[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Many of you know the voice of my next guest, Jamie Bernstein, host of WQXR's podcast, The NY Phil: Made in New York, for example, here is how episode four opens, and it takes us back 82 years ago.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

Alison Stewart: The attack pulled the US into the war.

Jamie Bernstein: This is the The NY Phil Story: Made in New York. I am Jamie Bernstein.

Alison Stewart: In the same episode, Jamie tells a story of how her father got his big break with the Phil.

Presenter: Good afternoon. United States Rubber Company again invites you to Carnegie Hall to hear a concert of the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Bruno Walter, who was to have conducted this afternoon is ill, and his place will be taken by the young American-born assistant conductor of the Philharmonic Symphony, Leonard Bernstein. The program includes the--

Jamie Bernstein: With just a few hours notice before the live broadcast, my very own dad had to pinch hit for the flu-smitten Bruno Walter, that acclaimed maestro and former protégé of Gustav Mahler. No pressure there Lenny.

Presenter: --in bringing the music of the Philharmonic Symphony to the millions of radio listeners every Sunday afternoon. Leonard Bernstein has come out on the platform and will presently lead the Philharmonic Symphony in our national anthem.

Alison Stewart: That exact moment is recreated in the critically acclaimed film Maestro. That portion of the film is in black and white. The visual cue takes us back to the '40s, and actor Bradley Cooper as a 25-year-old Lenny Bernstein is a bundle of energy, nerves, and charisma as he bounds on stage at Carnegie Hall, a pivotal moment in Bernstein's career. The film Maestro certainly takes us through the legend's career, but it also celebrates the love story between Jamie's parents, Lenny, and his wife, actor Felicia Montealegre, excuse me, Cohen Bernstein, played by Kerry Mulligan.

The two share a bond of intimacy and mutual admiration. They marry and start a family. They live a big life, but they have to do it within the small confines of the then-conventional definitions of sexuality and status. Jamie and her siblings have been supportive of the film, which shows a complete picture of their parents. They've even allowed the family's Connecticut home to be used for filming. The New York Times says, "Maestro is a fast-paced chronicle of towering highs, crushing lows, and artistic milestones most delivered in a personal key." You can see it now in select theaters, and on Netflix on December 20th. Joining me now is Jamie Bernstein. So happy to have you in the studio, Jamie.

Jamie Bernstein: Delighted to be here. Hi.

Alison Stewart: Before the film, had you been approached about a biopic about your family?

Jamie Bernstein: Well, this whole project began a long time ago, 15 years ago.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Jamie Bernstein: The producer, Fred Berner, and his partner, Amy Durning, came to the Lenny Bernstein office and pitched this biopic idea to us, and we said, "Okay, give it a try. See if you can put it all together." The years went by and the various iterations went by. It wasn't until about six years ago that Bradley Cooper came on board to this project. When he started taking his deep dive into Leonard Bernstein and everything about him, he decided to change the flavor of the project and make it be this portrait of a marriage rather than a conventional biopic. He really changed the whole idea of the film.

Alison Stewart: Before you could say yes with your whole heart, what did you need to know from the filmmakers? What were your hard yeses? What were your hard nos?

Jamie Bernstein: Well, basically, we were persuaded by Bradley Cooper that he was the man for the job. He had just finished making A Star Is Born, and he screened it for us. It hadn't been released yet.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting.

Jamie Bernstein: When we saw it, we thought, "Well, here's a guy who knows what he's doing." He was passionate about music and about our dad, although he didn't yet know as much about our dad as he eventually did, but we just felt like he was the right guy for the job, and then it turned out that he really was in ways that we couldn't even have anticipated.

Alison Stewart: He strikes me as a careful person.

Jamie Bernstein: He's careful, but he also is a big risk taker because the film is very full of risk-taking, to say nothing of Bradley getting up there and literally actually conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in the finale of Mahler's second symphony. That's risky.

Alison Stewart: What questions did you have about how they were going to handle some of the sensitive aspects of your family's life?

Jamie Bernstein: Well, we all had a conversation about it. It was fortunate in a way, in the timing that in our dad's centennial year, 2018, I wrote a memoir about growing up in my family called Famous Father Girl. The writing of that memoir gave my brother and sister and me a chance to talk about and process a lot of the challenging elements and issues in our family history and stuff about our dad and our parents as a couple. We went through all of that back then, and that turned out to be very good preparation for dealing with all these issues when it came to the filming of Maestro.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jamie Bernstein, host of The NY Phil Story: Made in New York on WQXR. Obviously, she is someone who's been deeply involved with the making of the film Maestro, which is in theaters now, and on Netflix, December 20th. Some of the movie was filmed in your actual home in Connecticut. First of all, why did you let a film crew into your house?

Jamie Bernstein: It's a big thing to let a film crew into one's house. We were not there for the filming. We left and everything looked normal, and then when we came back, everything looked normal, but in between it was as if the house had been picked up, turned upside down and shaken, and then turned back right side up and everything put back. They did a great job of all of that. It could have been far more disruptive than it actually turned out to be.

Alison Stewart: What was it like emotionally to see your family's home and to see your family in the home?

Jamie Bernstein: You can imagine--

Alison Stewart: Your fictional family in your home?

Jamie Bernstein: To say nothing of all of it, the whole emotional ride of watching this film be created and turned into an entity that's now in the world, it's just been-- we keep going back to the same adjective, surreal. It's surreal to see your own family portrayed on screen and ourselves too. We're in the film as kids and Bradley Cooper and Kerry Mulligan are younger than the three of us are, but they're playing our parents when we were younger. The whole thing is so discombobulating, but also kind of thrilling.

Alison Stewart: Maya Hawke plays you in the film. Did you have a chance to spend time with Maya?

Jamie Bernstein: I have not met her yet.

Alison Stewart: She's delightful, by the way.

Jamie Bernstein: So I hear.

Alison Stewart: You both have these great low voices.

Jamie Bernstein: Yes. I know we both have these raspy voices. We have that in common. Many people have said to me, "In real life, she's like you," so I can't wait to meet her of course.

Alison Stewart: I think I thought when I was watching it that she brought an extra dimension to it because she is a child of two very famous people.

Jamie Bernstein: She's a famous father girl too.

Alison Stewart: She is. And famous mother, girl, and who's had parts of their lives played out very publicly. I thought that was really smart casting and interesting casting.

Jamie Bernstein: Yes. I think that was a good choice.

Alison Stewart: The film begins with that moment that your dad got the call that would change his life, that the original conductor's come down with the flu. We heard you narrate it in the podcast. What was the family legend version of that like? When you talked about it in the home?

Jamie Bernstein: You have to remember that all of that happened way before we came along.

Alison Stewart: Of course.

Jamie Bernstein: That debut was in 1943, and our dad and mother weren't even married yet. Met perhaps that very year, but they didn't get married until '51. We didn't come along till after that. It was always history to us. It was ancient history, and so the--

Alison Stewart: I'm laughing. Were you kids and like, "Oh, dad, I don't need to hear that story again?" or-- Kids are kids.

Jamie Bernstein: Yes. We heard it so often anyway in the world.

Alison Stewart: Sure.

Jamie Bernstein: Anytime there's an article written about our dad or a book, it's all going to be in there. We mostly heard those details over and over from elsewhere, not so much from our dad directly.

Alison Stewart: I'm just saying this from the top of my head, because there's so much known about your dad, what are the adjectives you would use to describe him as Dad?

Jamie Bernstein: Oh.

Alison Stewart: As your dad.

Jamie Bernstein: As our dad.

Alison Stewart: As Jamie's dad.

Jamie Bernstein: Right. If you've only seen Leonard Bernstein, let's say on a video or in real life, standing on a podium in his white tie and tails, conducting and looking very imposing and serious, you would never know that he was hilarious. He was hilarious. He was warm and huggy and hilarious and his idea of a good time was to remember all the jokes he ever heard in his life and all the vaudeville routines that he inhaled and just absorbed like a sponge. He never forgot anything, he had incredible memory. He could reproduce entire vaudeville routines that he'd seen as a child and share them with us kids. We loved hearing all the funny stuff and the family was full of private jokes and private language.

There was a lot of laughter in our house and that's the first place I go to in my memories of my dad.

Alison Stewart: I love you dad had dad jokes.

Jamie Bernstein: He did. He had everybody jokes. Some of them were quite inappropriate.

Alison Stewart: Oh, okay. Jamie Bernstein is my guest. Maestro is in select theaters now. I'm going to ask the same question what your mom. What adjectives would you use to describe your mom?

Jamie Bernstein: Well, the thing about our mother was that she's really hard to describe. She was from South America and spoke excellent English because she went to English language schools but she had this hybrid quality in her relationship to the English language. She too was hilarious. She had this razor wit and she was very quick on the trigger and had this innate elegance and grace and was really artistic. She was a wonderful painter. She was also an actress. She was just so creative, and very loving to all of us.

She also created this fantastic household that grounded all the rest of us, in particular, our dad who otherwise would have just gone spiraling off into outer space if she hadn't been providing that grounding.

Alison Stewart: What's an example of that grounding of something she would do? It could be something small.

Jamie Bernstein: Well, just a silly example is the way my father dressed. He had ridiculous taste in clothing and thought it would be really fun to wear orange sneakers and a purple sweater and a crazy scarf. It was our mother who with her impeccable taste steered our dad towards dressing really well.

Alison Stewart: That’s funny.

Jamie Bernstein: In fact, there's a line in the film of Maestro where he credits Felicia with dressing him well, and that left to his own devices he would look like a clown and that was in fact true.

Alison Stewart: Part of the tension in the film we see is that your mother who had a strong career has to take a backseat to your father's career. Now that you're an adult, and you think back to that time, was that a deliberate choice she made, or was that the way things were done at that time?

Jamie Bernstein: That is such a good question because I think it's both. I think there was a part of her that really thrived on performing and she loved her theatrical existence but she also had an element of stage fright that she told us about. Being Mrs. Maestro turned out to be a very convenient excuse to back away from the thing that frightened her and it was really true that being Mrs. Maestro can be a completely full-time job. There was a lot to organize and keep track of and the family itself and just being the head of a household and all of that really absorbed her time and attention. I think she was ambivalent about it all the same.

Alison Stewart: It comes through in the film that your parents really loved each other even if it wasn't a conventional marriage and then even if there were these different tensions. What's a way that you remember knowing as a kid that your parents loved each other?

Jamie Bernstein: Oh, so many ways. Well, in the summers when I was little, when my siblings and I were very young, in the summers our parents would cook up these scripted, plot-driven home movies with silent eight-millimeter movie cameras, the kind you take home movies with but they would write scripts, and use funny props and put these stories together and our mother was kind of the kingpin of the whole project. They would do it together and you could just see how much fun they were having together putting these amazing home movies together not just with each other but with family and friends.

They did a part of one of the acts of Tosca, the opera, where my father played Scarpia and our mother played Tosca, and the lip-synced to Maria Callas and Tito Gobbi singing. You see my mother lip-synching Vissi d'arte with Maria Callas’s voice and it's good stuff and she gets to murder him. There's little psychodrama going on there.

Alison Stewart: Work some things out that way? My guest is Jamie Bernstein. Maestro is in theaters now. I'm going play a clip from the film. Carey Mulligan as your mother Felicia and she's talking to her sister-in-law played by Sarah Silverman about moments in the marriage which were tough, which were difficult, and how she felt in the marriage about needing your father's attention. Let's listen.

Felicia Montealegre: He called me You know?

Shirley Bernstein: And?

Felicia Montealegre: He wants us all to go to Fairfield together for two weeks. He sounded different.

Shirley Bernstein: Felicia.

Felicia Montealegre: No, let's not make excuses. He didn't fail me.

Shirley Bernstein: Felicia.

Felicia Montealegre: No, it's my own arrogance to think I could survive on what he could give. It's just so ironic. I would look at everyone even my own children with such pity because of their longing for his attention. It was sort of a banner I wore so proudly, I don't need. I don't need, and look at me now. Who's the one who hasn't been honest?

Alison Stewart: She's such a strong woman. They're such a team but like I said, the movie is very honest. Your father had sex outside the marriage, he was bisexual. We say queer now. Why do you think your parents stayed married for as long as they did?

Jamie Bernstein: Well, as you said because they really adored each other and something happened when they were together. They created this incredibly inviting warm environment not just for us kids, but for all the rest of their families and their friends and everybody loved coming to our house because the vibe was so good there. Despite whatever difficulties or static they may have had or experienced, they created this truly genuine bonded warmth that everybody loved to be a part of.

Alison Stewart: I got that from the film, this idea that love looks a lot of different ways.

Jamie Bernstein: You bet it does. It comes in all flavors.

Alison Stewart: I was fortunate to get to a bit of the New York Film Festival premiere. David Geffen Hall where your father worked for so many years and they turned it into a screening hall for the occasions. You were on a panel afterward. What was it like seeing the film in that space?

Jamie Bernstein: What a thrill it was especially the sound.

Alison Stewart: The sound.

Jamie Bernstein: They installed all those speakers to make the Dolby Atmos and the sound I think of it as a co-star of the film. It's just such a gigantic presence and I really hope people see this film in a theater so that they can get that big sound experience and have it wash over them like a tsunami. It's just thrilling.

Alison Stewart: What do you hope younger viewers will take away? There are people obviously who are listening who watch the young people's concerts and knew your dad from there, but there are people for whom this is new.

Jamie Bernstein: Oh, definitely. Most young people today don't really know who Leonard Bernstein was or why, in my opinion, he still matters in the world. What I'm really hoping is that two things would happen for those viewers. One, that they would get really curious about learning more about Leonard Bernstein and two, that they would fall in love with Bernstein's music because there's so much of it that we hear on the underscoring of the film, and maybe they'll want to go out and hear more of it.

Alison Stewart: They could also take a look at those Ruth Orkin pictures of him from Tanglewood. He was a babe.

Jamie Bernstein: Yes, he was. He was very easy on the eyes.

Alison Stewart: Jamie Bernstein has been my guest. Definitely check out The NY Phil Story: Made in New York, the podcast from WQXR. Maestro is in select theaters now, on Netflix December 20th. Jamie thanks for spending time with us today.

Jamie Bernstein: You bet, anytime.

Alison Stewart: That's All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart, I appreciate you listening, I appreciate you, I will meet you back here next time.

[music]

 

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.