A Star Is Born and our ongoing fascination with 'the star-maker machinery'

This is not your grandfather's A Star Is Born

One of the most magical moments in director Bradley Cooper's showbiz melodrama A Star Is Born comes over the opening titles, as a bedraggled New York waitress named Ally (played by pop sensation Lady Gaga) walks past her restaurant's dumpster and through a little tunnel, all the while singing a song that echoes off the walls. She's silhouetted against one of the city's busy thoroughfares, yet as she belts out a ballad, she's totally alone, completely unseen and unheard. And she is, to put it mildly, amazing.

Given the movie's title, it's not a spoiler to say that A Star Is Born ends with Ally singing to thousands of adoring fans — albeit still isolated, in a spotlight on a stage. Cooper and his co-screenwriters Eric Roth and Will Fetters spend the intervening two hours asking how much Ally has had to compromise, between the backstreets and the big time.

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Noel Murray

Noel Murray is a freelance writer, living in Arkansas with his wife and two kids. He was one of the co-founders of the late, lamented movie/culture website The Dissolve, and his articles about film, TV, music, and comics currently appear regularly in The A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, Vulture, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times.