Scott Cooper started out as an actor, but, after directing his first film, 2009’s Crazy Heart, and seeing how Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall and Maggie Gyllenhaal did it, he tells me he knew then he would never go back to that side of the camera. Since that first film that won two Oscars and earned him a Spirit Award for Best First Feature, he has proven his versatility as a writer-director with Out of the Furnace, Black Mass, Hostiles, Antlers and The Pale Blue Eye, working in various genres. Now he has returned to the musical setting of Crazy Heart with what can best be called an “anti-biopic,” the searing story of Bruce Springsteen’s most personal album, Nebraska, that the singer made at a time of deep trauma and questioning himself as a person and as an artist despite massive success.
Cooper joins me for this week’s edition of my Deadline video series Behind The Lens to talk about his career, the choices he has made and the making of Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere in what he has called the toughest year of his life including losing his father the day before production was to star and then his house in the Palisades Fire near the end of shooting. “I hope I never have to go through something like that again,” he tells me. But as we spoke just a few days before the film opened, he was hopeful and happy with the film and especially pleased since Springsteen himself loves it and has seen it 12 times so far.
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Cooper also talks about mentors he has worked with including Duvall, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Guillermo del Toro and Michael Mann, who he says has asked him to direct a new film written by Mann and Eric Roth called Comanche about an 8-year-old white girl kidnapped and taken into the Comanche world, only to be rescued years later and fighting to stay with the Comanche nation. It was the basis for John Ford’s classic 1956 western The Searchers, and he has high hopes to get it made. Cooper says his attraction to genres where so many great films have been made is challenging, but he hopes always to bring something different to them.
After the success of his Crazy Heart — which earned Bridges his lone career Oscar — he was offered the chance to do many other films in the musical genre including pics on Miles Davis, Chet Baker, The Grateful Dead, and Elvis Presley. But he didn’t want to be tied to just one genre, something he notes that Hollywood loves to do when you have success. He does have some surprising answers, though, about how he would tackle a film on Elvis, or Frank Sinatra, and it is not what you expect.
We also talk about the state of movies today, how new generations are watching them and the challenges of keeping the business alive. To watch our conversation and to go “behind the lens” with Scott Cooper. just click the link above.
Join me this Oscar season every Monday for a new episode of Behind the Lens, and every Wednesday for a new episode of The Actor’s Side.