‘Maestro’ Spotlight Gala Premiere at New York Film Festival: Jamie Bernstein and production crew sing praises of Bradley Cooper

Daniel Montgomery
·4 min read
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“This whole project began a good 15 years ago,” explained Jamie Bernstein, daughter of famed composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, at the New York Film Festival’s Spotlight Gala Premiere of “Maestro” at David Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center. “The evolution of this film has been so intricate and profound, and so many things happened along the way, and so many new people arrived along the way — most significantly Bradley Cooper, who came into the picture about five or six years ago and changed everything.”

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Cooper co-wrote, directed and produced “Maestro” in addition to starring as Leonard Bernstein. The film tells the story of the music legend’s life and career, with special attention given to his relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). “I’m used to going deep on research,” said co-writer Josh Singer. “And I love nothing more than researching pioneers like Lenny. I’m not used to struggling to keep up, which is what I found myself doing when Bradley signed on … He had such a focus and relentless obsession on understanding the man and his music and his family.”

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For makeup artist Kazu Hiro, who previously won Oscars for “Darkest Hour” and “Bombshell,” it was a longtime goal to work on a film about Bernstein, who was an inspiration to him early in his career. “I had to break it down into stages, because it starts from 25-years-old and up to his 70s.” They did “extensive” testing because “you have to be convincing as a look because everybody knows how iconic Lenny was,” but “at the same time it has to be comfortable for Bradley to act with it.”

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Parts of the film were shot in the actual Bernstein family home in Connecticut, which hadn’t “been changed that much since 1989 or even before,” noted production designer Kevin Thompson. “When Bradley and I were there together we realized that there was no way that we could ever shoot anywhere else for that location as long as we had the availability of shooting there. So it was a wonderful place to get the nuances of the family and how they lived and how it was a rich cultural country life on the weekends and in the summer.”

Costume designer Mark Bridges also drew inspiration from real materials. “Jamie opened the house to us and we were able to see some of the things that were still in the closet,” he said. “You get a sense of a person by that. Their choices and how they present themselves, so that was really valuable … That gingham dress that Carey wears in the summer house, that was actually Felicia’s dress.”

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Sound design is especially important for a music-driven film like “Maestro,” but for production sound mixer Steve Morrow, the dialogue mattered just as much. “The goal from the beginning for Bradley was authenticity,” he explained. They wanted “to make sure that conversations happen like conversations do in real life, overlapping and the realism in that. So the technical challenge is just to get that right.” As for the music, he wanted “to put the audience in the middle of an orchestra, to allow them to hear what almost nobody in the world gets to hear.”

Conducting consultant Yannick Nézet-Séguin worked closely with Cooper to capture Bernstein’s gestures. There’s “a certain technical aspect of conducting. You need to kind of know these basics,” but beyond that he wanted to give Cooper “the technical security whilst keeping him in the emotional state.” To capture “the real essence of Lenny” involved “his eyes, his arms, his mouth, his shoulders, his everything.” In one cathedral scene in particular, “what you see is Bradley Cooper conducting the London Symphony Orchestra Chorus. It’s not fake.”

“Maestro” opens in theaters on November 22, and it will be available to stream on Netflix starting on December 20.

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