I’m Jewish and this won’t get my nose out of joint.
Remember the episode of Friends where Joey need to play Jewdick?
I remember the other way around. Circumcised Joey needed a fake foreskin.
Back to the OP
I don’t see the problem.
I think the issue is that Bradley Cooper already has a naturally large nose. Larger than Bernstein’s. So, even at its most benign, it’s a strange decision for someone to look at that and say: more!
And I’ve been taken for Italian. Including in Italy (though not once I opened my mouth.)
– if either the nose itself or the overall portrayal is caricaturish, I think there’s a problem. If not, then I don’t see a problem.
Check out the prosthetic nose Alec Guinness wore when he played Fagin in David Lean’s Oliver Twist (1948).
It’s a stupid choice. Even if Cooper was Jewish it would be a stupid choice. How many people hear “Leonard Bernstein” and immediately picture the guy, especially with an accurately proportioned schnoz? He’s famous,* but he’s not a visual icon. The nose isn’t going to add verisimilitude to the performance except for viewers with a deepset implicit understanding that Jewish people should have big noses.
*although I would wager there are a great many people who love his music and couldn’t correctly identify the composer if asked
Puts me in mind of the times that Eli Wallach played Mexicans (The Magnificent Seven, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – probably others) in part (IMHO) because in those days somebody as swarthy as a member of a Polish-Jewish family was Mexican-looking enough for Hollywood.
Absolutely agree!
Lenny’s family is cool with Bradley Cooper wearing a fake nose to play the role, and so, dadgummit, am I.
Nice.
Ian McKellen wore a prosthetic nose as Gandalf in the LOTR movies, but it was very subtle and I remember no complaints at the time. It probably helped that Gandalf wasn’t, as far as we know, a Red Sea pedestrian.
I think it’s more than you seem to think.
I suppose it’s conjecture either way, but I’d be surprised to be proven wrong. A famous name doesn’t mean a famous face.
Give me a gallery of ten famous American composers (especially when they were young) and I’m sure I’d fail a multiple choice quiz,* even though I’d probably perform better than average at identifying their music.
*I know I would. I just looked up images of a young Sondheim, Copeland, and Gershwin. Couldn’t pick them out of a lineup. Maybe could do Gershwin once he really got his forehead on display.
Bradley Cooper’s own nose is bigger than Bernstein’s:
(L) Bernstein; (R) Cooper with fake nose:
But Bernstein wasn’t just a composer. He was probably most famous as a conductor, possibly the most famous conductor in the world in his heyday.
From here:
Here’s a different photo. Bernstein’s nose looks smaller than Cooper’s real nose.
That’s because many so-called “Jewish” features are actually Mediterranean features.
Still hard to compare because of the different angles. And Bernstein’s nose looked bigger as he got older. I’m inclined to defer to Bernstein’s family as to whether Cooper got the nose right.
Picture him? I don’t even know who he is. (Or didn’t until this thread.) Pretty sure he’s mentioned in an REM song though.
Now I feel old.