Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga join forces to give us a new take on the classic love story
A Star Is Born, which follows a struggling young artist and a veteran performer battling
addiction.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, it's Jan here, and in this video I'm going to reveal ten
behind-the-scenes secrets and fascinating facts about the making of the new A Star Is
Born movie.
Make sure you keep watching to the end to find out the heart-breaking real-life story
behind Lady Gaga's final song [in the film].
The first time Ally and Jackson meet, she's performing in a drag bar, belting out Édith
Piaf's classic love song La Vie en Rose.
And, incredibly, we have that famous French tune to thank for director Bradley Cooper's
A Star Is Born movie as we know it today because not only did the song inspire the drag bar
scene but also, crucially, it inspired Cooper to cast Lady Gaga in the lead.
Back in 2016, Cooper was still considering who should play Ally when he was invited to
a cancer benefit in LA where the superstar singer happened to be performing.
Cooper found himself so mesmerised by Gaga's rendition of La Vie en Rose that he immediately
decided to include the song and Gaga in his movie.
Straight after the event, Cooper got in touch with her agent and set up a meeting at Gaga's
Malibu home where he basically offered her the role there and then.
The two videoed themselves singing at the piano together and reading scenes from the
script, which convinced the studio that Cooper had indeed found his perfect co-star.
And the rest is A Star Is Born history!
Oh, and it was Gaga's conversations with Cooper about her early experiences in the music business
and a particular drag bar where she used to hang out that gave him the idea to create
that scene.
During the press tour for A Star Is Born, Cooper and Gaga have talked often about the
immediate connection they felt as soon as they met and how they bonded over their East
Coast Italian-American upbringing among other things.
And one particularly sweet moment during the shoot shows just what close friends they became.
After Cooper had filmed an especially tough scene which was vital for his character, he
walked up to Jackson's pick-up truck and opened the door only to discover a bunch of roses
that Gaga had left for him there on the passenger seat.
If you've seen the movie, you'll understand why Cooper was so moved by Gaga's gesture
as the scene he'd just filmed was a heart-breaking one for Jackson.
The soundtrack to A Star Is Born is jam-packed with original songs, some of which were actually
written during the shoot.
For example, Lady Gaga wrote the song 'I Don't Know What Love Is' when she felt completely
overcome with emotion after filming the scene in the cop bar.
And she even used her character Ally's on-screen notebook to write down the lyrics right there
in the moment.
She later finished off the song with Lukas Nelson, son of country music star Willie Nelson.
Lukas not only wrote and produced many of the movie's original songs with Gaga and Cooper,
but he and his bandmates from Promise of the Real also doubled as Jackson Maine's band
in the movie.
Lady Gaga really hates watching movies where you can tell the actors are lip-syncing, so,
despite the fact that her co-star Bradley Cooper had no real experience as a singer
or musician before A Star Is Born, she convinced him to record all their vocal performances
live on the day of filming rather than simply lip-syncing to pre-recorded tracks as often
happens in movie musicals.
Although first-time director Cooper found singing live terrifying, he says it allowed
him to capture 'the truth in each performance'.
Many of the movie's musical moments were filmed at real venues like Glastonbury Festival,
so to avoid the crowd recording their brand new songs and leaking them online ahead of
the film's release, the sound crew deliberately turned the amplifiers off so that the audience
couldn't hear the music or vocals!
That added another level of work for the movie's sound team as they had to capture each venue's
acoustics and apply them later in post-production to make the voices sound as they would have
done during a big concert!
Using such enormous real-life performance spaces like LA's Greek Theatre and the Shrine
Auditorium meant the production needed lots of people in the audience to get the right
visuals, energy, and enthusiasm to make the concerts look and feel real!
But instead of using thousands of extras, the filmmakers instead turned to Lady Gaga's
dedicated fan base, known as her Little Monsters, who were given the chance to buy tickets for
each of the venues where filming took place, all the proceeds from which went to Gaga's
Born This Way Foundation.
And as an extra thank-you to her fans at the end of a late night filming, Gaga gave an
impromptu piano performance of two of her hits.
Bradley Cooper may have many years' experience acting on camera, but when it came to playing
a seasoned singer and musician and performing live on stage, he realised he needed to dedicate
plenty of time to preparing for the musical aspects of the part.
So, he got himself a vocal coach and spent five days a week for six months learning how
to sing not just as himself, but also in character as Jackson Maine.
To give you an idea of the kind of progress Cooper made with his singing, when he first
started, he found himself getting out of breath after just one verse.
So, he certainly came a long way from that to performing so many songs live on film.
Cooper also took guitar and piano lessons and worked pretty much every night for twelve
months with Lukas Nelson who also shared his own insights on performing and acting like
a professional musician.
But Cooper didn't just work on his singing voice; he also spent months working on his
speaking voice, using a dialect coach to help him develop the rich timbre he wanted for
Jackson Maine's voice.
It proved to be a real challenge and initially it was even painful, but Cooper felt that
lowering his own range by about an octave would give his character the kind of presence
iconic musicians have and cinema audiences would feel that as soon as they saw Jackson
on screen.
Cooper dropped his own voice to more or less match the register of actor Sam Elliott, who
plays his on-screen brother.
And, apparently, all that time Cooper spent listening to interviews with Elliott to hone
his new voice paid off because when he played a recording of himself during his first meeting
with Elliott, the veteran actor was amazed at how much Cooper's voice sounded like his
own!
Although Gaga already has a Golden Globe for American Horror Story, A Star Is Born is her
first lead role on the big screen, and it took a little while for her to feel at home
on set.
While she knew all her lines on her first day of filming, she was so thrown when Bradley
Cooper went off-script for a moment in an effort to help her relax and 'let go of the
words', that she just kept repeating her same line again and again, before bursting into
tears!
Gaga and Cooper soon created a shorthand between themselves though to get the right mood for
each scene.
For example, to conjure up a certain warmth in her performance, Cooper would say the name
'Tony', to remind Gaga of her great friend and singer Tony Bennett, who she adores.
But if Gaga had to really concentrate, then Cooper would say 'ninja' or 'assassin'.
Just before Lady Gaga was due to film a really big, emotional scene on stage at the Shrine
Auditorium, she got a devastating phone call that her best friend Sonja was dying of cancer.
So, she jumped in her car and drove straight to Sonja's side, though she sadly missed her
friend's passing by just moments.
When Gaga later returned to set, she took to the stage and gave a heart-wrenching performance
of "I'll Never Love Again", an especially moving song for her character Ally in a scene
that Gaga says she'll never forget.
So, have you seen the new A Star Is Born movie?
And what did you think of it?
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!