The musician who said they wanted to “vomit into Bradley Cooper’s dewy man-child eyes”
Is there anyone in Hollywood who desperately craves an Oscar more than Bradley Cooper? Perhaps not, and there’s something morbidly funny about the actor and filmmaker continuing to rack up more and more nominations without claiming the prize he so obviously desires above all others.
At this rate, he’s in with a very real chance at breaking one of the most unwanted records in Academy Awards history. Greg P Russell would have been the ceremony’s ultimate nearly man after being shortlisted 17 times without a single win, but he was removed from the nomination that Michael Bay’s 13 Hours earned for ‘Best Sound Mixing’ for violating the rules on telephone lobbying.
As a result, he’s tied with Diane Warren, the only two people who’ve ever gone zero-for-16, although she was bestowed an honorary gong in 2022, so there’s that. However, Cooper has been sneaking up on them, having amassed a dozen nods in five different categories in the space of only 11 years. If he carries on at this rate, he’s less than a decade away from being the unluckiest loser of all time.
Whenever the Hangover alum is announced to be stepping behind the camera, audiences have been conditioned to expect awards bait. That’s not to suggest that A Star Is Born, Maestro, and Is This Thing On? are actively bad movies, but there’s a certain amount of prestige folks have been led to expect from a Cooper-helmed picture.
His feature-length debut, and the fourth version of the story, was a critical, commercial, and awards season favourite when it was released in 2018, but it didn’t win everyone over. It was generally well received by music industry figures, even if rules typically tend to have exceptions. In this case, it was Neko Case.
The singer and songwriter, who’s enjoyed a successful 30-year career as a solo artist and as a member of the New Pornographers, wasn’t a fan of A Star Is Born. Or, to be more accurate, she wasn’t a fan of its co-writer, producer, director, and leading man, making her feelings and distaste unequivocally clear on social media.
After catching a preview of the film in September 2018, Case shared an assessment on the first-time filmmaker’s splashy drama that wasn’t going to make it onto the promotional posters: “I want to vomit into Bradley Cooper’s dewy man-child eyes,” she wrote, before adding an exclamation: “Fuck. Off.”
As for the man himself? Well, it’s fair to say that she doesn’t rate him very highly. “Bradley Cooper is the beige demon who makes sure very standard white dudes get to be in everything,” she raged. “He turns a scene into damp sugar quicksand with his treacly fingers, and convinces you his vile incantations are him speaking some adorable French.”
Case was even ready to throw hands, declaring that “I will fight him” should the opportunity ever arise. It hasn’t, as of yet, and an educated guess would surmise that she probably wasn’t won over by Maestro or Is This Thing On?, either.
