Arizona isn’t Arizona in ‘A Star Is Born’
There’s a lot of buzz surrounding “A Star Is Born” — and, in the trailer at least, a little bit of Arizona.
The film, which stars Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga (Cooper also makes his debut as a feature director), is another retelling of the she’s-on-the-way-up, he’s-on-the-way-down story — there have been three other versions.
The first four seconds of the trailer, which was released June 6, show a massive crowd at a music festival — and someone is waving a giant Arizona flag. Later, for just a second, we see Cooper’s character singing in front of a large Arizona flag that’s hanging behind him on stage.
The images are brief but they’re there. Why?
Because Cooper’s character is from Arizona. And at one point he returns home.
But not really, at least not in real life. Despite all of that, the film wasn’t shot in Arizona. Instead, according to IMDB.com, it was filmed at various locations in California (including at Coachella) and at the Glastonbury Festival in England.
The reasons could be many, but there’s one that’s almost always in play when another location stands in for the state: Arizona’s lack of a transferable tax credit. It’s one of the reasons so few movies are shot here. Just recently, for instance, “Only the Brave,” the film that tells the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, was filmed in New Mexico. “Arizona,” released in August, was filmed in New Mexico and California — bookending the state that the movie is named for.
Arizona used to have a tax credit for films, but it ended in 2010. Various attempts to revive it have failed.
That said, plenty of films have been filmed here — notably parts of the 1976 version of “A Star Is Born” starring Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand. More than 45,000 people saw Streisand sing five songs for the film at Sun Devil Stadium, on the campus of Arizona That’s Barbra Streisand at Arizona State University in 1976’s “A Star is Born.” State University. Other scenes were shot in Tucson and Sonoita. The rest of the film was shot at Warner Brothers Burbank Studios.
We are a nice place to visit these days, evidently. You just wouldn’t want to film here. Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga star in “A Star is Born.”