A ‘jewface’ row wins a prominent part in Bernstein film
NewsIsraeli and Jewish media are getting het up at the discovery that Bradley Cooper is wearing a prosthetic nose to play Leonard Bernstein in the forthcoming Netflix biopic.
Riding on a social media wavelet, journalists have been wrestling with a phenomenon of ‘jewface’, a term that was coined by the comedian Sarah Silverman nine months ago to denote Hollywood casting of gentiles to play biopics of Jews.
Before long, the British actress Maureen Lipman followed up with an attack on Helen Mirren for playing Golda Meir.
Then, the Joan Rovers film that Silverman attacked was scrapped.
This week, Silverman was cast to play Leonard Bernstein’s sister in the Bradley Cooper biopic.
So that’s what the fuss is all about… she who makes the biggest noise gets a prominent part.
Bradley Cooper has a good schnozzle of his own, why would he need a prosthetic one?
So that it looks like Lenny’s.
So only someone with a naturally matching nose can now play Bernstein? Oy!
Next thing you know, the actor will have to smoke, pick up attractive young men, drink whiskey and wear cowboy boots!
Well, anything that makes the actor seem more like the person he’s playing makes sense. That is, after-all, a c t i n g.
I’m asking in a purely non-polemical way, so please spare me any anonymous ad hominem attacks:
Isn’t the point of makeup to help an actor more closely resemble the character s/he is portraying? If Bernstein had had a birthmark on his face that Mr. Cooper’s makeup replicated, would there be a similar hubbub?
I took a conducting class with Bernstein in the early 1980s, and he looked very much like the photo of Bradley Cooper that accompanies this article. While I’m leery of any classical music biopics, I cannot fault the makeup team for trying to emulate Bernstein’s features as closely as possible.
You are absolutely correct. This is the same discussion that should be had regarding characters and themes of non-European persuasion in Opera. Wearing darker make up to look like a character is simply not the same thing as actual Blackface. Trying to cast only singers of color or of Asian descent into specific roles is precisely what was fought against during the Civil Rights movement! People forget that Grace Bumbry used to have all her exposed skin painted first red and then with Caucasian tones whenever she portrayed a specifically White character, like Tosca. She did this not because she was hiding her skin, but to afford a sense of realism and dedication to the theatrical art for the sake of the piece and the audience. The very idea that people are taking an issue with an actor who is using prosthetics to look almost exactly like an actual recently and well-documented person is precisely what is part of the job. There is no -ism about it beyond Realism and Professionalism. People have lost their minds.
Exactly. It’s called acting. Woke gone crazy
Maybe Sarah Silverman would have preferred Adam Sandler to play Bernstein.
As for the nose, Nicole Kidman had a prosthetic nose to play Virginia Woolf. She got an Oscar. Hang in there, Brad!
Actually, they should have gotten Sean Penn. Has anyone seen him recently? He looks EXACTLY like Leonard Bernstein.
Lol… gross… no he does not.
Track down the interview he did recently with Sean Hannity about the war in Ukraine. You’ll see.
Have you seen him in prosthetic make-up playing bloated Nixon AG John Mitchell in Gaslit? Hilarious.
Sarah Silverman is not a good moral compass. She exudes many of the qualities she claims to hate.
Sarah Silverman is a hypocrite. She used to mock Asians, saying JAP, and when called out, remained aloof and unapologetic.
To me, it all goes back to the discussion as to whether Jewishness constitutes an ethnicity, which has had arguments on both sides in Jewish communities for decades.
If you think yes, then to have a gentile play the part of a Jewish person should be seen in the same way as a non-Black person playing a character of that ethnicity (which you might also think is fine), whereas if you think no, then it amounts to nothing more than an actor changing their appearance slightly to better resemble the character.
The first question I would ask is whether Bradley Cooper is the best person to play Bernstein, as no doubt there are a myriad of actors much better equipped for the role, whether they be Jewish or not.
Why are you so sure that “no doubt there are a myriad of actors much better equipped for the role, whether they be Jewish or not”? Bradley Cooper did a very fine job portraying a musician in “A Star Is Born,” so he doesn’t seem terribly miscast in the Bernstein biopic. I worked with Leonard Bernstein many times at Tanglewood and elsewhere, and one thing he undeniably had was great charisma. I think Bradley Cooper can capture that well.
People say to me you don’t look english.
What can i do my mother went out with an italian.
He looks exactly like Bernstein.
Didn’t Lenny used to make fun of his appearance referring to his “big Jewish nose”? And yes this is on videotape. This is just another instance of liberals creating their own outrage to further their own agenda…..
It’s no skin off my nose about the noise concerning the nose. If Mr. Cooper can successfully channel the full force of nature that was Leonard Bernstein then the actor should get the prize regardless of the size.
Douglas Murray makes a strong case for the role anti-semitism holds within the ‘Woke movement.’
A handful of wokers I’ve encountered in person don’t believe the Holocaust happened.
If the woke had its way, Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price would be canceled for singing German/Austrian music. Eminem would be canceled for rapping. Indeed, to them how one identifies is the core of their existence.
Bradley Cooper can only be Bradley Cooper.
It’s a phase. California is finally realizing this.
Go Bradley.
In fact, Larry David’s use of ‘Jewface’ predates Sarah Silverman’s. In a 2004 episode of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’, he and Suzie Essman are attempting to join a restricted country club, and argue over which of them will more easily ‘pass’.
The king is dead, long live the king
Until the present woke generation realises that acting is the illusion of playing someone that you are not and that make-up enhances this illusion, then we are continually going to have this argument.
You have no idea how pissed I was when I discovered all the Klingons on Star Trek were played by human actors wearing make-up. The nerve!
This is the stupidest, most contrived non-issue I’ve ever heard. If Cooper had worn some grotesque false nose to make Bernstein an ugly, JewBoy caricature, there might be some basis for righteous indignation. But it makes him a dead ringer for Bernstein. There is not a whiff of anti-Semitism in any of this. Did this take away a role for a Jewish actor? Give me a break, it’s not as if Jews are just now breaking into Hollywood. As I Jew myself, I see this as petty, stupid, and embarrassing.
I don’t get it.
Actors have been using prosthetics to better portray famous people since time immemorial.
If Bernstein had been Catholic no one would have batted an eyelid.
Bob Hope was not Jewish, had a most prominent nose. Any actor playing him in a biopic must have that nose if he doesn’t already. Q.E.D. A very good argument can be made that portraying Bernstein but forbidding the actor to look like him because he (Bernstein) is “different” really is a racist act.
I thought that last sentence read “he who makes the biggest nose gets the biggest part”….. How wrong can you be?
Un neis, Gwyn!
No one complains when they put noses on actors to play George Washington.
The problem – well, one of the problems – is that you could have a biopic of any of hundreds of symphony conductors and anybody could play anybody because the general audience (meaning, not us) does not know what they are supposed to look like, with the possible exception of Stokowski. But even today after all these years, lots of people, non-musical people, know what Bernstein looked like. And if the actor doesn’t look like that, the audience won’t buy in.
James Frain as Daniel Barenboim in “Hilary and Jackie” gave Barenboim a bit more handsomeness than he deserved.
From Oxford:
actor
noun: actor; plural noun: actors
1. a person whose profession is acting on the stage, in movies, or on television.
As far as I can tell, there’s no “ethnic/’racial’ origin” restriction. There’s always taste, but we’re not talking about that here. Technically, blackface is considerably harder to pull off then a prosthetic nose (no pun intended), and it could be argued that *for that reason* it’s really unnecessary, considering the number of talented black actors. Using blackface would also be in very questionable taste, considering its history.
In terms of a non-Jew playing the part of the Jewish person, it could be argued that a Jew *might* have grown up in an environment that would enable a fuller understanding of a “Jewish character”, but not necessarily. My opinion: hire the most skilled actor for the part.
it is like only black musicians can
play jazz. there are great white musicians. that play jazz. gerry mulligan. buddy rich. benny goodman. the list goes on
Makeup is racist. I guess. Theater is racist. Everything is racist if We say so.
https://www.jta.org/2022/05/31/culture/netflix-releases-photos-of-bradley-cooper-wearing-prosthetic-nose-to-portray-leonard-bernstein-reigniting-jewish-representation-debate
I didn’t pay much attention to Lenny’s nose, but his huge beer belly was hard to miss. Maybe a bigger prosthetic gut would be more appropriate. This is wistful thinking. Classical music biopic wouldn’t allow such a big budget.
Good for Sarah. I hope she gets a lot of money. One should never allow anyone to define you. It was Jewish movie moguls who defined American beauty as fair and blond way before Hitler did. Can’t think of a Jewish actor that looked “Jew face” as Ms. Silverman states. Most Jewish actors looked European like everyone else.
Around four decades ago I had the pleasure of rehearsing and performing with Leonard Bernstein on the podium right in front of me on several occasions and, if I remember correctly, his proboscis was actually a little bit larger than the one we see in this one picture of Bradley Cooper as the late Maestro, so, based on just that single piece of photographic evidence, I personally have absolutely no objections whatsoever to such a fairly modest makeup enhancement.
Boy, is this going to make things tough! Say good-bye to SciFi movies!
Who but the 150%-PC crowd could possibly care????? Actors have been wearing prosthetic noses for CENTURIES!!!! The LGTBQSHTUVSKD+ crowd just need to GROW UP!