a sleuth is born

Where Does Lady Gaga’s Character Live in A Star Is Born? Here’s the Answer

When film critic Alison Willmore posed that simple question, Twitter delivered a million responses. Here’s what Warner Bros. says.
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Courtesy of TIFF

Where does Lady Gaga’s A Star Is Born character, Ally, live in the film? It seems like a simple enough question on paper—but when film critic Alison Willmore posed it to her Twitter followers on Monday, Little Monsters everywhere realized the answer was more complicated than it appeared.

“Okay: Where do Ally and her dad live in A STAR IS BORN? Please cite evidence,” Willmore wrote. Responses poured in, with a large cohort saying that they assumed her character lived in New York. Others were stuck on Los Angeles, naming different neighborhoods they thought Ally might call home. Why the confusion? Well, A Star Is Born leaves things fairly ambiguous. In real life, Gaga is an Italian girl from New York, and she projects those vibes in A Star Is Born. Ally’s father is a limo driver named Lorenzo, played by Brooklyn native Andrew Dice Clay, who speaks in a thick New York drawl and constantly crows about Frank Sinatra. Lorenzo’s omnipresent driver pals, who always seem to be hanging out at Ally and her dad’s, boast the same Noo Yawk energy.

However! Bradley Cooper’s country rock star, Jackson Maine, first meets Ally at a bar he stops into while driving back from a West Coast music festival, then drives her home—indicating that she actually calls Los Angeles (or some California locale) home. But! If Ally lives in Los Angeles, why does Jackson then put her on a private jet so that she can come see him play at what appears to be the Greek Theatre, which is also in L.A.? Or is the Greek supposed to be doubling as an imaginary venue that only exists in the movie’s universe?

Questions, questions—and the movie never explicitly answers them. There are a few helpful hints here and there; for example, the supermarket where Ally and Jackson sit and sing in the beginning of the movie is an easily identifiable L.A. spot. It’s also known that Cooper shot concert scenes at festivals like Coachella and Stagecoach, implying that those scenes also take place in those locations in the film itself. And, per the Writers Guild Foundation, which responded to Willmore’s tweet, the original draft of Cooper’s screenplay, co-written by Eric Roth and Will Fetters, says that Ally’s dad lives “somewhere deep in the San Fernando Valley.”

To clear things up, Vanity Fair reached out to a Warner Bros. rep—who was delighted by the thread inspired by Willmore’s post. Per the studio itself, Ally and her father absolutely live in Los Angeles. Specifically, they live on Kensington Road in the Angelino Heights/Echo Park area. The house was selected by production designer Karen Murphy, who isn’t from Los Angeles and spent time driving around the city in order to find an area with the right feel. According to the film’s production notes, here’s how she settled on the house that ultimately made the cut:

She discovered a house on Kensington Road in the Angelino Heights/Echo Park area, which became the house where Ally lives with her father, a limousine driver who operates his business from home. “It needed to feel like a family lived there but not be a mansion, and I liked the homes in that area. It’s high, it overlooks downtown Los Angeles, which gives it an interesting outlook from the street, and we were going to utilize the outside as well so we’d see a view.”

As for Jackson’s woodsy home, which seems very anti-L.A.? Murphy said she wanted to avoid the typical celebrity mansion nestled in an enviable neighborhood. “He had roots in Arizona, he’s a very earthy guy, his music is earthy . . . I just wanted to find somewhere that felt like him without thinking about scale or a fancy address, but somewhere isolated where he would write and make beautiful music. I think he’s essentially lived on his own for a long time and he would need a warm, centering place, this guy whose life is somewhat amiss.”

Now, as for a detailed timeline of the movie—such as how long Ally and Jack are on the road together, how long Ally works on her album, and how long it takes for her pop career to calcify—that’s anyone’s guess.