On Tuesday, Bradley Cooper was facing backlash over his apparent use of a prosthetic nose in his depiction of legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in the upcoming movie, "Maestro."
I couldn’t care less about the controversy, which was another social-media constructed outrage that should have never happened in the first place. Instead, what we have here is just a case of bad prosthetics.
The released statement from Jamie, Alexander and Nina Bernstein somewhat stalled the backlash, via Twitter:
“It breaks our hearts to see any misrepresentations or misunderstandings of Bradley’s efforts…it happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well.”
What strikes me as a tad odd about Cooper’s schnoz in “Maestro” is that Bernstein didn’t really have an unusually large nose in his early days. It was fairly subdued at an almost perfect right triangle. Based on the archival photos I’ve seen, it only got bigger as he got much older in life.
Yesterday, Jeff Wells recollected how in the mid ’90s, the late Robert Evans shared a biological observation with him: “When you get older your nose gets bigger, your ears get bigger and longer and your teeth get smaller.”
From a purely aesthetic, and historically detailed, perspective, Bernstein’s nose was never as prominent as Cooper’s in “Maestro.” The folks that have made this argument have good reason in ridiculing the now. But inserting the term “Jewface” and turning it into a controversy is a whole other thing I’m not down with.
Now, wouldn’t it be ironic, and hilarious, if “Maestro” ended up winning the Best Makeup Oscar?
