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      Conducting Lessons: How Bradley Cooper Became Leonard Bernstein

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      On a late-spring day in 2018, when the New York Philharmonic was deep in rehearsals of a Strauss symphony, an unexpected visitor showed up at the stage door of David Geffen Hall, the Philharmonic’s home.Listen to This ArticleListen to this story in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.The visitor, Bradley Cooper, the actor and director, had come on a mission. He was preparing to direct and star in a film about Leonard Bernstein, the eminent conductor and composer who led the Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969. He was asking the orchestra’s leaders for help with the movie, “Maestro,” which has its North American premiere on Monday at the New York Film Festival.The Philharmonic is accustomed to having luminaries at its concerts. But it was unusual for someone like Cooper to express such deep interest in classical music, a field often neglected in popular culture.“How many top Hollywood stars can be genuine or interested in that way?” said Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s then-president and chief executive. “We were really impressed.”Soon, Cooper was a regular at the Philharmonic’s concerts and rehearsals, sitting in the conductor’s box in the second tier and peppering musicians with questions. He visited the orchestra’s archives to examine Bernstein’s scores and batons. And he joined Philharmonic staff members on a trip to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, placing a stone on Bernstein’s grave, a Jewish rite.Cooper as Bernstein.Jason McDonald/NetflixBernstein as Bernstein, in 1962.Eddie Hausner/The New York Times“You could see that he was watching with a very special eye,” said Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director. “He wanted to get into Bernstein’s soul.”Cooper’s time with the Philharmonic was the beginning of an intense five-year period in which he immersed himself in classical music to portray Bernstein, the most influential American maestro of the 20th century and a composer of renown, whose works include not just “West Side Story” but music for the concert hall.He attended dozens of rehearsals and performances in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Berlin and at Tanglewood in Massachusetts. And he befriended top maestros, including van Zweden; Michael Tilson Thomas, a protégé of Bernstein who led the San Francisco Symphony; Gustavo Dudamel, who leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who served as the film’s conducting consultant.Cooper has portrayed musicians before: He took piano, guitar and voice lessons for his role as Jackson Maine, a folksy rock star, in the 2018 film “A Star Is Born,” which he also directed.But “Maestro,” in theaters on Nov. 22 and on Netflix on Dec. 20, posed a new challenge. Bernstein was a larger-than-life figure with an exuberant style at the podium. Cooper needed to learn not only to conduct, but also to captivate and seduce like a great maestro.Cooper watched archival footage of Bernstein conducting, and Nézet-Séguin recorded dozens of videos on his phone in which he conducted in Bernstein’s manner. He also sent play-by-play voice-overs of Bernstein’s performances and assisted Cooper on set, sometimes guiding his conducting through an earpiece.Nézet-Séguin said the biggest challenge for Cooper, as for many maestros, was “feeling unprotected” and “naked emotionally” on the podium. “He wouldn’t settle for anything less than what he had in mind.”Cooper with Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Ely Cathedral, in England, where Nézet-Séguin coached Cooper for the film’s re-creation of a performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra.NetflixCooper, who wrote “Maestro” with Josh Singer, declined to comment for this article because he belongs to the union representing striking actors, which has forbidden its members from promoting studio films. But in a discussion last year with Cate Blanchett, who played the fictional maestro Lydia Tár in “Tár” (2022), he described conducting as “the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.”He said that people often ask: “What does a conductor even do? Aren’t you just up there doing this?” He waved his arms.“My answer is it’s the absolute hardest thing you could possibly ever want to do,” he said. “It is impossible.”Cooper grew up near Philadelphia surrounded by music. He played the double bass and showed an interest in conducting, inspired by portrayals of mischievous maestros in “Looney Tunes” and “Tom and Jerry” cartoons. When he was 8, he asked Santa for a baton.“I was obsessed with conducting classical music,” he told Stephen Colbert on the “Late Show” last year. “You know you put your 10,000 hours in for something you never do? I did it for conducting.”Steven Spielberg, who had been planning to direct “Maestro,” was aware of Cooper’s obsession. He recalled Cooper telling him that “he’d conduct whatever came out of their hi-fi system at home.”After a screening of “A Star Is Born,” Spielberg was so impressed that he decided to hand “Maestro” over to Cooper, with whom he shares a love of classical music.“It only took me 15 minutes to realize this brilliant actor is equaled only by his skills as a filmmaker,” said Spielberg, who produced the film, along with Cooper and Martin Scorsese.Cooper worked to win the trust of the Bernstein family, including his children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina, who gave the film permission to use their father’s music. (“Maestro” beat out a rival Bernstein project by the actor Jake Gyllenhaal.)Jamie Bernstein said that Cooper seemed “keen to seek an essential authenticity about the story.” He asked questions about her relationship with her father, and he was adept at imitating his gestures, like placing his hand on his hip as he conducted.Cooper visited the family home in Fairfield, Conn., admiring a Steinway piano that Bernstein used to play and examining his belongings: a bathrobe, a blue-striped djellaba, a bottle of German cough syrup that he brought back from a foreign tour.“Channeling a supernova”: Cooper with Gustavo Dudamel at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.Kazu Hiro/Netflix“He was just like a sponge soaking up every detail about our family’s existence that he possibly could,” she said.Cooper sent photos of himself in makeup and costumes, holding replicas of Bernstein’s batons, to his children. (They defended him recently when he drew criticism for wearing a large prosthetic nose in his portrayal of Bernstein, who was Jewish.)At the gym, Cooper sometimes wore a shirt emblazoned with the words “Hunky Brute,” a nickname that Bernstein used for the New York Philharmonic’s brass players. (Bernstein also wore a version of the shirt.)Bernstein’s musical career unfolds in the background in “Maestro”; much of the film focuses on his conflicted identity, including his marriage to the actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) and his dalliances with men.Cooper was eager to approach “Maestro” less as a biography and more as the story of a marriage, Spielberg recalled.While Cooper understood Bernstein’s genius, Spielberg said, he also had “an understanding of the complexities of Felicia’s love for this man, whom she would certainly have to share not only with the world but also with his hungry heart.”The film, shot largely on location, recreates several moments from Bernstein’s career, including his celebrated 1943 debut with the New York Philharmonic, when he filled in at the last minute for the ailing conductor Bruno Walter at Carnegie Hall.At Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshires, Cooper’s Bernstein is shown leading master classes and driving a sports car with the license plate MAESTRO1 across a pristine lawn as the real Bernstein had done. He visits his mentor, the Russian conductor and composer Serge Koussevitzky, who suggests he change his surname to Burns to avoid discrimination.Cooper in the pit at the Metropolitan Opera where he observed Nézet-Séguin during a performance of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande.”Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan OperaIn his conducting studies, Cooper spent the most time with Dudamel and Nézet-Séguin. He visited Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, dressed and made up as Bernstein, for sessions with Dudamel. And he traveled to Germany, score in hand, to observe Dudamel as he rehearsed Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. (Dudamel declined to comment because he is also a member of the actors’ union.)Cooper stealthily watched Nézet-Séguin from the orchestra pit at the Met, including at a 2019 performance of Debussy’s “Pelléas et Mélisande.” Later that year, for Bernstein’s 100th birthday, Nézet-Séguin invited Cooper and Mulligan to narrate a staging of Bernstein’s operetta “Candide” with the Philadelphia Orchestra.Nézet-Séguin said he didn’t set out to give Cooper conducting lessons but to refine his portrayals. “I had to take what he already did as an actor,” he said, “and make it into a frame that was believable.”Nézet-Séguin, who also conducts the film’s soundtrack, helped him find the downbeat for Schumann’s “Manfred” overture, which opened the Carnegie program in 1943. And he assisted Cooper with dialogue for a rehearsal scene of “Candide,” during which he conducts with a cigarette in his mouth.Last fall, Cooper and Nézet-Séguin traveled to Ely Cathedral in England to recreate a 1973 performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony by Bernstein and the London Symphony Orchestra, a climactic moment in the film.Cooper, who chose the music in “Maestro,” had studied the piece intensely, watching Bernstein’s performance as well as videos in which Nézet-Séguin dissected Bernstein’s gestures and explained how to count beats.“He would watch the videos,” Nézet-Séguin said, “and then text me and say, ‘Hey, can we talk about this or that moment?”Inside an empty Ely Cathedral, Nézet-Séguin, wearing a sweater that had belonged to Bernstein, coached Cooper as he rehearsed an eight-minute section of the piece with a recording.When the London Symphony Orchestra arrived, Cooper watched as Nézet-Séguin rehearsed in the style of Bernstein, who often broke the rules of conducting with his animated gestures. Sometimes, Cooper offered suggestions, such as adding tremolo in the strings.When Cooper took the podium, Nézet-Séguin provided occasional direction through an earpiece, advising him to hold onto a moment or let go.The musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra were startled by Cooper’s transformation. “It was uncanny,” said Sarah Quinn, a violinist in the orchestra. “It was just kind of a double take.”Throughout his work on “Maestro,” Cooper maintained a connection to the New York Philharmonic, soliciting stories about Bernstein. Van Zweden, who worked with Bernstein in Amsterdam in the 1980s, told him how Bernstein had broken protocol and hugged Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, calling her “darling” and taking a sip of his drink at the same time.Cooper visited Geffen Hall last fall after its $550 million renovation, attending a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and flipping through a Mahler score that had belonged to Bernstein. He returned in February when Dudamel was introduced as the Philharmonic’s next music director, embracing him and admiring a photo of Bernstein.Over the summer, Cooper invited a few Philharmonic staff members and musicians to his Greenwich Village townhouse for screenings of “Maestro.” The orchestra presented him with a gift: a replica of Bernstein’s Carnegie debut program.“From the beginning, he was intent on avoiding a broad burlesque of a personality, especially one as big as Bernstein’s,” said Carter Brey, the orchestra’s principal cellist, who attended a screening.Cooper has compared playing Bernstein to “channeling a supernova.” He said in a recorded Zoom conversation with Jamie Bernstein last year that her father transmitted his soul through conducting.“The pilot light never went out with him, which is incredible given everything that he saw, experienced, understood, comprehended, bore witness to, even within his own self,” he said in the video. “What a person. What a spirit.”Audio produced by More

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      Ed Begley Jr. Can Tell You the 3 Best Comedies of All Time

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      The actor and environmentalist considered hiring a ghostwriter for help with his memoir, then realized as he was writing things down, “This is too much fun.”Is there anyone in Hollywood that Ed Begley Jr. doesn’t know?“I think there’s a publicist at Paramount I need to have lunch with soon, and there’s a dolly grip at Fox,” he quipped. “I’m going to clear that up by the week’s end.”Readers of Begley’s new memoir, “To the Temple of Tranquility … and Step on It!,” might suspect that even that list is stretching it. In the book, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Marlon Brando, Christopher Guest, Cass Elliot, John Belushi, Tom Waits, the Beatles and even Charles Manson make appearances. As do memories from his work on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “St. Elsewhere,” “A Mighty Wind” and “She-Devil.”Begley, 74, had been considering writing a memoir for a year or two when his younger daughter, Hayden, asked him to spill his stories into her smartphone. His wild 20s, when he drank a quart of vodka a day, took pills and did cocaine. His transformation into an outspoken advocate for sustainable living. The Parkinson’s diagnosis he received in 2016.He took about 45 pages of notes, ostensibly for a ghostwriter, but realized he was enjoying the process. “I don’t want any ghostwriter touching it,” he recalled thinking. “This is too much fun.”In a video interview from his Los Angeles home, Begley spoke about practicing what he preaches and gave some much-needed love to the city’s Metro system. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1My BikeThere’s no doubt in my mind that the high point of my 8th year was getting a bicycle. A beautiful blue Schwinn. Later to be replaced by a white Peugeot, then a brown Nishiki, then a titanium Klein, and finally by a fat-tire American Flyer with electric assist — a compromise that my age and physical condition dictate, but I’m still riding!2‘Midnight Run’This is one of those perfect films. There’s not one misstep in the whole two hours and six minutes. Bob De Niro is great, as always, and though Charles Grodin is no longer with us, he was, and remains, a national treasure. It’s a brilliant script by George Gallo and flawlessly directed by Martin Brest. I would argue that it is one of the three best comedies of all time. The other two being “Bridesmaids” and “The In-Laws” — a self-serving selection, admittedly, but true nonetheless.3My LEED Platinum HomeTwelve-inch-thick walls, passive solar design, a 10,000-gallon rainwater tank, a gray-water system for the fruit trees, steel construction to avoid taking down trees to build a home. Not to mention the fire hazard when building homes out of sticks. Six raised beds and four compost bins allow me to grow a good deal of my own food. All of it proving that living more sustainably is certainly possible.4‘Loves of a Blonde’Milos Forman certainly made a good many fine films, several of them big hits like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus.” But there is an extraordinary early film of his, made [in Czechoslovakia] in 1965. If you haven’t seen it, please try to find it somewhere. It is a gem.5The L.A. MetroI know what you’ve heard, and most of it’s true. Things fell apart during Covid, and we haven’t been able to fix a good many serious problems that got worse during 2020. But I’m not giving up my senior pass, and I’m not giving up on public transportation in Los Angeles! Given the future that we’re facing with climate change, we must get people out of their polluting cars. And public transportation offers people a cost-effective way to do so.6Fryman Canyon ParkThere’s a precious tract of open space, a miniature Griffith Park, right in the middle of Studio City. It’s called Fryman Canyon. I’ve been in the valley my whole life and in Studio City since 1971, and I’ve been enjoying hiking this trail for over half a century. And I’m not done.7Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’No further discussion is necessary.8Paula PoundstoneI’ve seen her perform countless times, and it never ceases to bring me amazement and pure joy. It is certainly humbling to watch her work a crowd, but my more immediate problem is often catastrophic respiratory failure. I have more than once laughed so hard that I thought it would be the end of me. But what a way to go!9H.O.P. E. Healthy Organic Positive EatingA vegan restaurant in Studio City that is my go-to dining experience. It is a Thai restaurant, family-owned and delicious. One of the biggest contributions we can make to reducing the threat of climate change is to eat more plant-based food.10‘The Heart of Saturday Night’Though Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan have put out countless brilliant albums like “Mule Variations” and “Bad as Me,” “The Heart of Saturday Night” is the soundtrack for my life in the ’70s, and I always like paying a visit there. More

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      Stream These 9 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in October

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      Oscar winners and comedy classics are among the great titles leaving the streaming service for U.S. subscribers next month.Netflix’s venerable DVD wing shut its doors this month, and that’s not all that’s disappearing; Oscar winners, period pieces, genre thrillers and comedy classics are among the titles leaving Netflix in the United States in October. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘The Rental’ (Oct. 1)Stream it here.This horror thriller from the actor and director Dave Franco — written with his co-star and offscreen partner Alison Brie and the indie stalwart Joe Swanberg — may well have benefited from what seemed like unfortunate timing: It was released in July of 2020, to the drive-ins that were the only operating movie theaters in those early days of the pandemic. Plenty of folks were also taking that opportunity to escape their surroundings and hole up in Airbnbs, so this story of two couples on an isolated weekend getaway in a rental home may have landed with more bite than even its skilled filmmakers intended.‘Cliffhanger’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.There’s a bit of a Stallone-assaince in the air, thanks to his streaming hit “Tulsa King,” the return of the “Expendables” franchise and a coming Netflix documentary. So it’s a fine time to revisit one of his best films of a not-so-great era: this 1993 action-adventure, frequently (but accurately) described as “‘Die Hard’ on a Mountain.” Stallone stars as a Rocky Mountain rescue worker who has a stranded climber slip through his fingers and plunge to her death in an intense, terrifying opening sequence. When he faces a supervillain (played with relish by a scenery-chewing John Lithgow) who has hijacked and crashed a plane full of cash, our hero has to rediscover his mettle. The director Renny Harlin stages the copious stunts and set pieces with eye-opening verisimilitude, and Stallone, though typically cast as superhuman brutes, proves adaptable to his John McClane-style Everyman role.‘Collateral’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.With Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” speeding into theaters for Christmas, the time is right to revisit the writer and director’s earlier auto-based action drama. Tom Cruise is calm, cool and chilling as an unnamed killer-for-hire who has a few hours in Los Angeles to take care of several “errands”; Jamie Foxx, at his most charismatic, is the poor cabby unfortunate enough to be hired to shuttle Cruise’s killer around town. Mann’s signatures are all accounted for — pulsing music, electrifying action sequences, smeary nighttime photography, effortless cool — but there are also generous and affecting doses of dark humor and character-driven drama.‘Coming to America’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Eddie Murphy was the biggest movie star on the planet in 1988, and he could’ve easily continued to crank out fast-talking turns in “Beverly Hills Cop” and “48 HRS.”-style action-comedies for eternity. Instead, he developed and starred in this (comparatively) gentle and funny romantic comedy, playing against type as the soft-spoken Prince Akeem of the fictional African nation of Zamunda, who flees his homeland on the eve of his arranged marriage in order to find a wife he actually loves. He looks in what sounds like the perfect spot: Queens. Murphy is charming, the supporting cast is stacked, and the director John Landis’s ingenious inclination to have Murphy and his co-star Arsenio Hall play multiple roles results in some of the funniest and most quotable scenes of Murphy’s career.‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.When Matthew Broderick popped up as an overprotective parent in the summer comedy “No Hard Feelings,” older viewers couldn’t help but chuckle; this was exactly the kind of affable pushover that his most famous creation, the high school con artist Ferris Bueller, would have eaten for lunch. It remains his defining role, thanks to his affable personality, the straight-to-camera asides that make the viewer a co-conspirator and the wickedly smart dialogue of the writer and director John Hughes. But it’s not just Broderick’s show; Mia Sara charms as his girlfriend, Sloane; Jennifer Grey is a scream as his resentful sister; and best of all, the future “Succession” standout Alan Ruck is a basset hound of teenage ennui as Ferris’s best buddy, Cameron.‘Girl, Interrupted’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Angelina Jolie won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her scorching turn in this adaptation of the best-selling memoir by Susanna Kaysen, and it was something less than a surprise; it’s the kind of role that’s written to steal the show, a ferocious yet charismatic troublemaker who gets an equal proportion of laugh lines and breakdowns. But there’s much more to recommend here: the sensitive and atmospheric direction by James Mangold (whose varied filmography went on to include “Logan,” “3:10 to Yuma” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”); the heartbreaking supporting work by Brittany Murphy and Whoopi Goldberg; and the especially striking lead performance of Winona Ryder as Kaysen’s avatar, a suicidal neurotic whose time in a Massachusetts mental hospital is both harrowing and healing.‘Pride & Prejudice’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Viewers who know Matthew Macfadyen only as the ruthless social climber of “Succession” may be shocked by the humanity (and natural British accent) he brings to the role of Mr. Darcy in this delightfully energetic adaptation of the Jane Austen classic. The director Joe Wright (“Atonement”), in his feature film debut, stages it all with verve and wit, and Keira Knightley is marvelous as the plucky and gregarious Elizabeth Bennet. The jaw-dropping supporting cast includes Brenda Blethyn, Judi Dench, Tom Hollander, Jena Malone, Carey Mulligan, Rosamund Pike and Donald Sutherland.‘Reservoir Dogs’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Few films of the 1990s announced, with the piercing clarity of a schoolyard whistle, the arrival of a startling new talent like this 1992 feature debut of the writer and director Quentin Tarantino. Exploding at that year’s Sundance Film Festival like a stick of dynamite, “Dogs” shook up the previously artsy expectations of independent cinema, thanks to what would become the Tarantino trademarks of stylized violence, pop culture-infused dialogue, incongruent needle drops, scrambled chronology and tough talk from a stacked cast (including Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Chris Penn, Tim Roth and Tarantino himself). All would become clichés in the ensuing decade, but “Reservoir Dogs” still sparks with the electricity of a born filmmaker, already working with considerable confidence and skill.‘Steel Magnolias’ (Oct. 31)Stream it here.Robert Harling’s adaptation of his modest Off Broadway play set entirely in the beauty parlor of a small Louisiana town was brought to the big screen in 1989 as a big event. The director Herbert Ross (“The Turning Point,” “The Goodbye Girl”) filled his cast with boldfaced names: the Oscar winners Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis; the ’80s icon Daryl Hannah; the force of nature Dolly Parton; and a then-unknown actress named Julia Roberts, who ended up landing, surprisingly enough, the film’s only Academy Award nomination. Despite Ross’s efforts to open it up, “Steel Magnolias” still feels like a filmed play, and that’s to its benefit; the characters are big, the emotions are bigger, and the comic dialogue has the zing of a Southern-fried Neil Simon. More

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      Legal Arrangement in ‘Blind Side’ Case Is Terminated

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      A judge ended a nearly 20-year-old conservatorship that had given a couple broad authority over the affairs of the former N.F.L. player Michael Oher.A probate judge in Memphis ended an unusual legal arrangement on Friday between Michael Oher, a former National Football League player and the subject of the hit movie “The Blind Side,” and the people who took him in when he was a teenager, which had given them broad authority over Mr. Oher’s affairs.Mr. Oher, 37, filed a petition in August to terminate the nearly 20-year-old conservatorship, claiming that he had been tricked into signing away his decision-making powers under the pretense that he would be adopted. The petition stated that Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy, with whom Mr. Oher started staying when he was 16, were given power of attorney and access to his medical records, and that he could not bind himself to any contracts without their approval.The move by the judge was largely expected; the Tuohys had said at the time the petition was filed that they were happy to have the conservatorship end.Based on the book by Michael Lewis, “The Blind Side” is one of the most popular and highest-earning sports movies in American history, grossing more than $300 million upon its release in 2009 and earning Sandra Bullock an Academy Award for her portrayal of Ms. Tuohy. But it has also been criticized for perpetuating stereotypes about Black athletes like Mr. Oher needing help from white, wealthy benefactors like the Tuohys.Mr. Oher is also seeking money that he has said he should have earned from the movie, an injunction preventing the Tuohys from using his name and likeness, and an accounting of all the times that the Tuohys enriched themselves from “the lie of Michael’s adoption,” the petition said.The judge did not dismiss the case. The deputy clerk of the court said that no date had been set for another hearing. Lawyers for Mr. Oher did not immediately return requests for comment. A spokesman for the Tuohys did not respond to a request for comment.The Tuohys have denied wrongdoing. They have said that they sought the conservatorship only so Mr. Oher would be able to attend their alma mater, the University of Mississippi, to play football. The aim, they said, was to appease the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which had been suspicious of the fact that the Tuohys were prominent boosters of the school and had taken Mr. Oher in.In a legal filing on Sept. 14, the Tuohys said that they had never intended to legally adopt Mr. Oher and that they never told Mr. Oher that they would adopt him. In a 2010 book they wrote, however, the Tuohys refer to adopting Mr. Oher, and they have publicly referred to him as their adopted son.Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy took Mr. Oher in when he was 16.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressSandra Bullock won an Academy Award for playing Ms. Tuohy, in the 2009 film “The Blind Side.”Ralph NelsonThe conservatorship was created under unusual circumstances. It was granted despite a finding that Mr. Oher had “no known physical or psychological disabilities.” In Tennessee, a conservatorship is designed to protect an individual “with a disability who lacks capacity to make decisions in one or more important areas.”On Friday, the judge in Memphis, Kathleen Gomes, said that she could not “believe it got done” and that she had never seen a conservatorship granted under such circumstances.The judge in the original petition for the arrangement, Robert Benham, told The New York Times last month that he disputed the idea that a conservatorship could be granted only under such circumstances. But he said he ultimately granted the conservatorship because there was no opposition to the arrangement from the people at the hearing, including the Tuohys, Mr. Oher, the lawyer filing the petition and Denise Oher, Michael’s mother.Ms. Oher said in a recent interview that she didn’t recall a conservatorship being discussed at the hearing. She said that she thought she was present only to approve a name change for Michael, whose birth name was Williams. More

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      ‘No One Will Save You,’ ‘Hypnotic’ and More Streaming Science Fiction

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      In this month’s selections, extraterrestrials roam and the Earth wanders.‘No One Will Save You’Stream it on Hulu.I watch a lot of films for this column, and it’s the rare one that worms its way into my head the way Brian Duffield’s alien-invasion thriller did. The writer-director pulls off a double challenge: He tells the story almost wordlessly (making you realize just how many movies lazily rely on people speaking to themselves out loud) and creates a dreamlike world in which memories and monsters jostle for power.The camera almost never leaves Brynn (a fantastic Kaitlyn Dever, of “Dopesick” and “Booksmart”), a young woman living alone in a nice big house. She does not appear to have any family or friends, and aside from the fact that she drives a Subaru, you might think the movie is set in the 1950s or ’60s: Brynn uses a clunky landline, for example, and electronics don’t really figure. Even the extraterrestrials look as if they’d been imagined during that time — they have a prominent forehead and opaque eyes, and arrive in saucer-shaped ships. It is clearly a deliberate choice from Duffield but unfortunately I can’t offer my theory about its meaning without spoiling a key reveal. Suffice it to say that appearances can’t be trusted, starting with the fact that the reserved Brynn turns out to be a tough survivor when she is under attack, and concluding with a resolution simultaneously satisfying and unsettling.‘The Wandering Earth II’Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.In Frant Gwo’s “The Wandering Earth” (2019), our planet, propelled by thousands of thrusters, is roaming the universe to escape the sun’s impending explosion and the destruction of the solar system. Oh, and the now-frozen Earth, its remaining population hunkered underground, is linked to a space station guided by a supercomputer named MOSS. How we got to that nutty situation is the subject of this prequel, also directed by Gwo. And there’s a lot to cover because as you might have guessed, turning Earth into a gigantic spaceship is quite the endeavor. (These being productions from China, that country is the force driving the so-called Moving Mountain Project; the movie is no more or less jingoistic than an American equivalent would be.)“The Wandering Earth II” does not skimp on spectacle and awe-inspiring shots, and Andy Lau (“Infernal Affairs”) makes for a welcome addition as a scientist. Most interesting is the rivalry between competing initiatives to save Earth: physically move the planet out of harm’s way or bank on a digital solution by transferring human consciousness onto digital files. We know which one eventually wins out (or does it?) because this is a prequel, yet the process remains absorbing. And MOSS figures in, too.‘t=E/x²’Rent or buy it on Apple TV+.Narratives involving messed-up timelines are so frequent in contemporary science-fiction movies that you have to wonder what this popularity says about us: that we live in constant fear of missing out and need as many options and parallel universes as possible? That we are obsessed with the idea of regret and crave second, third or 10th chances? This month’s entry in the thriving subgenre is Andreas Z Simon’s low-budget movie, from Germany, that is both cryptic and playful.When we meet Merlin (Mario Ganss, an appealing everyman), he is at a computer, editing a scene in which a talking head expounds on the questionable linearity of time and space — elements that, in a way, Merlin can rearrange at a click of his mouse. Out of nowhere, he receives a vinyl LP (and the antique turntable to play it) containing a message that identifies Merlin as a time traveler and gives him instructions: “Kill the clown and rescue the mermaid.” The film has the type of puzzle-box construction that maddens some viewers and energizes others, but there is something compelling about its indie aesthetic — Merlin’s romantic life, in particular, feels lifted from a mumblecore movie.‘Hypnotic’Stream it on Peacock.Watching A-list stars in B movies tends to be great fun. Perhaps because they are free from the pressure of having to earn awards or deliver box-office results — or loosened up by preposterous scripts — they often give unbound, enjoyable performances. Think Adam Driver in “65,” for example, or Ben Affleck in this sci-fi thriller from the excellent craftsman Robert Rodriguez.Affleck plays Danny, a Texas cop with a heavy past and a present complicated by the murderous machinations of one Dellrayne (William Fichtner), a so-called hypnotic who can mesmerize anybody to do his bidding and creates hallucinatory mindscapes of the kind familiar to viewers of “Inception.” Why Danny appears impervious to Dellrayne’s paranormal power is key to a complicated story involving Alice Braga as a mysteriously helpful psychic and a secret government program called the Division that’s working on a nefarious Project Domino.The dense plot is a lot to absorb and the execution is often goofy — members of the Division wear red blazers, like Avis employees with even greater powers than dispensing free upgrades. But Rodriguez keeps the action moving, and the denouement might just make you rewatch the movie from a different perspective.‘The Deal’Stream it on the Roku Channel.Rent or buy it from most major platforms.This film gains if you look at it as being not as much about a dystopian future as about a dystopian past, more specifically one set behind the Iron Curtain of the mid-20th century. (Uncoincidentally, perhaps, the director, Orsi Nagypal, is Hungarian). Callbacks to communist societies abound, starting with the locale: a drab city of brutalist gray high-rises, protected from the outside world — which has been wrecked by a global pandemic — by a forbidding wall. There, Tala (Sumalee Montano) paints propaganda posters in a classic Socialist-Realist style for the authoritarian government. She has taken “the deal,” which gives privileged access to resources in exchange for the recipient being terminated after 20 years.This is a good way to control population when necessities are scarce and there seems to be waiting lists for everything, including lifesaving operations. That last issue becomes a critical problem when Tala’s daughter, Analyn (Emma Fischer), needs to get a kidney transplant. The two women embark on a journey in which they discover, among other things, black-market doctors and how the one percent lives. But the plot is almost besides the point: “The Deal” works best as an accretion of quotidian details about life under an oppressive regime. More

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      ‘Saw X’ Review: Blood, Guts and a Little Heart

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      The 10th movie in this horror series gives the fans what they want.For better or worse, I’m fascinated by the “Saw” movies — mesmerized by their inventively staged kills, in which victims are locked into medieval-looking contraptions and given a choice: a) hack off a limb or scramble an eyeball or b) face certain death by bear-trap helmet or ribcage-ripping metal claw; infinitely amused by the soap opera-esque narrative used to string together, and sort of justify, these sadistic games. I’ve willingly stuck it out through every movie in the horror series, so there’s no use beating around the bush: “Saw” is my kind of trash.For all its inanities, “Saw X,” the 10th “Saw” movie, should hit the bar for the like-minded: the traps are disgusting; the plot, so self-serious its absurd (and knowingly so). And unlike the sundry sequels before it (by the third “Saw,” any pretense of ingenuity had been hacked off), this one manages to make you feel something beyond gross-out adrenaline — assuming you have affection for the franchise’s mainstays.The first “Saw” movie, released in 2004 and written by the fresh-faced creative team of James Wan (who also directed) and Leigh Whannell, was an edgy novelty, unleashing one of the most sordid trends in Hollywood horror, so-called torture porn — an unintentional nod to the war on terror’s abused military detainees.John Kramer, a.k.a. Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), is an avenging angel with brain cancer. He appears — like Jason or Freddie Krueger — in every edition of “Saw.” You could say he’s the franchise’s beating heart. According to his arbitrary logic (what is good and evil, anyway?), he kidnaps wrongdoers and places them in his rusty traps. Those who manage to escape often gain a new lease on life, and, bizarrely, we’re rooting for creaky old John more than any of his would-be disciples. In “Saw X,” he winkingly refers to himself as a “life coach.”The events of Jigsaw’s latest flesh-fest are set between “Saw” and “Saw 2.” John, our ailing antihero, heads to Mexico for an experimental medical procedure that turns out to be a big fat scam. The crooks behind the swindle become his future victims. The director, Kevin Greutert, puts a surprising amount of effort into building out the arc of the betrayal John suffers, beefing up the stakes in ways that the previous, hyper-nihilistic “Saw” movies never bothered to address.Set on the outskirts of Mexico City, the film employs a jaundiced sepia filter to signal the shift to exotic territory, and though the plot entails a white guy knocking off Latinos, the more robust setup muffles bad-faith accusations of racism — not that the film’s commentary on such matters is sophisticated; in this world of juvenile thrills, we all look the same on the inside. This “Saw” avoids the dreary political baiting of “Spiral,” the 2021 spinoff, which linked the Jigsaw killer’s moral mandate to the Black Lives Matter movement.In any case, the biggest baddie, the swindle’s ringleader, is a coldblooded Scandinavian, Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnove Macody Lund), who may care less about her Spanish-speaking underlings than John himself.The Robin to Jigsaw’s Batman, “Saw” regular Amanda (Shawnee Smith) shows up to help the boss-man with his latest stunt, kidnapping Cecilia and three of her colluders. One-by-one, each victim plays their game, punctuated by John and Amanda’s soul-baring huddle-talks, Cecilia’s pitiless scheming (one maneuver involves a rope made out of a casualty’s intestines), and, for devotees, fist-pump-inducing appearances by symbols from the extended “Saw” universe — like a puppet reminiscent of a shrunken-head Michael Jackson.This is the most well-groomed “Saw” movie to date. The story mostly makes sense and Greutert pulls back on the frenetic editing techniques that made the older movies look like the blood and guts equivalent of white noise. Bell’s Jigsaw is the same placid psychopath we’ve come to rely on for gruesome titillation (and a few snickers) and here, he’s a little cuddly, too — just like the fans always thought he was.Saw XRated R for graphic torture scenes and drug abuse. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. More

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      How Dumbledore Became Michael Gambon’s Most Recognizable Role

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      The great British stage actor was not initially cast as the wizarding headmaster in the “Harry Potter” films, but he made the role his own.In the latter part of Michael Gambon’s long and storied acting career, some of the most animated analyses of his performances could be found not in theater or film reviews, but in forums for the “Harry Potter” fandom, where dedicated Hogwarts obsessives would dissect his every onscreen utterance as the wizard Albus Dumbledore.It wasn’t originally his role. Richard Harris, the eminent actor who was originally cast, died after filming the second “Harry Potter” movie. Gambon took over in 2003, joining the ranks of great British actors with popular late-career turns as wizards, a lineage that includes Alec Guinness (as the wizard-like Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi in “Star Wars”) and Ian McKellen (as Gandalf in the “Lord of the Rings” films).Several other well-known actors were initially considered to succeed Harris in the role, including McKellen, who demurred, and Peter O’Toole, who turned it down because of his long, close friendship with Harris.In the end the choice was Gambon, who died Wednesday. He made the role his own, donning the long silver beard and half-moon spectacles and speaking in his unmistakable rich baritone voice, a stark contrast to Harris’s hoarser, more wizened readings as the headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.He was seen by millions, and after a career playing the characters of Brecht and Pinter it was Dumbledore that became his most recognizable — and probably most debated — role.Once Gambon debuted in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” imbuing the character with a darker, sometimes mischievous tone, the question was born: Who was the “better Dumbledore”? Harris, with his soft-spoken, kind hearted air? Or Gambon, with his more sinister twist on the character?Gambon was self-deprecating about the role.“I just stick on a beard and play me, so it’s no great feat,” Gambon told a British movie blog in 2007. “Every part I play is just a variant of my own personality.”Gambon, who entered the film series in his early 60s, also chose to avoid reading J.K. Rowling’s source material, an approach that he once said was similar to that of Alan Rickman, who played Severus Snape, and Ralph Fiennes, who played Voldemort. He said bluntly that he tended to take movie roles for the money, telling the blog, “I just say what the script tells me to say.”Over the course of six movies, including limited roles in the two-part finale, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” he became beloved by fans and known as something of a prankster on set, once putting a “fart machine” inside Daniel Radcliffe’s sleeping bag.In a statement sent through his publicist on Thursday, Radcliffe, whose work with Gambon spanned his teenage years, said that the loss of the actor made the world “considerably less fun,” writing:Michael Gambon was one of the most brilliant, effortless actors I’ve ever had the privilege of working with, but despite his immense talent, the thing I will remember most about him is how much fun he had doing his job. He was silly, irreverent and hilarious. He loved his job, but never seemed defined by it. He was an incredible story and joke teller and his habit of blurring the lines of fact and fiction when talking to journalists meant that he was also one of the most entertaining people with whom you could ever wish to do a press junket. The sixth film was where I got to spend the most time working with Michael and he made the hours spent in front of a green screen together more memorable and joyous than they had any right to be. I’m so sad to hear he has passed, but I am so grateful for the fact that I am one of the lucky people who got to work with him.Rupert Grint, the actor who played Ron Weasley in the series, said in an Instagram post on Thursday that Gambon brought “so much warmth and mischief to every day on set.” And Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger, described Gambon as “kind kind kind” on Instagram, writing: “You never took it too seriously but somehow delivered the most serious moments with all the gravitas.” Onscreen, the darker edge Gambon brought to the role dovetailed with the trajectory of Rowling’s story, as well as the approach of the filmmaker David Yates, who directed the second half of the movie series.“He’s got to be a bit scary,” Gambon told The Los Angeles Times in 2009 of his Dumbledore. “All headmasters should be a bit scary, shouldn’t they? A top wizard like him would be intimidating. And ultimately, he’s protecting Harry. Essentially, I play myself. A little Irish, a little scary. That’s what I’m like in real life.” More

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      Michael Gambon, Dumbledore in the ‘Harry Potter’ Films, Dies at 82

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      After he made his mark in London in the 1970s, he went on to play a wide range of roles, including Edward VII, Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill.Michael Gambon, the Irish-born actor who drew acclaim from both audiences and peers for his stage and screen work, and who won even wider renown as Albus Dumbledore, the firm but kindly headmaster of the Hogwarts wizarding school, in the “Harry Potter” films, died on Wednesday night. He was 82.Mr. Gambon’s family confirmed his death in a brief statement issued on Thursday through a public relations company. “Michael died peacefully in hospital with his wife, Anne, and son Fergus at his bedside, following a bout of pneumonia,” the statement said. It did not identify the hospital where he died.The breakthrough that led the actor Ralph Richardson to call him “the great Gambon” came with Mr. Gambon’s performance in Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo” at London’s National Theater in 1980, although he had already enjoyed modest success, notably in plays by Alan Ayckbourn and Harold Pinter.Peter Hall, then the National Theater’s artistic director, described Mr. Gambon (pronounced GAM-bonn) as “unsentimental, dangerous and immensely powerful.” He recalled in his autobiography that he had approached four leading directors to accept him in the title role, only for them to reject him as “not starry enough.”After John Dexter agreed to direct him in what Mr. Gambon was to describe as the most difficult part he had ever played, the mix of volcanic energy and tenderness, sensuality and intelligence he brought to the role — in which he aged from 40 to 75 — excited not only critics but also his fellow performers.Mr. Gambon in the title role of Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo” at the National Theater in London in 1980. He called it the most difficult part he had ever played.Donald Cooper/AlamyAs Mr. Hall recalled, the dressing-room windows at the National, which look out onto a courtyard, “after the first night contained actors in various states of undress leaning out and applauding him — a unique tribute.”That brought Mr. Gambon a best-actor nomination at the Olivier Awards. He would win the award in 1987 for his performance as Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge” at the National Theater. Again it was his blend of vulnerability and visceral force that impressed audiences; Miller declared that Mr. Gambon’s performance as the embattled longshoreman was the best he had seen. Mr. Ayckbourn, who directed the production, described Mr. Gambon as awe-inspiring.“One day he just stood in the rehearsal room and just burst into tears — no turning upstage, no hands in front of his face,” Mr. Ayckbourn said. “He just stood there and wept like a child. It was heartbreaking. And he did angry very well too. That could be scary.”Michael John Gambon was born in Dublin on Oct. 19, 1940. He became a dual British and Irish citizen after he and his seamstress mother, Mary, moved to London to join his father, Edward, an engineer helping to reconstruct the city after it had been badly bombed in 1945.By his own admission he was a dreamy student, often lost in fantasies of being other people, and he left school “pig ignorant, with no qualifications, nothing.” When the family moved from North London to Kent, he became an apprentice toolmaker at Vickers-Armstrongs, which was famous for having built Britain’s Spitfire fighter planes.The teenage Mr. Gambon had never seen a play — he said he didn’t even knew what a play was — but when he helped build sets for an amateur dramatic society in Erith, Kent, he was given a few small roles onstage. “I went vroom!,” he recalled. “I thought, Jesus, this is for me, I want to be an actor.” He joined the left-leaning Unity Theater in London, performing and taking lessons in improvisation at the Royal Court.This emboldened him to write to Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards, the founders of the Gate Theater in Dublin, claiming to be a West End actor passing through the city en route to New York. An invitation ensued, as did a job as the Second Gentleman in “Othello,” followed by an offer to join Laurence Olivier’s new National Theater, which (Mr. Gambon said) was seeking burly six-footers like himself to play spear carriers.Several small or nonspeaking roles followed — Mr. Gambon remembered little but saying “Madam, your carriage awaits” to Maggie Smith in a Restoration comedy — until Olivier himself advised him to seek better parts in the provinces. That he did, closely modeling an Othello in Birmingham in 1968 on the Moor famously played at the National by Olivier, an actor Mr. Gambon said he always regarded with “absolute awe.”Mr. Gambon didn’t make his mark in London until 1974, when he played a slow-witted veterinary surgeon in Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy “The Norman Conquests.” One scene, in which he sat on a child’s chair so low that only half his face was visible, became celebrated for the hilarity it generated. Indeed, Mr. Gambon said, he actually witnessed a man “laugh so much he fell out of his seat and rolled down the gangway.”Mr. Gambon in 1987, the year he won an Olivier Award for his performance in Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge.”John Stoddart/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesMr. Gambon said he disliked looking in mirrors; so unpleasant did he find his face that he compared it to a crumpled plastic bag. His jowls and his heavy build meant that he never played Hamlet or any obviously heroic or conventionally good-looking characters, yet he won universal admiration for his versatility. He seemed able to grow or shrink at will. For a man compared to a lumberjack, he was astonishingly fleet and nimble. One critic saw him as a rhinoceros that could almost tap-dance.And he brought a paradoxical delicacy to many a role: King Lear and Antony, which he played in tandem for the Royal Shakespeare Company; leading roles in Pinter’s “Betrayal” and “Old Times”; Ben Jonson’s Volpone at the National Theater; and the anguished restaurateur in David Hare’s “Skylight,” a performance he took from London to Broadway, where it earned him a Tony Award nomination for best actor in 1996.At the time he was best known in the United States for a television performance as the daydreaming invalid in Dennis Potter’s acclaimed 1986 mini-series, “The Singing Detective.” Though he always said that the theater was his great love and he pined for it when he was away, he often appeared on screens both large and small during a career in which he was virtually never out of work.Before being cast as Dumbledore, Mr. Gambon was best known in the United States for his performance as the daydreaming invalid in Dennis Potter’s acclaimed 1986 mini-series, “The Singing Detective.”BBCFrom 1999 to 2001, he won successive best-actor BAFTA awards, for “Wives and Daughters,” “Longitude” and “Perfect Strangers.” His portrayal of Lyndon B. Johnson in the 2002 mini-series “Path to War” won him an Emmy nomination, as did his Mr. Woodhouse in the 2009 adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma.”His television roles varied from Inspector Maigret to Edward VII, Oscar Wilde to Winston Churchill. And in film he played characters as different as Albert Spica, the coarse and violent gangster in Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover,” and the benign Professor Dumbledore.Mr. Gambon took over the role of Dumbledore, a central character in the Harry Potter saga, when Richard Harris, who had originated it, died in 2002. Reviewing “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” in which he first appeared in the role, A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that the film, though noteworthy for its special effects, was also, like the two earlier films in the series, “anchored by top-of-the-line flesh-and-blood British acting,” and noted that “Michael Gambon, as the wise headmaster Albus Dumbledore, has gracefully stepped into Richard Harris’s conical hat and flowing robes.” Mr. Gambon continued to play Dumbledore through the final movie in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” released in 2011.For all the attention that role brought him, Mr. Gambon claimed not to see this or any other performance as a great accomplishment; he tended to answer interviewers who questioned him about acting by saying, “I just do it.” But in fact he prepared for his roles conscientiously. He would absorb a script, then use rehearsals to adapt and deepen his discoveries.“I’m very physical,” he once said. “I want to know how the person looks, what his hair is like, the way he walks, the way he stands and sits, how he sounds, his rhythms, how he dresses, his shoes. The way your feet feel on the stage is important.” And slowly, very slowly, Mr. Gambon would edge toward what he felt was the core of a person and, he said, rely on intuition to bring him to life onstage.Though he was no Method actor, Mr. Gambon did use memories when strong emotions were needed. He found it easy to cry onstage, he said, sometimes by thinking of the famous photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack. Acting, he said, was a compulsion, “a hard slog, heartache, misery — for moments of sheer joy.”Mr. Gambon in the 1989 film “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.”Steve Pyke/Getty ImagesIn person Mr. Gambon was elusive; he said that he didn’t exist aside from his acting and that he hated the idea of celebrity, even popularity. He adamantly refused to reveal anything about his private life to interviewers, though it’s on public record that he married Anne Miller when he was 22 and that together they had a son, Fergus. They both survive him. It is believed that they remained on good terms even after he had two other sons, Tom and William, with the set designer Philippa Hart.He was knighted in 1998.His engineering apprenticeship left him fascinated with the workings of mechanical things: clocks, old watches and especially antique guns, of which he possessed scores. He also took delight in fast cars; he once appeared on the television show “Top Gear” and drove so recklessly that a section of the track he’d taken on two wheels was renamed Gambon Corner.He became notorious for impish behavior on and off the stage. A qualified pilot, he promised to cure a fellow actor of his fear of flying by taking him up in a tiny plane, then mimed a heart attack as, his tongue lolling, he nose-dived toward outer London. Mr. Ayckbourn recalled a moment in “Othello” when Mr. Gambon shoved Iago’s head into a fountain. “Shampoo and set, shampoo and set,” roared the Moor — but such was the emotion already generated the audience reportedly didn’t notice.“I’m actually serious about my work,” Mr. Gambon once said. However, much of that work came to a premature end after he played a wily, drunken, needy Falstaff at the National Theater in 2005, followed by the alcoholic Hirst in Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” in 2008.Having admitted that he often felt terrified before making an entrance, he had panic attacks while rehearsing the role of W.H. Auden in Alan Bennett’s “The Habit of Art” in 2009 and was twice rushed to a hospital before withdrawing from the production. By then he was finding it difficult to remember lines. After playing the nonspeaking title character in Samuel Beckett’s “Eh Joe” in 2013, he announced that he would no longer perform onstage.He continued to appear on film and television, notably as the ailing title character in “Churchill’s Secret” in 2016. But his departure from theater meant that he ended his stage career with a deep sense of loss.“It’s a horrible thing to admit,” he said. “But I can’t do it. And it breaks my heart.”Alex Marshall More