that is the guy who I work with all the time, and we started working on these three separate voices, when he's in his 20s, when he's in his 50s, and then when he's in his late 60s.

David Remnick: He's a dialect coach.

Bradley Cooper: He's a dialect coach, yes.

David Remnick: When you are about to do a scene, do you have to then put on the headphones, hear the voice, and then get into it, or can you put it on as a party trick?

Bradley Cooper: Here's what's great about having prep. The only way that I know how to do this is I have to bank Lenny way before I start shooting, otherwise I'd be terrified, David. Leonard Bernstein, that character that you see in the film, was banked maybe six months before we started shooting. When I go through hair and makeup in the morning before crew call, Lenny's there. It's me, but I'm speaking like him, everything's him. I direct the whole day as him, and I do that just because that's the only way I know to be absolutely free, and I'm not even thinking about anything.

If I had to go and put headphones and listen, I'm, excuse my language, absolutely fucked. Because all of my energy, David, also, is to the filmmaking and to the other actors. There's never a moment ever where I'm even thinking about what I sound like. What you find about that, because as you mentioned there's all these different voices, and the way we would shoot a day would depend on the energy of the Lenny. Young Lenny, he would have a lot of energy. I would race through the day. Old Lenny, you're in the third gear as we're making the movie. Then the crew, we were like, "Oh, we got young Lenny today. Oh, that's great."

David Remnick: Obviously, the heart of the movie is this relationship between Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia. She goes into the marriage with her eyes wide open. She knows that her husband-to-be is gay or bisexual. He's been described in different ways. He's definitely not monogamous. She thinks she's up for the task somehow. How do you get to Felicia's internal life?

Bradley Cooper: Again, it starts off with the macro of the story, and the idea of-- what I got to know about Leonard Bernstein was that he was a very consistent person, very consistent in his unorthodox way he lived his life. That's why in the beginning of the film when I placed him, he's up in the clouds like an angel, then God's calling him to go down to the people to give his gift. That's what that first scene's about.

In that, he's playing the bongos on David Oppenheim's butt. That is the same guy who, then is dancing with William [unintelligible 00:20:08] at the end of the movie, William, the young conductor. He does not change the entire film. Felicia does. Felicia has an awakening, an understanding of who she is and what her plight is, when she, after--

David Remnick: Well, let's slow both of these things down because we've seen it, but you're saying Bernstein is the same throughout his life.

Bradley Cooper: It's almost like he's the antagonist, she's the protagonist in some ways.

David Remnick: What is the "it" there? In other words, he's this, just absolutely consumed and consuming personality, and his ambitions are limitless. He wants to be--

Bradley Cooper: Well, he states it. He states it to us, the viewer, at the beginning of the film, and her, "I refuse to be one thing. The world wants us to be only one thing, and I find that deplorable. I find you very attractive, Felicia," right after we had just seen him banging the drums of a guy's butt.

David Remnick: Right.

Bradley Cooper: You're like, "Oh, okay."

David Remnick: In other words, he could be musically voracious, sexually voracious-

Bradley Cooper: That's right.

David Remnick: -and voracious in all things.

Bradley Cooper: Jerry Robbins just said five minutes ago, "Your show pony, here is a composer, not a conductor. We just saw him composing Manfred, and now he's playing the piano with Aaron Copland." The hope is in the very beginning of the movie. You were bombarded by who this man is. Then she comes onto the stage, comes off the bus, huge close-up, and she grounds him. The movie slows down. It gets tethered by her. Then she says to him, "You are a dragon," and then kisses him. He takes that as, "You see me, and you still want me."

David Remnick: What did Felicia do for Leonard Bernstein's creative life? How are we meant to understand that in the film?

Bradley Cooper: Well, number one, what I just articulated about the hope of what the audience feels from that first 10 minutes of the film, is that she tethers him. In tethering him, he can focus. He composed quite a bit of material in those glory years. He had a tremendous amount of frustration and lament that he hadn't composed more as he got later in life. Halfway through the movie, he says, "When you add it up, it's not that much." You see that he's a bit downtrodden even then.

David Remnick: Because he's disappointed that he was not the composer of classical music that would have put him on the same level as his heroes.

Bradley Cooper: As Mahler. Yes.

David Remnick: As Mahler.

Bradley Cooper: Where I landed and what I used was, he was so excited about life. He was given so many gifts, and let's just say those are little fires he gets to start. He just had all of these fires, all burning at the same time. That takes a tremendous amount of energy, a family, extramarital intimate relationships, conducting, composing, teaching, all of these things. We didn't even really go to the social activism that he did, in the movie.

I think that has a tremendous amount of impact on him throughout his life. I don't think it was just composing. I think if you asked him, he would have definitely said, "I wish I was a better father." I think he would have said, "I wish I was a better husband. I wish I was a better boyfriend." I think all of those things suffered because he was given so many talents.

David Remnick: Not to be cheap or reductive about this, but do you relate to any of that?

Bradley Cooper: Absolutely.

David Remnick: Tell me about that.

Bradley Cooper: I have a lot of passions. I love doing so many different types of things. The thing that really struck me, when I made A Star is Born, I was only really able to make that movie with absolute freedom because I had been sober for so many years, that I could go into this mindset, this soul place.

David Remnick: For about 20 years, right?

Bradley Cooper: --yes, fearlessly. It'll be 20 years in August. It was what? 17, 16 years at the time but a long time. This movie that you were speaking of, I made absolutely fearlessly. I knew I had to because that's a huge element in Bernstein's music. It is fearless.

I think that in the last three to four years, I've arrived, by the grace of God, to a place of actually having self-esteem and feel very comfortable in my skin. I do feel, as arrogant as this may sound, that because I have had the benefit of living in the time period that we are living in now, and there's such an awareness to mental health and taking care of yourself, that I feel like I'm in a place of contentment, soulfully, that maybe he never arrived at because of many factors.

David Remnick: What brought you to that place?

Bradley Cooper: Just tremendous work. Just relentless work.

David Remnick: You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour, and I'm speaking with Bradley Cooper about his film, Maestro. It opened in theaters this week. 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 [crosstalk].

Bradley Cooper: I'm so glad you bring that up.

David Remnick: You're making this [crosstalk]

Bradley Cooper: It's so true.

David Remnick: 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. The benefit is at the Bernstein's. They host it. All the swell people of New York are there. It becomes immortalized first in The New York Times, and then much more famously, Tom Wolfe writes a piece called Radical Chic.

The Bernsteins look, just to put a quick tag on it, ridiculous. They seem like silly people, in a way that's now familiar, trying to be down, trying to be hip, and coming off absurdly. I don't think, my understanding, 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.

Bradley Cooper: Oh, and wrote.

David Remnick: You wrote the scene of that party?

Bradley Cooper: Yes. That party was that party for a long time. Again, the movie tells you what it wants. The spine of the film is their relationship. 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. It really deluded his accountability for her state by introducing that into this narrative what this movie was about. That's why I ultimately took it out.

In terms of, people have asked about, "You're jumping timeline." That switch from black and white to color, which is 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.

David Remnick: Tell us what the marital agreement was, for those who haven't seen the film or read lots of biographies.

Bradley Cooper: 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. She went into this marriage knowing all of those things. At the time, that was a very unorthodox thing. 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 fully him, another person.

David Remnick: 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. On the advice of Felicia, in fact, maybe the insistence, he lies. He tells her it's not true.

Bradley Cooper: Yes, pivotal scene for both characters, both Felicia and Lenny. In fact, in terms of what occurs 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." He goes out there to try to justify, and he talks about jealousy and tells this tale that's hilarious.

[playback clip starts]

Leonard Bernstein: -enlightened, or shed some sort of understanding on what could have happened. I can only imagine that it was spurred on by jealousy, darling, jealousy of whatever it is that I do. It's plagued me all my life, and I apologize for plaguing you now."

[playback clip ends]

Bradley Cooper: Then, she just asked point-blank to her father, "Are the rumors true," and he says, "No, darling.

[playback clip starts]

Felicia Montealegre: I'm relieved.

[playback clip starts]

Bradley Cooper: Then she says, "I'm so relieved." When she says, "I'm so relieved," you see on his face this disappointment of why are we teaching our daughters something that we ourselves don't believe in.

David Remnick: Absolutely.

Bradley Cooper: 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 of me saying, "Fucking tell her the truth." I started to think, honestly, David, I was like, "I'm going to tell her. I'm going to tell her." Then I started to think, "Well, if I tell her, I'm going to have to rewrite and reshoot-

David Remnick: Retype the movie.

Bradley Cooper: -so much of the movie." 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.

David Remnick: Wow.

Bradley Cooper: Then he goes and you could see his head shake for a second like that's me going through it and then he goes, "Okay, let's just go." That's really--

David Remnick: One of the incredible things to me, there's another moment where they have an argument on Thanksgiving. This is an incredible scene. Thanksgiving Day at the Dakota as balloons are floating by the window, Snoopy, or I forget what it was.

Bradley Cooper: Snoopy, yes.

David Remnick: The argument begins with this tremendous crosstalk. You are actually 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.

[playback clip starts]

Leonard Bernstein: You're letting your sadness get the better--

Felicia Montealegre: Oh, stop it.

Leonard Bernstein: Let me at least finish.

Felicia Montealegre: It has nothing to do with me, no.

Leonard Bernstein: Let me finish what I'm going to say. I think-

Felicia Montealegre: No.

Leonard Bernstein: -you're letting your sadness-

Felicia Montealegre: This has-

Leonard Bernstein: -get the better of you.

Felicia Montealegre: -nothing to do with me.

Leonard Bernstein: That's--

Felicia Montealegre: 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 obligation.

Leonard Bernstein: What obligation?

Felicia Montealegre: To what you've been given. to the gift that you've been given.

Leonard Bernstein: Oh, please. Please.

Felicia Montealegre: My God.

Leonard Bernstein: The gift comes with burdens-

Felicia Montealegre: Oh-

Leonard Bernstein: -if you had any idea.

Felicia Montealegre: -the burden of failing and honesty-

Felicia Montealegre: I'm sorry to just admit it-

Felicia Montealegre: -and love.

Leonard Bernstein: -but that's the truth.

Felicia Montealegre: And above all, you love people and-

Leonard Bernstein: I do love people.

Felicia Montealegre: -and from that wellspring of love, the complications arise in your life.

Leonard Bernstein: That's exactly right.

Felicia Montealegre: Wake up, wake up, Take off your glasses.

[playback clip ends]

David Remnick: 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 Bernstein conducting the climactic passages of Mahler's Second Symphony at a cathedral in England. 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.

Bradley Cooper: That is the spine of the whole film. Again, I hope you heard some of it because she was really laying into him at the beginning, but it was all about--

David Remnick: All is fast and furious. You know what I mean?

Bradley Cooper: It is.

David Remnick: It's like life not like a script.

Bradley Cooper: Yes, 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 hurtfully 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." It's just the-- [laughs]

David Remnick: You're going to end up--

Bradley Cooper: You're going to end up a lonely old queen. She doesn't say, "You've crushed me. How dare you. You've betrayed-- He doesn't say anything to that. 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 and want 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." 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.

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've loved him because that's what she attacks him for at the Thanksgiving Day parade fight. She says it's hate, "You're up there showing people that they'll never hold a candle to you, that you are so much better than them." 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. 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. Then she says to him, "There's no hate in your heart." That's the pure love they had for each other.

David Remnick: 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 Mahler. That's got to be a childhood fantasy come true.

Bradley Cooper: Yes, sure is.

David Remnick: Some kids dream of hitting the ball out of Yankee Stadium.

Bradley Cooper: That's it.

David Remnick: You got to do that.

Bradley Cooper: I know.

David Remnick: What was the experience like? How does the filming work?

Bradley Cooper: Well, I knew I was going to do that piece of music six years ago, so I started working on it then. There's a wonderful recording of that performance, and I was able to get the raw footage where it's just seeing his conducting. Then I just spent all of the time I could, number one, going to the New York Phil three or four times a week, just watching conductors, the LA Phil, the Philadelphia Orchestra. Became very close with Gustavo Dudamel and Yannick Séguin.

David Remnick: Those are two of the very top conductors working today.

Bradley Cooper: Then Yannick, who's been in just a whole part of Lenny in this film, I had an earpiece and he was counting tempo for me when I was doing-- because I was conducting them. That is live.

[MUSIC - Mahler: Second Symphony]

Bradley Cooper: The problem was, I couldn't really hear it because the music's so loud. I couldn't really hear it. 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, it's over and they're not following you.

David Remnick: What happens if the music stops? You have to do it again?

Bradley Cooper: No, they keep playing because they're the best orchestra in the world, but it's not the same. It's not the same. I know it, and so the camera knows it and the audience knows it. I went to bed that night. The next morning, 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. He said, "I think we do."

I always would show up before crew call really a couple of minutes at least 20 because I'd been in the makeup chair, I walked into the empty Ely and it was as if Lenny saying to me, "Just do it one more time. Do not give up." The 75 orchestra members of the London Symphony Orchestra brought everybody back one shot-

[MUSIC - Mahler: Second Symphony]

Bradley Cooper: -and for whatever reason, David, all of that prep for six years came to me effortlessly. I was able to let go and conduct the orchestra so much so the timpanist came running afterwards and said, "Yesterday, everything you did was absolute shit. This is the one you have to use."

David Remnick: Really?

Bradley Cooper: I was like, "YNo, no, I know." Yes. I said, "No." He said, "No, you actually conducted us there, Lenny." I said, "I know. Yes, that's what's going to be in." That was it. You'd have to ask Lenny, but I think he'd be very happy. I hope he would.

David Remnick: Wow, that's incredible.

Bradley Cooper: It was really incredible I'll never forget it. Scariest thing I've ever done by far, not even close. Singing at the Oscars live, performing at Glastonbury, nothing even comes close.

[MUSIC - Mahler: Second Symphony]

David Remnick: Bradley Cooper, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a recreation of a famous concert by Leonard Bernstein, for his new film Maestro. The film Maestro has been getting some love from the critics, and it's going to be a heavy contender, I think, for the award season. Bradley Cooper stars in the film as Leonard Bernstein. He directed the film, and he co-wrote it with Josh Singer. Cooper's path to being a filmmaker of note was hardly a straight line. He became known first as a beloved actor in some decidedly [unintelligible 00:39:01] comedies playing a jerk in Wedding Crashers and more of a straight man in the Hangover films.

[playback clip starts]

Phil: Dr. Price? Stu, you're a dentist. Hey, don't try and get fancy.

Stu: It's not fancy if it's true.

Phil: He's a dentist. Don't get too excited. And if someone has a heart attack, you should still call 911.

[playback clip ends]

David Remnick: Cooper went on to some really serious roles in films with directors, including David O. Russell. He might not like me mentioning it, but at the same time, he shows up quite often on list of Sexiest Men Alive. Still all along, Cooper told me, he wanted to get behind the camera. He fulfilled the cliche of, "I always wanted to direct," and he did so with a bang. He debuted as a director on A Star is Born.

Bradley Cooper: I didn't allow myself to dream as big as I really wanted to dream when I was a kid. Acting is what I thought I wanted, but the truth is, it wasn't just what Hopkins and Hurt did in the Elephant Man, it was what David Lynch was doing with the Elephant Man and was the sound design. That's what really got me excited. 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. I was lucky enough to work with filmmakers who saw that in me and invited me very much into their process.

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?" 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." It became 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. I'm 40 years old, and I can't just sit around and wait and do movies that I actually think aren't what I want to be doing.

David Remnick: What directors don't want to work with you and why?

Bradley Cooper: You'd have to ask them why, but any actor will have a list of directors that just don't-- at that time I had written David Fincher an email years ago, never heard a response. Martin Scorsese at that time, Paul Thomas Sanderson, Quentin Tarantino, I could go on and on.

David Remnick: You worked with one of the most difficult people. You did three films with David O. Russell, who couldn't be more difficult famously.

Bradley Cooper: Well, I love David, and we had an incredible time together. Hopefully, I'm not coming across anyway not acknowledging how lucky I've been with the people I have gotten to work with. I'm just speaking to the fact that there 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."

David Remnick: Are you done with fun? In other words, if a fun comic role came along, it was three months of your time, it's not Hangover 5 but something of a similar spirit.

Bradley Cooper: Well, I would do Hangover 5. It would be four first, but yes.

David Remnick: I don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

[laughter]

David Remnick: You would do that in a flash and not just to pay the bills.

Bradley Cooper: I would probably do Hangover 4 in an instant just because I love Todd, I love Zach, I love Ed so much. I probably would, yes.

David Remnick: I think we just made news. Hangover 4 is coming around the corner.

Bradley Cooper: I don't think Todd's ever going to do that. Real quick just to end, 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 Born. This is me having fun.

David Remnick: It is-

Bradley Cooper: Oh, I wouldn't do it if it wasn't.

David Remnick: -but the higher fun.

Bradley Cooper: I don't know what you mean. Just comedy?

David Remnick: It's just less consuming and exhausting.

Bradley Cooper: I just didn't see it as exhausting.

David Remnick: You don't have too many maestros in you. There's only one life to live.

Bradley Cooper: That's correct. I also realize that, and 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.

David Remnick: 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?

Bradley Cooper: You don't move on. That's the beauty about what I get to do. Chris Kyle lives inside me. 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 was talking with a bit of a thing when I would-- [chuckles] I was like, "Oh, that's not really my voice." These are experiences. Like your time in Russia, I assume those four years will always be inside of you.

David Remnick: It's true.

Bradley Cooper: It's the same exact thing.

David Remnick: How did it shape the way you think about what's next, or does it put a stall on it? Do you become much pickier and more selective?

Bradley Cooper: I don't know. I just know that I feel like my tools are sharper. I may have a few more tools now as I go into the next adventure, which is exciting.

David Remnick: Do you know what that next adventure is?

Bradley Cooper: I might.

David Remnick: No, I thought you might, and it's not a Metallica biopic.

Bradley Cooper: Oh, there you go.

[laughter]

David Remnick: I know you have a special effect [crosstalk].

Bradley Cooper: I need to keep my hearing, David. I've blown off my thread.

David Remnick: Exactly. I know. You've had hearing issues in the past, and I don't think Metallica would be good for you.

Bradley Cooper: No-

[laughter]

Bradley Cooper: -as much as I do love them.

David Remnick: Sometimes people when they begin their careers in either comic roles or writing comically, and then they "get serious", look back at the comic work with some, I don't know, diminishment. I wonder how you feel about it because those movies were antically wonderfully funny.

Bradley Cooper: My hope, David, is that there's a lot of humor in this movie. There's a lot of jokes in A Star is Born, and all the filmmakers that I love. Stanley Kubrick was hilarious. I find that humor is a-- when my father was dying and I was holding him, and my mother and I just had a tuna fish sandwich, that's why it's in the movie where she says, "You smell like tuna fish," I remember holding my father who was unconscious at the time. My mother saying, "Your breath smells like tuna fish." I just thought, "Mom, he doesn't know." There's humor everywhere. I love comedy. In fact, they're the same thing really.

David Remnick: It's storytelling.

Bradley Cooper: It's storytelling.

David Remnick: The film began in some ways with permission from the family, and then you present the film to the three children. They're very painful things. The film, toward the very end, Lenny is both bereft and pathetic. You dramatize this by him coming in a very clumsy, sloppy way to a young director at Tanglewood. I think that stands for a lot of things because I think we know that there were many such incidents. How did the kids react to the film when you showed it to them for the first time in all its glory, and at times, pain?

Bradley Cooper: You'd have to ask them, but my instinct is they'd say that if they had not seen anything, or talked about anything until the last version of the film, I think it probably would've been pretty traumatic, but because they had been such a part of it at every turn, I would send them clips and they would come and see chunks of the film, so it was a gradual digestion of the whole experience.

David Remnick: Were they inhibiting in any way? Did their living presence and their permission for the film in any way say, "You know what? If I do that, that's too far. It's a betrayal of them"? Biographers have this problem.

Bradley Cooper: Never.

David Remnick: You didn't have that problem?

Bradley Cooper: No. Obviously, if you see the film.

[music]

David Remnick: Bradley Cooper, thank you so much.

Bradley Cooper: Thank you. Oh, that was awesome.

David Remnick: That was great.

Bradley Cooper: That was really awesome.

[music]

David Remnick: Maestro directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Cooper and Carey Mulligan is in theaters now.

[music]

 

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