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- I got to say, I think I felt vital writing A Star is Born.
And it's not that I didn't feel vital
writing other movies, you know, and some recent.
But it put me into a different mind set, I think.
It wasn't my more traditional sort of training
of what is the theme of this piece,
why am I writing this, all those questions.
It was more, sort of, thrown into the morass,
if you will, and there's a good morass
and I think the movie does reflect the zeitgeist
and I wasn't really, it's not that I was unaware of it,
but that it wasn't something that would motivate me.
- And yet, it's a traditional story
that's been remade since the Janet Gaynor version.
- [Eric] That's right.
- [Stephen] How did doing, remaking a
classical film revitalize you?
- I think it was twofold.
One was Bradley Cooper, who had a point of view
of wanting to do it first-person.
So that you had an intimacy to it,
which remains even though I'm not sure
how much is really improvised, I mean
I think early on, I could see that set pieces
were not going to be, sort of, the way of the day,
which is more traditional to the way I wrote.
And so we tried to, I tried to write out
you know, sort of conversational dialogue
that felt improvisational, you know,
in many cases, sometimes it was.
But it also was this kind of less, you know,
get a barn and put on a show in an odd way
because they said here we go,
we're going to start doing rock concerts,
and what does it feel like to do that
and we had a number of pretty well known
artists come and watch the thing
and say it's just about as close as you got.
So he really captured that.
- I just loved that there was no
lead up in the movie to certain moments
- [Eric] Yes, yes.
- Like when she comes to his concert,
I loved that there was no, I don't know,
you didn't milk it long - [Eric] Yeah.
- You know, it was like, as soon as the song ended
he was like, "Come out, I want you
"to sing your song."
- [Eric] Yeah, we talked about that, yeah.
- It was so, it felt so real
rather than, let's see Bradley do six songs
and then realize she's in love with him
and then he asks her - [Eric] (laughs) Yeah right.
- It's like, no, no, just do that,
it's very dirty, and - [Eric] Well, I'd
attribute that to Bradley.
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- A certain agent came to me with House of Cards,
and I had known about it because
Michael Mann and Al Pacino and I
were going to do it together as a film at one point.
But, the point being, so I said yes,
I sent it to David Fincher, or however it got
to David, and David and I are close friends,
and they ended up making it,
and the whole business turned on its rear, right?
And, so, to me, it was like scavenging
my own children, in other words,
now it's not bigger than life, it's smaller than life
as part of the way things are,
and you know, movies are done on a
day and date basis and you don't
normally get to sit with an audience.
I will make now pitch for A Star is Born
because I think it does somehow bring
people in some weird way together
that they get to, I feel it's about, in a nice way,
about what was glamorous about Hollywood.
It feels like a hearkening back to that
plus, I think, she's amazing,
and the music, and Bradley, and anything.
So we can use, A Star is Born. (laughs)
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- I was fired, actually twice.
But, the one I remembered, I knew was coming,
'cos, I won't mention the personality
but the personality was very narcissistic
and I knew at one point he was not
going to want to see me in that mirror.
And sure enough, he didn't. (laughs)
You know, that was the end of that.
- Director, you mean, or
- [Eric] Director, yeah, director
- Why didn't you direct?
- Uh, I don't have the math for it.
I don't have the math mind, or the patience, I guess.
I did when I was in college, I won
some student shorts and stuff,
but beyond that, uh uh.
- Is it frustrating working with
directors who change your work?
- [Paul] No, no, not when they make it better.
- [Eric] I was about to say it depends on,
yeah we both agree, it would
depend on which direction it's going.
- When they make it better you
take credit for it. - Exactly, loud and clear.
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