Bradley Cooper gives account of his Leonard Bernstein struggles

Our correspondent Susan Hall went to hear the film-maker discuss some of the dilemmas he faced in embodying Bernstein on film:

Here’s her report:

Bradley Cooper spoke at the first public screening of Maestro at the Angelika Theater in New York. The film started as a biopic on Leonard Bernstein, the conductor. It is now the story of his marriage to Felicia Montealegre.

Cooper said he was very nervous facing a theatrical audience. He’d been very nervous showing the film to the Bernstein children, but they all hugged and cried after the screening. Stephen Spielberg, a co-producer and director of another Bernstein film, sat in a screening room by himself. We did not hear how he reacted.

Cooper has been invited to show the film to his mentor Clint Eastwood, and is very nervous going off to Savannah to screen it for him.

Cooper was very nervous picking up a baton, even though he’d first asked for one when he was very young. He loves classical music (no composers named). So do his co-producers Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.

Cooper attributes accurate hand and arm motions for upbeats and downbeats to his tutor, Yannick Nezet Seguin, whose voice came whispering to him through an ear device during filming. Cooper laughs off Nezet Seguin’s appraisal of his conducting talent: an invitation to conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra any time.

Cooper remarked that it had been a privilege to conduct in the concert hall where Bernstein himself conducted. Anyone who had a hard hat tour of the old Philharmonic Hall during re-construction knows that the original was gutted. A short sequence in Maestro looks more like an advertisement for the new David Geffern Hall.

Bernstein was not only a great conductor but a great composer. Cooper is clearly caught up in the composer’s infectious tunes and off center beats. He talks about make-up artist Kazu Hiro with whom he had a short-term relationship consisting of five-hour sessions to transform him on each shoot day into character. Like Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill, Cooper was glad to have Hiro do the acting work with his painterly skills.

Often Cooper directed/conducted in full Bernstein makeup. He regards this as schizophrenic, a term Bernstein used about himself. For Bernstein it was the pull and push between composing and conducting, and between loving men and loving a woman, his wife.

Carrie Mulligan, who plays Bersteins’s wife. spoke too. She calls Cooper a great director. He figured out that she always froze when he said “Action.” So the two just sat and talked. The cameras rolled without an audible prompt. Give it to Cooper. Mulligan’s performance is superb.

Cooper talked about the Bernstein children coming to trust him. Their interest was in their parents’ relationship. They had happy childhoods full of play and love at home. Felicia’s gay brother, who formed a young boys’ basketball team and cruised midtown North in his Jaguar looking for recruits, is not mentioned.

The childrena’ questions so moved Cooper that the film turned from biopic to an exploration of marriage. The mysteries of the two people’s bond can never be understood by outsiders. That more than could meet a child’s eye was driving the marriage is not suggested.

An Australian study finds that heterosexual women often have wonderful relationships with bi-sexual men. These men provide a unique kind of support and are reported to be stellar sexual companions.

The Bernsteins would divorce when Lenny felt the need to live an ‘out’ life with his primary objects of desire, men. After Stonewall, this seemed possible. Yet he and Feliicia continued to be close friends and companions throughout their almost three decades together (and apart).

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