The ceremony had not even begun, and the iconoclastic Lady Gaga had already snatched up two Grammy Awards in the categories of Best Original Song Written for Visual Media and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, for “Shallow.”
A Grammy veteran with six awards now under her belt, Gaga responded to the news of her latest Grammy award with a heartfelt tweet thanking her collaborators, replete with weeping emoji and a row of hearts. “I’m not gonna be able to wear any makeup tonight. We just won our first of Grammy nominations for the night. I’m in tears with honor and gratitude. Thank you @RecordingAcad #Grammys #Grammy and my co-writers and Bradley I love you so much thank you.”
I’m not gonna be able to wear any makeup tonight. We just won our first of Grammy nominations for the night. I’m in tears with honor and gratitude. Thank you @RecordingAcad #Grammys #Grammy and my co-writers and Bradley I love you so much thank you 😭❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) February 10, 2019
The Grammy was awarded to Gaga and co-composers Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando, and Andrew Wyatt. Gaga also performed the song live at the Grammys, accompanied by Mark Ronson (in Cooper’s absence), thrilling audiences and critics alike and, by all accounts, stealing the show at the famed award ceremony. Gaga also took home a Grammy in the Best Pop Solo Performance category for the title track to her album “Joanne,” cementing her legend as an inimitable pop icon.
The film, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Gaga and Cooper in the lead roles, is now headed to the Academy Awards with 8 Oscar nominations, in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Original Song, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Big Hopes for Academy Awards
While in some of those categories the film faces stiff competition, all bets are on that “Shallow” will win the Oscar for Best Original Song. “Shallow,” a song that Gaga has described as “counter-culture in a lot of ways” has already received a multitude of accolades and awards, and is also nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Sound Mixing.
A stylized ballad performed onscreen in the movie by Gaga and co-star Bradley Cooper, “Shallow” is a hit that has been wooing both audiences and critics, and exploding at all of the 2019 awards ceremonies, winning a prestigious BAFTA award for Best Original Music just prior to nabbing those two Grammys. The song also won a Critic’s Choice Award, which in the past has been in a good indicator that it may also win an Oscar.
To further cement the song’s popularity and mark it as an all-time classic, Gaga and Cooper will perform the duet at the Academy Awards ceremony on February 24. If Gaga’s Academy Awards performance is anything like the one she delivered at the Grammys, this legend will be unforgotten in music history.
In addition to “Shallow” winning the Golden Globe for Best Original Song for a Motion Picture, A Star is Born also did well at the Satellite awards where it had a whopping 11 nominations, of which it won three: Best Motion Picture in the Musical category, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Song. Here too, “Shallow” emerged triumphant.
Variety named A Star is Born the Best Film of the Year, and the American Film Institute listed it among the Year’s 10 Best Films. To date, the film has earned 200 award nominations and has already won 54 of them. With its impressive list of 2019 Academy Award nominations it’s probably safe to assume that the film will win at least one Oscar.
This bittersweet musical drama stars Gaga and Bradley as Jack and Ally, a fading rock star who falls for a promising and talented young singer. The film represents the fourth version of a Hollywood classic that starred Judy Garland in 1937 and Barbara Streisand in 1976 in the role of Ally. An impressive directorial debut for Bradley Cooper, the 2018 remake was adapted from the original screenplay by Cooper, along with Eric Roth and Will Fetters, earning the film a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The film is graced by stellar performances by both Cooper and Gaga, and a strong supporting cast that includes Andrew Dice Clay, Dave Chappelle, and Sam Elliott. Both Cooper and Gaga are nominated in the Best Actor and Actress Category, and Elliott is nominated for Best Supporting Actor. While Gaga was snubbed for Best Actress at the Golden Globe Awards, she may still win the Oscar for her unforgettable performance. Cooper has been nominated for both Best Actor and Best Director, and the film may also take home the Best Picture award. But the surest bet of all is that “Shallow” will go home victorious once again.
Heather Parry’s Goal
A Star is Born is also a favorite among audiences, grossing over $413 million at the box office globally, thanks in large part to the exuberant out-of-the-box marketing strategies employed by Heather Parry, the film’s executive producer, and her film and TV production team at Live Nation.
A leader in the music and live concert industry, Live Nation owns over 100 music festivals and, with A Star is Born, has firmly established itself as a serious player in the film and television industry, after a series of successful documentaries on musical artists such as the recently released Five Foot Two about Lady Gaga.
For Heather Parry, A Star is Born represents the leap that Live Nation needed to take beyond its investments in the documentary genre and into the larger and more lucrative world of narrative fiction. The project also required a financial leap for Live Nation, as the firm’s costliest film project to date. But the company mobilized their unique resources to benefit the film by promoting it to music festival attendees in addition to movie audiences. This gave the film a great crossover appeal among both music and film lovers.
Parry emphasizes the importance of risk-taking as a type of modus operandi when pursuing and producing an artistic vision.
“At Live Nation, our motto is always artists first. So whether that is a talented filmmaker such as Bradley Cooper, or an artist like Lady Gaga, we want to get behind and support,” she notes.
Parry started her career at MTV then headed the film and TV department at Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions prior to her post at Live Nation. Having already established an excellent working relationship with Gaga while producing Five Foot Two, which Netflix picked up and ran with, Parry trusted Gaga implicitly from the start.
She also confirms that, just from knowing his prior work, she had enough faith in Bradley Cooper to back his directorial debut, knowing instinctively that he’d make a great director because of the passion he injects into his work. A satisfied Parry smiles and states matter-of-factly, “I was all in. I put my whole bet on that.”
And she did: Live Nation threw all its irons into the fire, and it paid off.