“Maestro,” about the legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, is nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as Best Actor for Bradley Cooper—who is not only the film’s star but its director and co-writer. Cooper’s movie focusses less on Bernstein’s musical triumphs, as a dominant figure in classical music for decades, than on his extremely complicated personal life. Bernstein was married to the actress Felicia Montealegre, played in the film by Carey Mulligan, but lived as a proudly nonmonogamous bisexual. “I had no desire to make a bio-pic,” Cooper tells David Remnick, of a man whose life is so well documented. Despite his track record as a box-office draw and critical success, Cooper endured a string of rejections from major studios when he shopped around a movie about classical music, shot largely on black-and-white film. Academy nominations aside, for Cooper, the experience of getting to play Bernstein and actually conducting the London Symphony Orchestra—“the scariest thing I’ve ever done, hands down,” he tells David Remnick—was reward enough: he had been practicing conducting an orchestra since his early childhood.
The segment originally broadcast on November 24, 2023.
From “Talk Easy”: Sam Fragoso Interviews David Remnick
Ava DuVernay Wants Her Film “Origin” to Influence the 2024 Election
How the Journalist John Nichols Became Another January 6th Conspiracy-Theory Target
The Poet John Lee Clark’s “How to Communicate” Brings DeafBlind Experience to the Page
Dexter Filkins Reports on the Border Crisis
From Critics at Large: The Year of the Doll
Bruce Springsteen Has a Gift He Keeps on Giving
Christmas in Tehran: Bringing the Holidays to Hostages
A Harrowing Detention in Gaza
Brandy Clark: Grammy-Nominated Album Is “Authentically Me”
Liz Cheney: Donald Trump Should Go to Jail if Convicted
How Did Our Democracy Get so Fragile?
Dolly Parton “Busted a Gut” Reaching for the High Notes on “Rockstar”
“Maestro” is the “Scariest Thing I’ve Ever Done”
Geoffrey Hinton: “It’s Far Too Late” to Stop Artificial Intelligence
A Rise in Antisemitism, at Home and Abroad
Emerald Fennell’s Anatomy of Desire
Will the Government Put the Reins on Amazon?
From “On the Media”: David Remnick Talks with Brooke Gladstone About Reporting in Israel
Is a “Win-Win” Still Possible in Policing?
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Should This Exist?
Without Fail
Hannibal Buress
Longform
Conversations