Bradley Cooper spent six years creating Maestro as a movie. Cooper wrote, directed and stars as Leonard Bernstein. He informed Deadline’s Pete Hammond at Contenders Film L.A. that he misplaced all sense of time making Maestro.
“He died in 1990 and I swear I knew him,” Cooper stated of Bernstein. “This movie has messed time up for me. It’s bent time, it really has.”
Cooper stated his obsession goes again additional than the time since he obtained the rights to Bernstein’s music and life from his household. Cooper remembers asking Santa Claus for a conductor’s baton as a baby, having seen it in Bugs Bunny cartoons.
“I spent embarrassingly too many hours pretending I was doing that,” Cooper stated. “I didn’t know it was called baton back then. I was like the thing Bugs Bunny is holding that makes music.”
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This yr, Cooper stated, his daughter requested him for a baton coincidentally. It was each Cooper’s ardour for conducting and his curiosity in highlighting Bernstein’s spouse, Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), that received the Bernstein household over.
Mulligan additionally signed on earlier than Cooper had written the script. She visited Montealegre’s household in Chile.
“The more I learned about her, the more I wanted to learn about her,” Mulligan stated “She wanted to be an actor. She wanted to come to New York but to know where she arrived, I needed to know where she came from.”
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Bernstein was bisexual and Montealegre tolerated his affairs with males. One of Bernstein’s lovers was David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer). Bomer stated he learn letters between Oppenheim and Bernstein within the Library of Congress, and copied Oppenheim’s letters by hand to provide to Cooper on set.
“It was such a beautiful private look into their world and a shorthand they had together,” Bomer stated. “The love and respect they had together and the similarity of their ambitions, their points of view on the world and how to succeed in the world.”
Cooper targeted extra on Bernstein’s relationships, although he discovered to conduct for a number of scenes within the movie. Bernstein’s authentic music supplies the movie’s rating.
“I did want to serve his legacy musically,” Cooper stated. “The best thing is to tell a story we can all relate to hopefully and it’s all to the rhythm of his music. The movie is all scored to his music. That is the best way I can present to you this man.”
Maestro opens in theaters Nov. 22 and premieres on Netflix Dec. 20.
Check again on Monday for the panel video.
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