Bradley Cooper on "Maestro"

[Music] it's Sunday morning on CBS and here again  is Jane Pauley they called him Maestro a conductor composer and music educator of national Renown the  great Leonard Bernstein is the subject of a new film starring and directed by actor Bradley Cooper  mo rocca on Bernstein's remarkable and complicated life last summer we had really good grapes this  past Thursday Nina Bernstein Simmons Alexander Bernstein and Jamie Bernstein gathered at their  family's Connecticut home to talk about Maestro so

how long do we have to do this for well we need to  build up a very strong connection the movie that Bradley Cooper has made about their late parents  and how much time do you all spend in the house now every chance we get you know we weekends  and lots of summertime and it's Heaven here much of the movie was filmed in this house where  the children share cherished memories of their father composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein  and their mother actress Felicia Montealegre and if you're wonde

ring how these three feel about the  movie Cooper has made I think we have an intruder in this house oh stop it Bradley Cooper not only  co-stars he also co-wrote the movie and directed it too much much of this movie was we shot so  much many things occurred right here right here a creative person uh sits alone in this gray Studio  that you see here and writes all by himself and communicates with the world in a very private way  it's Cooper's second film as a director the the first was the hit a

star is born with Lady Gaga  still he needed the consent of the three living Bernsteins to make the movie he met with firstborn  Jamie in a New York restaurant I eat with my hands all the time and I'm eating the spinach with  my hands and I recognize it and then I either apologized for something and you said that's  what my dad used to do oh yeah corn on the cob was favorite thing and I remember in that moment  I thought oh this might happen the young American Born assistant conductor of the Ph

ilharmonic  symphony Leonard Bernstein Cooper immersed himself in the life of Leonard Bernstein who from  the age of 25 was a bold-faced name in American culture the longtime conductor of the  New York philharmonic today we're going to talk about the meat and potatoes of  Music the main course the man who made classical music more approachable through  his televised young people's concerts on CBS and the composer of Symphonies and  landmark musicals including West side Story and candide make sur

e that  you make space so that the [Music] serve [Applause] becoming Bernstein meant  looking like him at various stages and the transformation is startling and it took four  years four years of tests the makeup is amazing oh yeah if summer doesn't sing in you then  nothing sinks in you you may have read that Cooper's makeup includes a prosthetic nose  that the non-jewish actor used to portray the Jewish Bernstein The Bernstein themselves  are more than fine with that I just want to point out th

at Bradley has a very substantial  nose I don't think anybody noticed that before the fracas happened it's the absolute  nonissue of all time I'm thinking of a number but Maestro is not a womb to tomb  biopic instead Cooper decided to explore the relationship between Bernstein and his lesser  known wife portrayed by Carey Mulligan oh well I was listening you wonderful our mom was the most  elegant delicious person theirs was a love story yes but Complicated by the fact that Bernstein  also had a

ffairs with men she didn't go into the marriage blindly not at all she knew exactly what  the deal was they obviously loved each other to death they never fought in front of us we never  saw any any Darkness we felt a a lot they kept everything very well uh tidied um and pretty well  hidden but as a young woman Jamie had questions as depicted in the film so the rumors aren't true  her father didn't tell her the truth no dy I know exactly who you are it's give it a well in her  2018 Memoir Jaimie

reported that shortly after their wedding her mother wrote to her father  quote I'm willing to accept you as you are without being a martyr and sacrificing myself on  the L.B. Altar and you wrote in your book but the truth was she had done exactly that yeah I that's  how I feel I don't maybe you don't feel that way but I feel like it it cost her everything to to  stick with it it was really tough for her and I think it contributed to her early death in a way I  wouldn't go that far um I think y

ou know probably uh she regretted a lot of things looking back  Felicia Montealegre died of lung cancer in 1978 at the age of 56 she had a wonderful rich life  and uh and mostly wonderful marriage and a lot of love there's a price for being  in my brother's orbit you know that as much as Maestro is a love  story about a marriage it's also a story about Leonard Bernstein's love  of music including Mahler's second Symphony [Music] I've never experienced anything like  it in my life and I may never

again were you   0:06:59.400,1193:02:47.295 [Music] actually conducting the musicians I worked it  took me six and a half years of working on it for six minutes and 25 seconds of Music Leonard  Bernstein died from a heart attack in 1990 at the age of 72 he and Bradley Cooper never met  miss him oh yeah man what do you miss about him it's hard to talk about I don't know we  shared something very special the four of us it's hard to even articulate but he was with us  he was with me certainly thro

ughout the entire time his energy has somehow found its way to me  that I really do feel like I know him [Music] [Music]