Chemistry is a curious metaphor for human connection because matchmaking is certainly not a science\u2014not yet anyway. Thanks to the Tinders and eHarmonys, we have more data on the subject than ever before, but we still can\u2019t predict much about successful love or collaboration. Both depend so much on timing.<\/p>\n
The Internet is buzzing right now about the chemistry between actor Bradley Cooper and singer Stefani Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga. It\u2019s not about their star-power performances in Cooper\u2019s remake of the 1937 Janet Gaynor film A Star is Born<\/em>.<\/p>\n The chatter is also not about the whirlwind romance that followed their working together\u2014because there wasn\u2019t one.<\/p>\n Instead, everyone is discussing Sunday\u2019s Oscar ceremony, which featured Cooper and Gaga in a tiny remake of their remake, live on stage. The musical centerpiece of Cooper\u2019s Star<\/em>, a song entitled \u201cShallow,\u201d about diving deep into a relationship and into your dreams, was nominated for Best Original Song, and eventually won the Academy Award\u2014but not before the two performed it live before the audience of L.A. luminaries<\/a>, and the entire world.<\/p>\n To say they recreated their chemistry in the film doesn\u2019t say enough. My own romantic partner, watching beside me on the couch, had to open a window, despite the snow falling outside, after their performance. As she observed, it had gotten hot in there.<\/p>\n This widely shared response<\/a> is a lesson for my students. Social media gives us an honest, immediate reaction to an event. Twitter and Instagram accounts around the world couldn\u2019t believe Cooper and Gaga\u2019s televised duet didn\u2019t reveal some hidden truth between the two. The Internet clambered to find footage of Cooper\u2019s girlfriend\u2019s reaction, salivating for awkwardness<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet the more the audience inquired, the more the moment revealed itself to be exactly what it was\u2014a skilled enactment. Cooper\u2019s girlfriend was the first on her feet. Gaga\u2019s collaborator on \u201cShallow,\u201d producer Mark Ronson<\/a>, and the Oscar Ceremony director Glenn Weiss<\/a> both confirmed the performance was meticulously planned by Cooper from the morning the nomination was announced.<\/p>\n The heat was an act\u2014a fabrication\u2014engineered by two extremely talented people. It swept right past our uncanny valley detectors. It resonated more than the real, fumbling PDAs between Best Actor Rami Malek and his recent love interest and costar, Lucy Boynton. Yet the Oscars\u2019 stage crew stopped mid-telecast to give the singers a second round of applause backstage for what they understood was a technical achievement.<\/p>\n Every semester, my communications students\u2014whether working technically with words, images, or moving images\u2014inevitably mention how false their work begins to feel when they labor on it. A first draft feels honest, while an edited piece feels like a Frankenstein\u2019s monster. My answer is always the same\u2014they haven\u2019t worked nearly hard enough. They haven\u2019t brought their stitched corpses to life.<\/p>\n Students most unfamiliar with writing and creativity hope to turn in \u2018A\u2019 assignments every week. I encourage them to think of their semester\u2019s collective effort as steps\u2014drafts\u2014towards maybe one or two worthy pieces of work.<\/p>\n The great movie director Billy Wilder famously ridiculed the Oscars for giving its statues to showy performances. His pinnacle example of a great actor was Cary Grant, who always played the everyman, and whose hard work was invisible and rarely acknowledged. Pretty-boy Cooper faced similar difficulties directing this film I\u2019m sure, though he\u2019s separated himself time and again as an actor above chiseled faces all over Hollywood.<\/p>\n A Star is Born<\/em> is literally old material. Yet its recreations of the chemistry within the current popular music scene and in one human connection are so good they\u2019re also invisible. Cooper\u2019s choice to cast our most artistically brazen, meat-dress-wearing rock diva as a shy hopeful was genius.<\/p>\n The Oscars performance was a coda to Cooper\u2019s smart decisions to shoot Star<\/em> in the middle of the Coachella music festival while Gaga was headlining and on the real Manhattan set of Saturday Night Live<\/em>. He clearly knows how to pick the right cultural touchstones to create the illusion of reality within them.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a reason SNL<\/em> itself has become a barometer for stardom. If you can join the best comedic writers and performers of the moment and be as funny or funnier in a live program, you deserve to cross that exclusive threshold\u2014you understand that contriving on stage is all about years of preparation. Cooper and Gaga just pulled a similar trick in the Dolby theater.<\/p>\n Only the two of them get to imagine what\u2019s on the other side. What\u2019s exciting is how much they just showed all of us how ready they are for the challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chemistry is a curious metaphor for human connection because matchmaking is certainly not a science\u2014not yet anyway. 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