Bradley Cooper & Carey Mulligan in character for "Maestro"
Thoughts? Here's how the real couple looked...
image via The Daily Beast
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), who was one of the 20th century's most important musicians and wrote the greatest musical score of all time (West Side Story) was gay in real life. But, like many men of his generation, married a woman to make his life easier and his career more successful. Felicia Montealegre, a Chilean American woman, was aware of this for most of their marriage. You should read her amazing famous letter to Bernstein about their "this whole bloody mess which is our 'connubial' life'.
Their story will be told in Maestro (2023), Bradley Cooper's sophomore directorial outing after A Star is Born (2018). It's interesting that he went with another music-centered romantic drama, right? Though they separated for a few years in the 1970s, the Bernsteins stayed married until Felicia's death 12 years before Bernstein's.
Matt Bomer will be playing one of Bernstein's lovers as was evident from this paparazzi shot during filming.
The complciated Bernstein marriage could make for a great movie, though we can't help noticing that it's extremely similar to De-Lovely (2004) on paper, which didn't turn out to be a great movie. The earlier picture was about the gay songwriter Cole Porter (another giant 20th century figure in American music) and his wife who were also very close and aware of the husband's situation. They also stayed together until she died, roughly 10 years before he did. (Naturally the other Bernstein biopic announced in 2018, which was to star Jake Gyllenhaal and be directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, is not happening.)
Maestro is still filming and will arrive on Netflix sometime in 2023. It's easy to picture it being an Oscar thing, too, don't you agree?