Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein Facial Prosthetic Earns A Hilarious Seal of Approval Amidst Controversy
Ever since Bradley Cooper announced that he will direct and star in a biopic about iconic Jewish American composer Leonard Bernstein, critics have been attacking the move on the basis that Cooper does not have any Jewish in him — except for that one time when Michael Ian Black took him out to the tool shed.
Right now, Cooper finds himself at the center of an internet firestorm after a series of promotional photos released ahead of the film festival premiere of Maestro showed the actor/director sporting a comically sized nose prosthetic that, from certain angles, looks to be about twice as large as the late Bernstein’s actual schnoz. After Variety posted a series of Maestro screencaps showing the hilariously huge honker on Twitter this past Tuesday, the internet immediately and predictably accused Cooper of promoting Nazi stereotypes and implicitly encouraging a second Holocaust.
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While many members of the online community have come to Cooper’s support by proposing that the scandalous sniffer is simply the result of bad makeup and not bad morals, Cooper’s Wet Hot American Summer co-star posted a much deeper defense.
Worth noting in the midst of the controversy is that, along with Black’s emphatic endorsement, Bernstein’s surviving children have come out in support of Cooper’s portrayal of their father, even if the actor looks like he could use his face as a sailing rudder. “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,” Jamie, Alexander and Nina Bernstein wrote in their statement of support, adding, “At all times during the making of this film, we could feel the profound respect and yes, the love that Bradley brought to his portrait of Leonard Bernstein and his wife, our mother Felicia.”
Though the Bernsteins asked us not to attack Cooper with anti-Semitism accusations for his loving efforts to capture their father on screen, they said nothing about endlessly clowning him and his makeup department for the unethical practice of affixing a Great White Shark’s dorsal fin on his face. Here are just a few of our favorite proboscis puns and nose jokes from the past few days.
