Blair, our production coordinator atThe Social, just walked into my office while I was watching Lady Gaga onJimmy Kimmellast night. He raised his eyebrows, and I told him that “theA Star is BornOscar campaign is still happening and the Oscars were four days ago”.
Lady Gaga was onKimmelto promoteA Star is Born. Because the movie is being re-released this weekend with extra performance footage I guess to celebrate Gaga’s win for Best Original Song. Look, not everyone is an asshole. Nikki, our makeup artist, is obsessed withASIB.She watches it every night at home. Every night. Like just to have it in the background. I messaged her earlier to tell her the news about the re-release and she started panicking because she’s going out of town this weekend and is worried that it won’t be available next weekend. There must be a lot of Nikkis out there who aren’t Little Monsters, I get that. And some of those same people are the ones who tried really hard to believe that Gaga and Bradley Cooper are in love for real after their performance at the Oscars. Which she addresses immediately during this interview with an eyeroll and a confirmation that what we saw on Sunday is what they wanted us to see because the song is a love song and the movie is a love story and they brought it to the stage and left it on the stage. Can we move on now? Well. I guess that’s a stupid question because it doesn’t feel like we’re ever moving on fromASIB, at least not for another week at the movies.
Not that I mind if it’s like this, though. As I’ve said many times, I LOVE Lady Gaga inASIB.And I love when she is, in real life, the way she is here onKimmel– irreverent and funny and cool and cute too. It’s cute that she’s carrying her Oscar around in a bag, it’s cute that she’s looking at it like it’s the love of her life, the true love of her life, not Bradley Cooper. That’s what I missed during award season – it was never a problem how badly she wanted an Oscar, it was all the crying and the “I want to thank life” speeching and how light we were on this Gaga who showed up on Kimmel. I wonder if it’s the effect of being around Super Serious Artist Bradley Cooper. THAT’s what was missing from theASIBcampaign: it was work but it also FELT like work, non? Which is what Duana was talking about in herpost-Oscar postabout their performance. Of course you put the work into the staging and the directing, as a reflection of the film, but at the same time, especially when it’s about artists and singing and creative connection – and Gaga knows this better than anyone else – there’s also joy and release. There’s allowing space for joy and release and that almost holy place that top entertainers get to (Beyoncé, for example, for all her military precision, when she’s up there on stage, you can see the abandon on her face in the actual faces she’s making - that shedoesn’t want people to take pictures of) which they successfully achieved in the film. This is what was missing at the Oscars, an unclenching, if you will. She’s not clenched onKimmeland it makes all the difference.
