Jake Gyllenhaal and Bradley Cooper Will Play Jewish Legend Leonard Bernstein In Rival Biopics
2018: The Year Two A-List Hollywood Stars Fought To Portray A Gay, Jewish Musical Theater Composer.
If Julia Louis-Dreyfuss’ historian great-grand-daughter doesn’t write a book by this title by 2098, I will eat my hat. In a bizarre cultural moment, movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Bradley Cooper have both been cast as legendary Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein, in two separate biopics.
That’s right — the upper echelon of privileged, masculine America is vying to portray Mr. Leonard Bernstein.
Gyllenhaal, whose project was announced on May 1, will producer and star in “The American,” based on the Humphrey Burton biography “Leonard Bernstein,” adapted by Jewish writer Michael Mitnick. It is, apparently, “structured in five movements, like a symphony.” So, as Bernstein-character Anita of “West Side Story” would say — “smoke on your pipe and put that in!”
This week it was revealed that Cooper will direct and star in yet another Leonard Bernstein biopic — “Bernstein,” with Paramount. Cooper will co-produced with a couple of unknowns named Stephen Spielberg and Martin Scorcese, with a script by Jewish writer Josh Singer, who gave us “Spotlight” and “The Post.”
So who would be the better Bernstein?
For those who don’t know, here is sensual Mr. Cooper, a man whose gifts for acting and comedy belie the fact that he has probably self-administered hair bleach since his earliest days. Cooper is a rich woman’s Matthew McConaughey. He is like a human Whole Foods grocery store.
For those who don’t know, this coiffed-headed meat stick is the actor known as Jake Gyllenhaal, an artist with Hollywood credentials and a gentle soul. Gyllenhaal is a proud Jew who has called the rumors about him being gay “a huge compliment.” He has sang off-Broadway in a Stephen Sondheim musical (Bernstein’s collaborator on “West Side Story,”) and once again, is an actual Jewish man.
Winner: Jake Gyllenhaal.
Mr. Cooper, how dare you? We’ll talk if you haven’t shamed us with your Judy Garland movie.
Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO