Two new interviews in Oggi & Gioia (Italian press - translated)

[BornSimon 4,740]

So these two new interviews were published today and I translated them both, there's nothing particularly new but I liked the Oggi one a lot, there's a lot of feeling in it. Translations in spoilers.

OGGI

Translation

Spoiler

Lady Gaga is still a mystery. I decided that those first few moment that she arrived to the Venice Film Festival to promote her new movie, the fourth remake of A Star Is Born. And she was right in the city of her grandparents and great-grandparents! 

And the movie works, so much so that a young member of the audience had to change his initial grimace to a satisfied smile: he was conviced Lady Gaga was just a commercial phenomenon, but he had to change his mind.

The movie, at least in its first hour, in a masterpiece that manages to capture the essence and the adrenaline that is felt backstage at a rock concert and the emotion on stage. Bradley Cooper's directorial debut is a pleasant surprise, the camera is always in the right spot. 

The two meet and fall in love through music. And Lady Gaga is a true discovery in this film. "Bradley brought me back to when I was a child and I dreamed of being an actress. He wanted me to act with my natural hair, which is not fair and is not dark, but it's my italian hair. I am proud of my roots because I have a family that has never judged me and has always helped me dream."

The movie, directed by italo-american Bradley Cooper (grandparents from Campania and Abruzzo) and starring italo-american Stefani Germanotta (grandparents from Sicily and Veneto) has achieved amazing reviews, especially in the music world.

But who is the real Lady Gaga? A few years ago, during her sensational rise to success, she was invited to a charity event by HFPA, Hollywood's foreign press. Her people informed us that she would attend and that she would donate money, but she would do no interviews, no red carpet and most of all, no pictures. I met her right before she walked up on stage to receive the 300 thousand dollar cheque for the Film Foundation. I introduced myself in Italian, "I am from Venice", I told her. And she immediately came up to me and gave me a warm hug, as if I was a long-lost cousin, and told me "My family is from Venice too", "I thought you were from Sicily", I told her. "Sicily and Venice. Big family!", she confirmed with a bright smile. "You are truly beautiful, can I take a picture of you?", I asked her, "Sure", she answered, posing in front of long brown drapes. Three shots and three different expressions. Who said "no pictures"?

In Venice, on the Ca' Giustinian terrace, we met again with great pleasure. She wanted to gift me a photograph of my Venice with Santa Maria Della Salute in the background, "a painting my father had painted various times", I had told her. So she posed and gave me her profile, just like Ally does when she meets Jackson (Bradley Cooper), the only man who understood her and told her her nose was beautiful. "Do you know how many times they told me I would never find success with this nose?", Ally says in the movie. But it's a line Lady Gaga herself has heard multiple times. "This movie is a dream come true for me", she tells me.

I ask her to sign me something for Alex, a photographer friend of mine who is very ill. We are surrounded by people: press, bodyguards, Warner Bros. She stops and recollects herself for two, three seconds, which feel like an eternity when you are surrounded by people who are trying to rush you around. "Alex?", she asks me. "Yes, Alex. Chemio is very strong, but he fights like a lion". She writes on the white sheet I gave her and then bends over and kisses it to leave her red lipstick next to what she has written for him: "Alex, te amo", in Venetian. When she looks up again, her eyes are filled with tears, as if she had mysteriously felt Alex's pain.

Lady Gaga in an extraordinary woman who sometimes seems to make the world's struggles her own. She suffers from fibromyalgia, a disease that attacks the nervous system, but she always makes time to give herself to the less fortunate, to her little monsters, which is the name she gave her fans, a name she has tattooed on her left arm.

"This movie was born out of my total trust in Bradley", the actress told me at the Toronto Film Festival, "and he trusted me when I noticed that behind the actor was a rock singer waiting to explode. It's a movie born out of true magical moments of friendship."

"Is it true that, at the start of your career, they asked you to get your nose done?", I ask her. "Very true, right from my very first music video and even before my first single was released. But I like my italian nose. I am proud of my roots. I have always done the opposite of what I was told. This has helped me stay true to myself."

"Next project?", I ask, finally. "A Las Vegas residency. I am getting ready what I feel will be my first true spectacle where everything will be made the way I have always dreamed. I appreciate those who say that I've made it, but I feel that I am still at the very start when it comes to showing who I really am".

GIOIA

Translation

Spoiler

Stefani Germanotta's lethal weapon is her somewhat languid and disarmed gaze. A sort of trance that stretches her features when the music gets into her, depriving her of every disguise. So anyone who finds themselves in front of her can only totally surrender. 

Bradley Cooper, producer, co-screenplay writer, director and actor in A Star Is Born, has learned this at his own cost. The first time he laid eyes on Lady Gaga - he remembered at the Toronto Film Festival while promoting the fourth remake of A Star Is Born - was at a charity event in Los Angelese. "Stefani was singing La Vie En Rose live. When she finished the whole room fell silent. It was crazy. That was the moment I realised that song had to be in the movie." And it is indeed there, in the exact moment that the eyes of the two actors cross for the first time, and it is inevitably love at first sight. For Bradley Cooper, who is Jackson Maine, a country musician with a drinking problem and a traumatic past. And, we bet, for the huge audiences that will fill the cinemas to watch the movie (out in Italy on Oct 11). Everybody is KO, totally smitten with this new make-up-free version of Lady Gaga, from the moment she gives Cooper that lethal look, laying across the stage at a drag queen bar, with bad make-up and fake eyebrows, whispering in a not-so-great French the last verse of La Vie En Rose.

An inevitable coup de foudre, that's how you can describe the artistic meeting between the actor and the pop star, both ultra-sensitive, perfectionists, same italian roots in their veins. That's how they describe it. Huge chemistry and a lot of generosity. He gifted her the centre of the stage, she gifted him her energy, her magnetism, giving up provocations and disguises. But also turning into a talent coach for Bradley and his singing. Like he did with her acting. Giving her the pole position for the Oscars.

Q "You said that seeing Cooper at work has changed you"

A "I feel more secure in my artistic choices now. It's been very helpful to see Bradley stay so true to his vision, involving the cast and crew with his enthusiasm, believing in us and in the movie so much so that he turned himself into a musician: the voice he pulled out surprised me and conquered me. In the end he confessed to me he has been writing songs since he was a child. His intensity and his extreme attention to direction have really got to me."

Q "Is he a strict director"

A "Not at all: I knew full well that in this narrative I was just one character, a vehicle in the movie, I was very passionate about delivering his vision. He gave back showing a deep sensibility. One day I had to leave the set to go and see a dear friend of mine who was sick with cancer, who sadly died. I was there for a long time, with her desperate husband. When I got back on set I was devastated, victim of a feeling of loneliness, scared of losing more loved ones. That day I had to film an important scene in which I sang: he observed me until the end, and then, with all the sweetness that he is capable of, told me that there was no need to do it again, that it was perfect. Bradley is truly able to get into your soul, I think you will realise this once you watch the movie."

Q "At the centre of the movie there's the important theme of addiction to drugs and alcohol, the theme of insecurity the the depression that more often than not artists go through"

A "It is a true disease, the movie explains it very clearly. People who suffer from addictions of any kind or mental illnesses need to be helped with every possible mean. My character, at the beginning, is a victim of a sort of shyness that pulls her back, that doesn't let her believe in her own talent. That's why I think it's so important to support new artists, because they are usually very very insecure. I have lived the same anxieties, the feeling of not being good enough. I know what it feels like. I made it to the other side thanks to the music, but it's not always so easy."

Q "You were also a victim of bullying as a teenager, from those who did not understand your eccentric talents. Is that why you founded the Born This Way Foundation?"

A "Yes, to promote self-esteem and potential in the youth and, naturally, to fight bullying. When I was a teenager I went to a very strict, catholic school, and I often felt isolated and different"

Q "You are also an LGBT activist"

A "Of course, I was always very close to my drag queens, I know I have a lof of fans within the community, and it's also thanks to them if I am where I am now. I like to think that behind every female icon is a gay man"

Q "Are you ever scared of the critics?"

A "They are part of the game. I have learnt that there will always be someone who doesn't like what you do. As an artist, my biggest desire is to create something that will make people happy. That's why I expose myself totally and feel everything on such a personal level"

Q "How would you define your relationship with music?"

A "Music is able to change you because it influences both your body and your mind at the same time. An enormous power that only needs to be used to do good"

Q "In the documentary Five Foot Two you openly talked about the disease you have to deal with: fibromyalgia"

A "It's always been very important to me to be authentic first and foremost. That's why I let the director film me at my hardest times, like those times I was bent over in pain without knowing what to do. A chronic pain that is with you day after day changed you, but it also helps you, because when I am suffering making music becomes liberating for me, it relieves my pain. But I understood that this type of problem shouldn't be hidden, it's not a weakness, it's awareness."

Q "You showed your true self in ASIB as well, acting with no make-up on"

A "(Laughs) It wasn't easy because I love my make-up and my outfits so much that I create some myself. But I put myself in Bradley's hands... blah blah blah the make-up story about Bradley bringing wet wipes with him etc.

Q "Are you generous in love?"

A "I am convinced that us women love almost always inconditionally giving our all. And we aren't always repaid with the same love. It's very clear what I want in love now though: a man who is beside me and loves me totally, healhily and honestly."

BONUS: She is also in today's Daily Mirror (UK)

[Panchecco 17,159]

Queen of cheap italian gossip magazines! 

[VTV 10,803]

Time is next. 

Boomkackmark me 

[Levine 18,424]

I loved the Oggi interview! 

[Bradley 55,028]

In the end he (Bradley) confessed to me he has been writing songs since he was a child.

Good God Bradley you truly have been mixing with Gaga for a long time

(Laughs) It wasn't easy because I love my make-up and my outfits so much that I create some myself. But I put myself in Bradley's hands... blah blah blah the make-up story about Bradley bringing wet wipes with him etc.

This translation

[thatfoxyfeeling 12,011]

I can't cope with all this promo.

[BornSimon 4,740]

37 minutes ago, Levine said:

I loved the Oggi interview! 

I'm glad! I really enjoyed that one as well, so warm.

31 minutes ago, Bradley said:

(Laughs) It wasn't easy because I love my make-up and my outfits so much that I create some myself. But I put myself in Bradley's hands... blah blah blah the make-up story about Bradley bringing wet wipes with him etc.

This translation

LMAO Sorry I couldn't bother to type what she has been saying in every single interview 

[Bradley 55,028]

50 minutes ago, BornSimon said:

I'm glad! I really enjoyed that one as well, so warm.

LMAO Sorry I couldn't bother to type what she has been saying in every single interview 

It's fine, I was joking.

Thank you for the translation btw!