On Friday, October 5th, the latest reboot of Hollywood classic A Star Is Born will hit theaters nationwide. The new update stars real-life pop superstar Lady Gaga and four-time Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper, who also made his directorial debut and on the film. In the new remake of A Star Is Born, Cooper plays a heavy-drinking, aging musician who discovers and falls in love with a budding young singer-songwriter (Gaga) and spirals out of control as her rising star begins to eclipse his own. In order to capture the essence of a middle-aged rock star onscreen, Cooper consulted with someone very familiar with that sort of character: Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder.
As Bradley Cooper explains in a video interview with Yahoo Entertainment, “I went up to Seattle and spent four or five days with him and I asked him 9,000 questions. And he gave me minor, little things that only musicians know about what to do, just aesthetically and the inner workings. … He was wonderful.” Cooper also joked that Vedder initially warned against him making another A Star Is Born remake. “He thought it was crazy I was going to do this movie,” Cooper laughed. “He was like, ‘What? Bro, don’t do that.’”
That hesitance from Vedder is understandable. In 1937, at the dawn of the Technicolor era in film, the showbiz romantic drama stole the hearts of audiences everywhere with its tale of an aspiring young actress’s fraught path toward Hollywood success starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. An oft-referenced piece of timeless American cinema, A Star Is Born has been remade periodically, including an updated interpretation starring Judy Garland and James Mason (1954) and a rock musical version featuring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson (1976). Cooper’s remake will mark the fourth version of the film to be released.
However, while taking on such an entrenched, beloved story is no easy task, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga went above and beyond to ensure that this new version was up to snuff. For the new remake’s original soundtrack, Cooper and Gaga collaborated with an assortment of high-profile country and Americana artists including Lukas Nelson (who appears in the film as a member of Cooper’s character’s band), Jason Isbell, Mark Ronson, Diane Warren, and more. The newest interpretation of A Star Is Born starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga—as well as Dave Chappelle, Andrew Dice Clay, and Sam Elliott—is set for a nationwide theatrical release this Friday.
Lukas Nelson, Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Bradley Cooper Talk Creating The Sound Of A Star Is Born
[Video: Warner Bros. Pictures]
You can watch a handful of trailers for the new A Star Is Born below via Warner Bros. Pictures. To watch Bradley Cooper’s full interview with Yahoo Entertainment in which he speaks about learning from Eddie Vedder for the role, head here.
A Star Is Born (2018) – Official Trailers
[H/T Insider]