Auteur director, Bradley Cooper of the Hangover movies, doesn't allow chairs on set
Bradley Cooper says "there's no chairs" on set when he directs: "I’ve always hated chairs on sets; your energy dips the minute you sit down in a chair. There's no video village." He's also adopted Christian Bale's acting method: "I had heard stories about Daniel Day-Lewis. I… pic.twitter.com/tRTHPXkbzX
- Zack Sharf (@ZSharf) December 14, 2023
Spike Lee interviews Bradley Cooper for Variety's 'Directors on Directors'. This article is a short, summarised transcript. It goes like this:
- Spike Lee has seen Maestro 3 times and thinks it's great.
- Bradley says he 'doesn't think like an actor', which is a quality directors have recognised in his in the past apparently. 'I was a filmmaker in the position of an actor'.
- He says Maestro is 'exactly [his] vision'.
- Talks about Daniel Day-Lewis and method acting briefly, saying he doesn't know how he does it. He's taken cues from Christian Bale from when they worked together on 'American Hustle' and says he keeps the character voice off-camera, but doesn't really do anything more drastic than that.
- Spent 3-6 hours in the makeup trailer each day to be Leonard Bernstein. I wonder why??
- Film was passed down from Scorsesse to Spielberg to...Bradley Cooper.
- And, the quote we all came here for, he doesn't let people sit down on set: 'But when I direct, I don’t watch playback. There’s no chairs. I’ve always hated chairs on sets; your energy dips the minute you sit down in a chair'. It's not mentioned in the article, but Christopher Nolan also does this.
ONTD, do you make arbitrary rules unrelated to anyone's skillset to try and make yourself seem like a serious director?