The spontaneous scene that changed Bradley Cooper’s career: “It just encapsulates everything”
Posted On
(Credit: Netflix)
Despite beginning his career as an actor, Bradley Cooper has established himself as a formidable director in his own right after the global success of A Star is Born, which also marked the beginning of Lady Gaga’s career on the silver screen. However, there was one passion project that had been ticking away in the background for nearly eight years, with one story that Cooper was desperate to bring to life, and during the winter of 2023, he did just that.
Maestro is an autobiographical film about the life and passions of Leonard Bernstein, one of the most iconic conductors and composers of all time — known for creating West Side Story among many other achievements. Similarly to his 2018 film, Cooper wrote, directed and starred in the project, morphing into Bernstein and truly capturing this larger-than-life spirit and unstoppable passion that made him such a compelling person. Cooper played him as this dynamic and extremely enthusiastic person that was also quite hard to be close to, keeping his inner world a secret and struggling with the clash between this and his family life.
The project was a labour of love for Cooper, who has been an avid admirer of the conductor for many years, fascinated by the many layers within his public and private self and his many untold stories. And so, Cooper embarked on the quest to bring the complex vibrancy of his life to the screen, all of which culminates in one shot, and one that Cooper spontaneously created after a particularly challenging scene.
The film’s emotional climax takes place at the Ely Cathedral in New York, based on a real-life performance in 1973 when Bernstein conducted Mahler’s 2nd Symphony in C minor. The performance was one of the most famous from Bernstein’s career, and sees him fully committed and engrossed in the music as he draws on the beauty of the piece and gives his all to the moment. After watching a clip of it on YouTube, Cooper said he knew that this needed to be the film’s climax, saying, “It just encapsulates everything you ever want to know about him as a conductor. His ability to harness that music, to be in the centre of the sun and not burn, but instead just shine the light back onto us”. He shortly began working with the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra to practice conducting the scene, knowing that he needed to pull off this moment in a spectacular way for the emotional payoff to work.
But the importance of this moment began to weigh on Cooper, and when they finally began shooting the scene that he had been preparing for over two years, he realised the enormity of the challenge. The shoot did not go well – they had multiple cameras rolling, and Cooper was terrified to conduct the 130 musicians in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, unconvinced by his ability to lead the music.
After countless takes, Cooper felt disheartened and disappointed, unconvinced they had a take that would work or even hold a flame next to Bernstein’s energy in the original performance. The next morning, they were supposed to shoot another scene outside the cathedral, but in a spontaneous stroke of genius, Cooper asked whether they could move the techno crane inside the cathedral and try one more take of the conducting scene.
They shot one scene in one long six-minute take, and it was this one that ended up being used in the final cut of the film. Cooper said that after he had finished the scene, one of the musicians came up to him and said, “You know what you did yesterday? It was total shit. Today, you conducted us”.
Sometimes we need uncertainty and self-doubt to fulfil our potential, and Cooper’s recreation of this iconic musical moment shows that this can be the key ingredient to filmmaking, as well as the deprecating words of a world-class orchestral player.
[embedded content]
Related Topics
