Some of you have been begging for Beige Booty Shorts to make a grand return. Don’t let me down. As we’ve discussed, Bradley Cooper secured his third Oscar nomination for American Sniper, a film for which he rocked a fake baby and chugged 8,000 calories per day. I’m oversimplifying. He also played Chris Kyle as a guy who spent too much time talking to his wife on a satellite phone during battle scenes. I get that the script needed to stress the communication of a military family, but the excessive phone calls were a stretch.

Bradley won’t win the Oscar (or will he?), but he’s already won by ruling the box office with a $324 million film (so far). Bradley spoke with NPR’s Fresh Air. The whole thing is enormous (full transcript here), and he works it so hard. This is a really powerful interview — even though Bradley’s playing dumb about what he expected from audiences. Some key passages:

On the cultural lightning rod: “I don’t think one could ever foresee something like that happening. I feel a bit removed from it just because I’m in NYC doing this play, and my life hasn’t changed on a daily basis, you know? People aren’t coming up on the street or anything like that, either praising or yelling at me. But war is such an emotional subject, so maybe I was a fool to think that it wouldn’t.”

The film as a Western: “It was always to get Chris Kyle right and tell a human story, and I just liked the idea of a character study based on this conflict. That’s what I’ve enjoyed about it initially, and I love the idea of framing it as a Western. And that this guy happened to be incredibly charismatic. You have a guy going into a town, and there’s his equivalent on the other side – another sharpshooter. He’s a sharpshooter. You end it in, you know, tumbleweeds. At the dust storm, there’s showdown. This sort of, you know, one man and his sort of pursuit – that idea.”

When veterans come home? “Chris talked about … being over there and the choices and why, and he talked about how that’s not his job. He made a commitment and an oath to his country, and if you have an issue with it, the people that you really need to talk to are those who make the decisions of where to send the troops. And he would wish that that attention was diverted to them, and instead, maybe look at what the sacrifice is. That’s how we looked at this movie … as, hopefully, igniting a conversation about the lack of care and attention that goes towards vets. 22 vets commit suicide each day – that the amount of people that come home is so much greater than before because of medical advancement and that we need to take care of them.”

Getting into Chris’ head: “I lived with him. I basically made this document where I had every single thing he’s ever said recorded and I would just listen to it. It’d be the first thing I woke up with in the morning. I’d just put on the ear buds right away and last thing I listened to at night. And just really sort of soak him in. And so, God, I’m just – something about him – it was just beautiful.”

The 40-pound weight gain: “Without the aesthetic, I wouldn’t be able to see the inner. I had to adopt that or rather take on that sort of physical presence in order to understand what was going on inside. So that’s how I approached it, and that’s not really normal, but that’s what I did. And I also knew that if I didn’t feel what it was like to be him – if I didn’t believe that I was him in that way – that I don’t think I was ever going to get to the man himself. It wasn’t at all like a costume, it was like this sort of transformative experience to me because there was no going home from it. It was a gradual change that then became my daily life until the – until I started to shed him after we stopped shooting. I just woke up one day, and I could just feel it – that he wasn’t there. That sounds so crazy.”

[From NPR]

All of what Bradley says about veterans and aftercare is dead on. He’s done his research there. The problem I have with Sniper is how so much of it was fictionalized. They based it on Chris Kyle’s book of tall tales, and then it was further modified as a “Western.” The standoff between Kyle and the enemy sniper, Mustafa, never really happened. The two characters’ rivalry was a framing device, and it was a driving force in the film. That’s just one example of how Chris Kyle’s history was rewritten.

Do you believe Bradley was super surprised at how Sniper drew controversy? Character study or not, this is a movie about a controversial figure who draws strong opinions from both sides of the political spectrum. Of course people would get worked up. BCoop also revealed to USA Today how he’s also surprised the film is a box-office smash. He’s playing humble. This is more of the “I’m not handsome” game.

Something fun: Coop’s stylist spoke with InStyle to reveal how she’s feverishly planning his Oscar look. The plan is for Coop “to go old-fashioned, like Cary Grant.” LOL.

Photos courtesy of Pacific Coast News & Fame/Flynet