LAS VEGAS – If you haven’t heard half of Hollywood has already seen Bradley Cooper’s “A Star is Born.” In fact, it seems like a week doesn’t go by where another prominent name drops that Cooper screened the movie for them and it’s fantastic (the most recent being Robert DeNiro). At CinemaCon today Cooper joined his ex-roommate and Warner Bros. surprise host Will Arnett on stage to talk about the movie and screen the first trailer for what will be his directorial debut. Based on the 2 minutes and 30 seconds of footage shown the “Silver Linings Playbook” star may have found a compelling new spin to a story already brought to the screen three times before.
First image and more details of “A Star Is Born”
The story is a familiar trope; a fading star (Cooper) helps a younger one (Gaga) find fame. It appears in this incarnation Cooper is playing a blues-y, country rock star and Gaga a singer who insists she isn’t comfortable singing her own material. The more she gets famous the harder he falls.
“She’s kind of a revelation in this movie,” Cooper told the audience. “When I approached her for it she said, ‘Well, we’re gonna sing live.’ And I was like, ‘Well, you’ll sing live. I don’t sing.’ And she was like, ‘No, no. I can’t stand the movies when you see that it’s just playback and they are lip syncing to it. We are gonna sing live.’ And deep down I knew we were going to do have to do that.”
The Grammy-winning icon was supportive, however. Cooper recalls, “She said from the beginning, ‘You’re going to become a musician and ‘You are going to make me as comfortable as I can be on film,’ because she’s never done a film before. It was a good barter.”
Luckily, the film took three years to make (it should be noted at one time Beyonce was going to play Gaga’s role) and Cooper seems indebted for Warner Bros. unusual patience with his first big screen endeavor.
“Everything is live. We jumped on real stages at Glastonbury and Coachella and Stagecoach. So you can’t substitute that,” Cooper says. “Kris Kristofferson was in the ‘70s version [of ‘A Star Is Born’] and was playing at Glastonbury and he was kind enough to let us go on during his set which was singing in front of 80,000 people. So, I got to sing and then say, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Kris Kristofferson.’”
What’s most apparent in the preview is Matthew Libatique‘s gorgeous cinematography most of which follows the actors on stage. The affect feels a little “Blue Valentine” meets “Once” meets “Crazy Heart,” but in the best way possible.
“Music is the most purest way you can express yourself because you always have to be relaxed and it always wrapped itself around me,” Cooper says. “In terms of a visual experience I always saw this movie as something that had to be seen in a theater because I thought I as a theatergoer could be on stage with musicians while they are singing. The times I’ve been on stage watching musicians the scope is incredible, but oddly movies that have live music [don’t capture that], you’re in the audience. And this movie almost the entire time the camera is on stage and I think it was a really successful endeavor.”
Will “A Star Is Born” become the Oscar player the months of hype is setting it up to be? Needless to say, this trailer certainly gets them off to a great start.
“A Star Is Born” opens nationwide on Oct. 5.