‘A Star Is Born’ Returns to Theaters With New Footage — Plus a Look Back at the Film’s Earlier Versions!

Bradley’s vision

As writer/director of A Star Is Born, Bradley Cooper was determined to craft a film that would deal with our feelings and failings, combined with the world of music and original songs that underscore every emotion in the film. But, points out Bradley, “I never thought, ‘How do I make this original?’ I just knew I had to make it authentic to tell the story I wanted to tell.”

What seems hard to believe is that despite her global success, Lady Gaga was actually nervous playing Ally, which represents her first feature film work (she’d previously appeared on television in American Horror Story). “I had to get past the nerves,” she says, “but I was so excited, because, in my opinion, when somebody has talent inside them, brewing for years, ready to move into another medium and it finally happens … it’s like a huge explosion, an opus. [Bradley] was meant to direct, and I just got lucky enough to be in his first film.”

“She’s done incredible work as an actress,” points out Bradley, “but to make this transition … It felt like we were at the same point individually in our work, and we both needed the same thing from each other, essentially, in order to jump the tracks to this other place.”

Stepping behind the camera for the first time

In the film, Bradley’s character, Jackson Maine, is attempting to encourage a nervous newcomer into the spotlight, figuratively and literally. In a way, this mirrors his need to tell this particular story and test himself behind the camera for the first time. “I’ve always known that I wanted to direct, but I also knew that I needed to have a point of view, to know why I was doing it, otherwise there was no reason to. And I always wanted to tell a love story, because it feels like something everybody can relate to — the love, the loss of it, the high of it. It’s the thing that makes you feel the most alive.

“Coupled with that is music — not just music, but singing,” he adds. “There’s something about singing that’s so honest … you can’t hide at all. I thought that those two things could be put together in a way that maybe I’d find my point of view.”

Jack discovers Ally

By the time Jack wanders into a bar seeking booze, the audience will already have seen him popping pills and drinking alcohol before he goes on stage, while also having an instant connection with the audience. At the bar, though, he watches Ally perform and is simply blown away. Says Gaga, “When Jack comes backstage after he sees Ally singing, she’s a little flustered. She doesn’t understand what’s going on or why this famous musician wants to have a drink with her. She’s overwhelmed. [But then] she starts really opening up to him, and he’s telling her how beautiful she is and she still kind of doesn’t really believe him … but she’s trying to.”

The communication goes both ways, with Bradley stating, “What I’ve always loved about their first night is that he tells her things I don’t think he’s ever told anyone. This is not a guy who talks about that stuff, and all of a sudden he’s talking about it to her. They just met, but there’s this chemistry, this synchronicity, that’s occurred, and they both wind up letting their guard down. Over time, they’re constantly putting it back up, and then it’s down, and then up again. It’s just a huge tsunami of emotions that they both give over to what’s going to be their plight throughout the story.”

“She’s enamored of him,” Gaga interjects, “but very quickly there’s a human connection and the star-struckness starts to fade away. She even has the audacity to touch his face.”

It was that sort of moment that Bradley chose to linger on, to help establish the immediacy of their connection. “There’s the initial energy of it when she turns to him on the bar and looks at him for the first time,” he says. “We shot that at 48 frames — it’s more the way she’s looking at him than the way he’s looking at her, and Jack even talks about it later, the impact of it. Another thing we did was to go close up on any time in the beginning of the relationship that’s tactile: when he touches her nose, when he’s wrapping her hand, when she touches his ear. You always remember the first touch of somebody, because it either sends a chill down your spine or it’s a dead fish. But for them, it’s chills, which is good.”

Relying on each other

“When they’re sitting in the parking lot together and she sings to him …” Gaga remembers, “to me, that’s when she first begins to fall in love with him, because he’s just a sweet guy and he’s so lovely to her.”

Like the characters they play come to do, Bradley says he and Gaga “relied on each other in every single way. I knew every time we did a musical number, I had this undeniable force in her, and I knew there was no one else who could’ve played the part. Her talent, her work ethic honed from years of performing … As a storyteller, you’re just so thankful you cast the right person, but we were truly in this together, and that’s the way we approached every scene and every song: as partners.”

Gaga adds, “The very first thing we said was, ‘Okay, now you’re a musician and I’m an actress. We’re making that exchange, so keep me in a comfortable yet vulnerable, raw place where I can give you what you need for the character. He did that for me, and as we worked on creating the songs, I watched him become a real musician.”

Finding his voice

In an attempt to get everything right, Bradley worked with dialect coach Tim Monich to develop Jack’s rich timbre, noticeably lower than his own voice. “Having met many iconic musicians, one thing I know for certain is that they walk in a room and all the energy goes to them,” he says. “The audience has to feel his presence the minute Jackson Maine enters the movie, and one instinct I had was to lower my speaking voice. I worked with Tim on American Sniper, and he’s incredible. We spent months on Jack’s voice, and I think I lowered my range an octave. But it’s fun, because the minute you lock into the voice, everything else about the character follows.”

Besides actors like Sam Elliott, Andrew Dice Clay, Rafi Gavron, and Dave Chappelle, there are a number of musical performers as well. “One of the things Stefani brought to this production was the world of music,” Bradley offers. “She would say, ‘We should work with this person,’ and ‘This person would be great for this,’ and all of a sudden it became so easy for me. She did all the legwork, and then I was able to just walk into the room.”

“We had a studio to work in and we filled it up with all of the best writers,” adds Gaga, “and we had a lot of songs for this film. We even wrote while we were filming. I started writing ‘I Don’t Know What Love Is’ after we shot the scene in the cop bar, because I was so overcome with emotion from shooting that scene. I was actually using Ally’s prop — I’d asked if I could keep my prop notebook — and I wrote it down in there. Then Lukas Nelson [son of Willie] and I finished it.”

Overall regarding the music Bradley points out, “There’s no point in the film where any lyric is sung that isn’t directly related to the emotional moment in the movie in which it’s occurring. They’re singing only words that have to do with exactly what their fear is, their hope, their dream, in that moment. It’s essentially part of the script, but it’s not the script.”

During all of this, it was important to Gaga that Bradley never felt like anyone was trying to make him into a particular type of musician. “She really protected me in a big way,” he says. “She knew that I would find whatever Jack’s sound was if I was just allowed to keep exploring. And, look, singing’s not easy, especially singing in front of a lot of people. Initially, after one verse, I was out of breath. I had to spend five days a week for six months learning how to sing, and not as me but as Jackson.”

Production ends, but the memory lives on

When filming concluded and Bradley began working on post-production, most of his crew moved on to other projects, but the experience of filming left a strong impact on everyone. Says Gaga, “So much of this film resonates with me still. I think a lot of people will relate to the themes, and the story will be something profound to them. And the music really tells this love story — that’s something we all took very seriously and believed in. We all saw Bradley’s vision and we all wanted, to the very last second, to make it just perfect.”

“One thing I’ve learned is that when you’re creating any kind of art, if you’re in the moment, you trust your instincts but can be flexible, too, and you can make something that might shift someone’s way of looking at their world a little bit,” Bradley reflects. “And when your whole crew goes there with you? That’s a wonderful feeling. That everybody trusted my vision was exhilarating and, I think, gave me the confidence to keep at that daunting task every day.

“This has been a three-year journey and the experience has been amazing, and if I’m lucky enough that anybody allows me to do it again, yeah, I absolutely would,” he continues, adding, “There’s a line in the film that Jack says to Ally, ‘If there’s one reason we’re supposed to be here, it’s to say something so people want to hear it.’ I hope that’s what we’ve done.”

A Star Is Born (1937)

This was the first version of the subject matter, produced 81 years ago with Janet Ganor playing a young actress who has arrived in Hollywood seeking stardom. Circumstances lead her to an older actor named Norman Maine (Fredric March), who takes her under his guidance. She takes the name Vicki Lester and co-stars with him in a massively successful film, although it becomes apparent that his career is fading while hers is just beginning. They end up getting married, but Norman becomes consumed with alcoholism while she becomes more famous. In the end, she has to decide what is more important: fame or her husband. 

A Star Is Born (1954)

The plot of this first remake is extremely similar to the 1937 version, with James Mason playing Norman Maine and Judy Garland as Esther Blodgett. The primary difference is that instead of a movie, it’s a musical that turns Esther into a star. Given that it’s Judy playing her, there’s no surprise there. 

A Star Is Born (1976)

Flash forward 22 years from the last version, and the story is back, and while the core remains similar, the setting is pretty different, moving from the world of film and musicals to pop music. Kris Kristofferson is rock star John Norman Howard, whose career has peaked and started to decline due in so small part to his addiciton to cocaine and alcohol. Following a concert he stumbles into a bar and sees Esther Hoffman (Barbra Streisand) singing. They meet, he encourages and mentors her in her career, and they fall in love. But, as in the other versions, their relationship is threatened by her ascension and his continuing decline and addictions. 

A Star Is Born (2018)

Look for Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born, which reaches theatres on Oct. 5. If successful, no doubt we’ll be seeing yet another version of this story in a couple of decades.