Brilliant film, Bradley – but don’t expect to be reborn as a pop star
You see a lot of strange sights at the Glastonbury Festival. So I was only mildly astonished last year to witness American movie star Bradley Cooper on the Pyramid Stage pretending to play a song. There was the star of The Hangover (I, II and III) in the cold Somerset drizzle, in front of tens of thousands of baffled revellers, strumming a silent guitar and mouthing silent words. Had someone forgotten to turn the PA on for the Hollywood interloper?
His unscheduled appearance came before Kris Kristofferson’s set, which might have been a clue. This weekend A Star Is Born hits the cinemas, with Glastonbury footage of Cooper’s rock star character flashing up for a few seconds in a touring montage. I like to think that, if you concentrate as the camera pans out into the audience, you might be able to spot a puzzled Telegraph critic making his screen debut.
Whose star do we really see being born in A Star Is Born? With her movie debut in the new version of the screen classic, pop superstar Lady Gaga has already won over critics. She is beguiling, touching and compelling as the ingénue plucked from obscurity. But in the music world, it is her handsome co-star who is breaking new ground. Cooper’s musical debut, Shallow (a duet with Gaga) is the fastest climbing single in the US, on course to reach number one. The soundtrack album (including five solo Cooper cuts) looks set to top charts all over the world. At the age of 43, is this grizzled leading man about to become a pop star?
You can barely move in charity shops for discarded piles of Russell Crowe, Robert Downey Jr, Steve Martin and Jeff Goldblum CDs. Sometimes it seems that inside every actor lurks a frustrated singer-songwriter. Yet for all the music made by movie legends, not many have made the transition to genuine pop stardom in the post rock and roll era. Movie casts are overcrowded with musicians who can act, from the aforementioned ntioned Kristofferson (Cooper’s per’s predecessor in the e 1976 version of A Star Is s Born) to Mark Wahlberg, who began his career as rapper Marky Mark. But talent does not seem to transfer so smoothly in the other direction. Only Kristofferson’s co-star Barbra Streisand (who began her career in musical theatre) is really celebrated both as movie and music legend. A curious narrative arc in the new A Star Is Born sheds light on why that might be, presenting a Hollywood vision of pop which is both seductive and ridiculous. Cooper’s grizzled rocker is constantly advising his protégé about honesty and authenticity. Everyone has talent, but only some people have something to say is his insistent message. Meanwhile Gaga is pressurised and manipulated with image makeovers to disguise her offbeat beauty and slick productions that mangle her heartfelt songwriting into something more contemporary. The emotional narrative requires that we be dazzled by y Gaga’s flowering talent; instead we watch it being squashed into conformity while the veteran rocker looks sadly on. I couldn’t tell if this was intentional or accidental satire. Cooper (who also d directed) essays a ja jaundiced view of the contemporary co music bus business that would prob probably be shared by a lot of middle-aged rock fans. In his version, Gaga’s star o only really shines when she sings country rock a and piano ballads that m might have sounded dated in the Seventies. Yet without a blockbuster movie campaig campaign behind it, a song as resolutely old-fashioned old-f as Shallow would be shot down at the first radio playlist meeting m before it had even reached the chorus. Cooper’s character c is not wrong abou about our appetite for artistic artisti truth. Authentic emotion is one of the things we will always crave from music. But outside of a cinema, no one is going to sit for two hours to slowly grasp the inner beauty of a new artist. A pop song has to make its impact in a highly charged and ultracompetitive environment. The ear craves novelty. The eye demands to be dazzled. Production values shift. Each generation wants something fresh and thrilling to call their own. Warmed up Carole King is not going to cut it in 2018. Frankly, without the shine of Lady Gaga’s megawatt charisma and a multimillion-dollar marketing budget, Bradley Cooper’s old rocker would have zero chance of getting his grizzled visage within a whisker of the pop charts.