Josh Singer (‘Maestro’ screenwriter) on Bradley Cooper’s ‘uncompromising passion’ and that iconic Snoopy scene [Exclusive Video Interview]

“What’s remarkable is how lucky I have been to work with incredible directors,” “Maestro” screenwriter Josh Singer tells me, referring to such filmmakers as Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight,” for which they both won Oscars), Damien Chazelle (“First Man”), Steven Spielberg (“The Post”) and now Bradley Cooper. He notes how Cooper, the co-writer/director/actor/producer of “Maestro,” shares the same “uncompromising passion” as the other helmers, adding, “He likes to go deep, and he likes to work hard, and he likes to get it right, which is very much how I like to work.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Cooper stars as American composer Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan plays his wife Felicia Montealegre in Netflix’s high-profile biopic. Singer calls Cooper’s “choices” as an actor and as a director “genius,” especially once he saw “the whole thing put together.” He reveals how Cooper “has that sort of preternatural sense of where he is at all time and where he’s going, which I think only the very, very, very best actors have, and similarly the best directors.”

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Singer raves that Mulligan is “amazing” in her role and that “she’s just as advertised.” He declares, “You can’t ask for a better actor to begin with, and then she’s just such a wonderful human. For me, it’s the best performance this year by far, not even a question.” It was always clear to Singer that “Felicia had grounded Lenny,” but he was personally “terrified of going into the later years, the years when they’d struggled.”

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That’s when Cooper got involved in the project, and he wanted it focus more on Bernstein’s family life because that was “so fascinating” to him. “The idea of queer men having a family, and it’s not a beard, it’s not fake, it’s a real love and a real family and a real need” fascinated Cooper. Bernstein “couldn’t live” without Montealegre, which Singer found “extraordinary.” The screenwriter explains, “Bradley just got consumed with that lens, and it became clear that was going to be our A-story.”

Singer laughs when discussing the film’s iconic line, “Who left Snoopy in the vestibule?” It turns out it was Cooper’s idea to bring that real story from Bernstein’s life into “Maestro,” and so that’s why the “big fight during Thanksgiving with Snoopy passing by out the window” happened at the end of the second act. “The fight I knew was great, but then when you see the Snoopy VFX, you’re like, ‘Oh, wow!'” Singer recalls. “And that again speaks to vision, which I think Bradley has just in spades.”

Also in our exclusive video interview, Singer talks about how he knew “almost nothing” about Bernstein prior to taking on “Maestro,” how his prior spec script about the life of George Gershwin helped him get this gig, and what he specifically looks for in movie scripts when he fills out his own Oscar ballot each year.

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