My Afternoon with Bradley Cooper (sort of)
Seeing "Maestro" with a live Q&A + your Spotify Wrapped
Back in your Inbox after a little Thanksgiving Break — hope you missed me! Today, we’re doing reflections on the beautiful, evocative film Maestro, plus details from the Q&A I went to with the one and only Bradley Charles Cooper! And, of course, your Spotify Wrapped.
Well, folks, Thanksgiving 2023 is behind us, and it’s full speed ahead on Christmas Magic—a.k.a. Wonka season!
I am not being sarcastic when I say that I love every single Instagram post of every single person’s Christmas trees; please never stop. [Except the ones with a coordinated color scheme and no homemade ornaments because that’s Christine Quinn from Selling Sunset serial killer behavior.]
Since my last post, I’ve watched Maestro, which we’ll talk about shortly, and also:
American Symphony. SOBBING CRYING CALLING MY MOM!! This is the jazz/musical phenom Jon Batiste’s documentary about creating his symphony during his wife’s journey with cancer. It was a complete and gorgeous celebration of life and humanity. THIS IS A MUST-WATCH.
May December with Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, and Charles Melton (give him the Oscar!). This one’s for the people who like a reeeeal messed up story! I felt like I needed a shower after, but I also thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a good watch if you enjoy well-made films that mock their protagonists and hold your eyes on the ick under the surface of seemingly beautiful people. You will feel so icky and sad at parts of this. And you will laugh out loud at the absurdity of others.
The other thing that happened to me this week? My Spotify Wrapped continued to embarrass me!
My top artists were Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Maren Morris, One Direction, and Olivia Rodrigo. Spotify said my musical heartland is Bozeman, Montana. Which, to be sure, is a beautiful magic place but also I think this means I have to buy one of those wool rancher hats and get more good at outdoors?? I need stronger cheekbones for this.
Anyhoo…YOUR TURN! Who was on your Spotify Wrapped? Top artists? Top songs? Musical heartland? What can we learn about you, even if it is that you are embarrassed by your musical tastes or that you have a toddler living in your home?
An Afternoon with Bradley Cooper
The day before Thanksgiving, I took the subway down to the IPIC theater at Fulton Market to watch Maestro, the new film directed by and starring Bradley Cooper. According to an email from the theater to their entire marketing list, the showing was to be followed by a “Live Q&A with Bradley Cooper.” (!!)
I could not let myself believe this would really be Bradley Cooper in the flesh.
I spent the days beforehand perseverating: Could they call it “live” if he wasn’t there in person? Does FaceTime count as “live”? Am I doing a “live Q&A” every time I get on Zoom? Could a prerecorded Q&A with humans alive during recording be called “live”? What is “live”? What is LIFE!??
In short, I spiraled a little.
I even called the theater ahead of time! The guy who answered said proudly, as if this IPIC theater was in fact his own small business endeavor: “Yes, Mr. Cooper will be here IN! PERSON!” When I mentioned the FaceTime thing, he faltered a bit and said, “Well, I am 90% sure he will be here in person.” Spiraling resumed!
The spiraling was—as usual—needless. Bradley showed up!
The movie ended, I wiped the tears from my eyes, we clapped1, the lights went up, and Mr. Bradley Cooper entered from a side door, in the flesh!
I didn’t expect to feel this, but I was…really touched that he showed up!? There’s something so earnest about it — not relying on his celebrity status or “resting on his laurels” but going out there, doing the work, talking to his audiences. It fits with the stories about him spending six years learning enough conducting to perform just a six-minute scene in Maestro.
Some might say that Bradley Cooper is a Try-Hard. [His Try-Hard energy is why A Star is Born is nigh unwatchable for me.] But all he’s doing is taking a big swing and hoping for the best. And doing an incredible job.
I guess what I’m saying is: May God give me the grace to be half such a Try-Hard!
Reflections on Maestro
“A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”
-Leonard Bernstein
Maestro opens with this quote, which serves as an excellent guidepost for how to process what we’re experiencing. It’s not full of answers. It’s not a documentarian’s approach to describing a life. It’s more like brushstrokes of feelings, moments that make you feel something. In the words of the New York Times review, it arrives with “a whoosh of exuberance.”
In fact, if they’d handed out a pop quiz about Leonard Bernstein’s life at the end of the movie, I would’ve failed! What I did leave with was a feeling. I felt like a bell that had been struck. [To badly paraphrase Annie Dillard.] Ringing with the inner life of two people both at odds and in sync with each other. It felt less like a biopic and more like, shall we say, a series of evocative, emotionally stirring tableaux, each perfectly constructed down to the tiniest detail. Every scene is just gorgeous to look at, to listen to, to experience.
Then, take all that artistry and film technique and add the performances from Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan.
When I texted a musician friend to ask her opinion of the movie, she said simply: “Two words: Carey Mulligan.” Her performance—and Bradley Cooper’s—lifted the movie into more than the sum of its parts. She played Leonard Bernstein’s wife, Felicia. It’s been said Felicia lived in Leonard’s shadow: the woman behind the man, the anchor of the family who sacrificed her ambitions for his.
But in the movie, we watch from that shadow; the shadow is the point of view. She is the angle from which we see Leonard Bernstein. Her love for him, and her pain.
In conclusion: If you can, go see it in the theater. It’s a visual and audio [aural?] feast! It’s worth it for that one scene alone — the one that Cooper practiced six years to prep for. My jaw was on the FLOOR.
That’s all for this week! Guys, I can’t thank you enough for being here, and I’d love to hear what you’re watching, reading, listening to, and what was on your Spotify Wrapped! Drop a like or a comment to help me grow. :)
Clapping when your plane lands: dumb. Clapping at the end of a movie: just giving meaning to our fragile human existence.