BuzzFeed has put together a list of behind-the-scenes tidbits about the making of A Star Is Born. Here are 10 of them (check out the full list at the link):
- Originally, this remake of A Star Is Born was going to be directed by Clint Eastwood and star Beyoncé.
- Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga filmed the entire movie in only 42 days.
- Lady Gaga changed her hair and stopped wearing makeup months before filming started in order to get into character.
- Cooper based his character Jackson Maine’s stage persona on Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder.
- Gaga helped Cooper get a feel for what a real-life concert is like backstage. She was even candid about how drugs are readily available once you become famous.
- While filming, Gaga and Cooper developed a shorthand. When Cooper wanted Gaga to evoke a feeling of warmth and love, he would whisper “Tony”—a nod to Gaga’s close relationship with Tony Bennett.
- When Gaga's character Ally is walking up the ramp from work in the beginning of the film, she’s singing the preamble to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”—an homage to Judy Garland who starred in A Star Is Born in 1954.
- Cooper’s real-life dog plays the adult version of Ally and Jackson’s dog Charlie.
- In fact, Charlie is named after Bradley Cooper’s late father—a subtle way that Cooper wanted the memory of his father to be in the film.
- Gaga said she wants viewers to come away from the film saying, “I saw that movie and I cried my eyes out and I learned something about myself.”