Bradley Cooper wrote 'A Star is Born' with this Delawarean

If you openly weep during Bradley Cooper's remake of "A Star Is Born," you won't be alone.

The Delawarean who co-wrote the script with him did just that when he first saw the film at a test screening a year ago.

Screenwriter Will Fetters, a Brandywine Hundred native, first started writing the remake of the 1937 film of the same name nearly a decade ago as one of his first jobs in Hollywood.

Throughout the years it came close to getting made.

One time it was with Clint Eastwood directing. Another time was when Beyoncé was attached, set to play the role that Lady Gaga is now getting rave reviews for.

But for Fetters, it wasn't just the long journey that made him cry during Gaga's heart-tugging scene that features the song "Shallow."

It was seeing his words come alive and be better on screen than they even were on the page thanks to a musical backdrop of original songs that make up the already-bestselling soundtrack, which will officially be released Friday along with the film. 

"It's really been a roller coaster," says Fetters, 37, whose wife Amanda had their third child two months ago, a son named Everett. They also have 18-month-old daughter Collins and 5-year-old son Whitman.

In the summer of 2015, Fetters left his family at their Studio City home in California for more than a month to work on the script with Cooper in London. Cooper was in England performing the lead in "The Elephant Man" at the time.

A year later, in the summer of 2016, he hopped on a plane again and went to France to meet Cooper and finish their work when Lady Gaga signed on.

Both trips were emotionally charged. He and his wife had a hard time getting pregnant with their first two children and were dealing with that when he first went to London. While he was in Paris the next year, they found out they were going to have their daughter Collins.

"It was incredibly emotional," he says of the moment when he broke down at the test screening. "I left my family for this film and worked on it so hard for so long. It really caught me very much by surprise at how hard it all hit me. It was startling."

"A Star Is Born" opens in select theaters Thursday, including Delaware's Cinemark Christiana and XD, Regal Brandywine Town Center 16, Penn Cinema Riverfront IMAX, Newark's Main Street Movies 5, Middletown's Westown Movies, Regal Peoples Plaza Stadium 17, Cinemark Movies 10 near Newport and AMC CLASSIC Dover 14. It opens in all theaters nationwide Friday.

The film is Fetters' fourth Hollywood feature film, and he has had quite a run when it comes to hunky leading men.

After having Robert Pattinson ("Remember Me"), Zac Efron ("The Lucky One") and James Marsden ("The Best of Me") star in his first three films, this new movie just happens to star Cooper, a former People magazine "Sexiest Man Alive." (Cooper also makes his directorial debut on "A Star Is Born.")

But this is the only one of Fetters' flicks that has garnered major Oscar buzz.

The film's expected success should be a moment of redemption for Fetters, coming eight years after "Remember Me" was savaged by critics. They pounced on the film's twist ending that had Pattinson's character dying in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

In 2014, Fetters was reflective while talking to The News Journal about his bumpy Hollywood debut.

He said his intentions were pure while writing that film and processing the emotion of the terrorist attack, which happened when he was 20. Fetters said it was a personal script that he wrote years before it was picked up and turned into a Hollywood feature — the first film for Pattinson after the first two "Twilight" movies.

Pattinson's teenage fans were also turned off by the dark surprise ending. 

"I learned not to take critical reaction personally, but you shouldn't turn it off. You do learn from it," Fetters said at the time. "Critics aren't internet trolls. They are thoughtful people who put a lot of time into it and give their honest reactions."

It's a good thing Fetters didn't dismiss critics back then, because these days he doesn't mind the glowing reviews that have begun pouring in.

"A Star is Born" has a "certified fresh" 96 percent rating on the Rotten Tomatoes movie review aggregation website, powered by a steady stream of praise from some of those same critics.

"The Oscar race has now officially begun," pronounced Rolling Stone's Peter Travers.

"Simultaneously an immersive concert film, enchanting romance and tear-jerking rock fantasy, 'A Star Is Born' is a dynamic multi-faceted showcase for Gaga and Cooper, who makes his directing debut a thing of melodic, masterful beauty," USA Today film critic Brian Truitt gushed in his four-star review.

"With equal parts glitz and grit, Cooper has successfully navigated the most perilous shoals of making a classic narrative his own, managing to create one of its best iterations to date," Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday raved.

And Variety's Owen Glieberman didn't waste any time getting right to the point in the first line of his review: "'A Star Is Born' is that thing we always yearn for but so rarely get to see: a transcendent Hollywood movie." 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fetters is also taking all the accolades in stride, partially due to the fact that he and his wife are pretty busy caring for their three young children.

Ask about whether he's daydreaming about winning an Academy Award and rubbing elbows with A-Listers at the Oscars — nominations are announced Jan. 22; the show is Feb. 24 — and he shoots down any such notion.

"Maybe it's because I'm old, but I'm thinking more about the logistics of how we would get there and who would watch the kids," he says with a chuckle. "Plus, I don't usually go to parties like that. I'm usually just here at my house in gym clothes wearing a [Philadelphia] Sixers hat."

Whether it's through sports or family, his local roots are still strong, especially since his parents Judy and Bill still live in Brandywine Hundred.

In fact, the makings of his Hollywood career could be traced back to the old Stone Balloon Tavern and Concert Hall in Newark.

"Remember Me" might never have happened if it were not for a 2003 bar brawl at that landmark college club.

Fetters spent a night in jail at the Newark Police Department after jumping in to break up a fight and learning that you "don't mouth off to a cop."

His plan had been to become a lawyer and this sudden black mark on the pristine record needed to get into law schools upended all of that.

"It was just enough to freak me out and scare me into writing ['Remember Me']," Fetters says, remembering crying at Iron Hill Brewery the next day, explaining what happened to his mother.

He thought his life was over, but it was really just beginning. And soon, he was putting pen to paper.

These days, he still thinks about that twist of fate at least once a week.

"I think about it all the time — when I look at my kids or just now when I drove by a billboard for this movie," he says. "That was an amazing moment. If I can get that moment into my bones, I don't think I would ever be that worried.

"It was a really traumatic, upsetting thing that happened and it was the best thing that's ever happened to me. I would not be here without it. It's the mystery of life."

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).

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IF YOU GO

WHAT: "A Star Is Born," co-written by Brandywine Hundred native Will Fetters

WHEN: Advance screenings continue in some theaters Thursday, Oct. 4. The film opens wide on Friday, Oct. 5.

WHERE: Delaware theaters with advance screenings include Cinemark Christiana and XD in Christiana, Regal Brandywine Town Center 16 in Brandywine Hundred, Penn Cinema Riverfront IMAX in Wilmington, Main Street Movies 5 in Newark, Westown Movies in Middletown, Regal Peoples Plaza Stadium 17 in Glasgow, Cinemark Movies 10 near Newport and AMC CLASSIC Dover 14 in Dover.

INFORMATION: astarisbornmovie.com