Maestro is a biopic of Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper, who also writes, directs and produces), an American conductor/composer who wrote a lot of, you know, he was really famous. It says here he was the first American composer to receive international acclaim – I do movies, not music.
The project started its life way back in 2008 with Josh Singer, who had not yet received his first feature credit, attached to write and Martin Scorsese attached to direct. He eventually stepped down and the project fell to Steven Spielberg, who approached Bradley Cooper to star. When Spielberg left the project, Cooper took control, seizing the director’s chair and rewriting the screenplay, though Singer is still credited. Scorsese and Spielberg are still credited as producers along with Cooper and a whole slew of other middlemen bridging these relationships.
Scorsese’s participation is ironic, because Maestro feels a lot like a remake of his 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull. It’s unfortunate that Maestro releases into a world where Raging Bull already exists, because I would never, ever recommend the newer film over the classic, and there’s too much overlap for them to coexist.
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Reel Entropy 