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| Tony Kushner dishes about working with Spielberg and Sondheim on 'West Side Story' (spoilers!) | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 03:53 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 03:47 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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| One of the things I love most about Steven Spielberg's reimagined ''West Side Story'' is Tony Kushner's remarkable screenplay. He gave it so much historical context and added depth to all of its principal players. Its actors have said that Kushner gave each of them pages and pages of backstory. In this new interview with GoldDerby.com, Kushner reveals the research, care and consideration that went into various changes and choices. He also said Sondheim would criticize his lyrics, and Kushner would tell him he was wrong. And though Sondheim was amenable and appreciative of Kushner's revisions, there was one alteration that Sondheim wouldn't budge on. All in all, it sounds like they had an incredible collaboration. |
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| Link | GoldDerby.com: Tony Kushner Explains the Biggest Change He Made to 'West Side Story' |
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| I Love the New WEST SIDE STORY but My Latino Family and Friends Hate it! | |
| Last Edit: BroadwayTonyJ 01:57 pm EST 01/14/22 | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 01:55 pm EST 01/14/22 | |
| In reply to: Tony Kushner dishes about working with Spielberg and Sondheim on 'West Side Story' (spoilers!) - WaymanWong 03:47 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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| I've seen it twice so far and I want to see it one more time before it disappears from movie theaters. It's beautifully shot, acted, and sung. Janusz Kaminski's cinematography is extraordinary -- it's nice that at least one Polack is connected to the film, since Tony is Polish-American. I love the film because overall it is so beautiful to look at, and it is entertaining. However, it is totally lacking in authenticity and that is what is so upsetting to the Latino members of my family and one of my former boyfriends, who is 100% Puerto Rican. I just spoke to him. He told me incontrovertibly that a Puerto Rican guy would never use a term like "gringo" to refer to a white person. What was Kushner thinking? How could he make a mistake like that? Why didn't Moreno correct him? Members of my family lived in tenement buildings like those in the film during the mid-50's, my Aunt Millie on Chicago's west side and my Grandma Luzar on the south side. Their apartments were nowhere near as nice as that of Maria and Nardo's. They didn't have parquet bathroom floors or a nice kitchen or pretty furnishings. Ours were very shabby. We weren't poor, just lower middle class. My uncle and grandpa were respected tradesmen with decent jobs, but poorly educated and third generation immigrants from Poland and Czechoslovakia. My female cousins did not have wardrobes like Maria and Anita. My aunt and grandma did hang laundry out the window, but only during the daytime. The would never have laundry hanging outside in the evening after a rain that would leave puddles on the sidewalks like the one that Tony walks through in the film. My male cousins and one of my younger uncles actually belonged to white gangs, a Czech one on the west side and a Slovak one on the south. They hated blacks, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans who were beginning to move into their neighborhood. My male cousins and uncle may have been charismatic leaders, but they weren't any where near as articulate and witty as Riff or Tony. In fact, they were pretty stupid. At one point in the film Kushner has Riff quote a line from Meredith Willson. Really? Are we supposed to believe that Riff took Graziella to see The Music Man a couple of days before the rumble? A lot of Kushner's dialogue is absolutely risible, which would draw laughter from anyone who grew up in the 50's inner cities. The gang members in my family did not wear tight designer jeans or smart looking shirts with collars. They dressed like bums with hand-me-down, ill-fitting, baggy pants, I think they might have been called dungarees, something like the Dead End Kids wore in the 30's. I noticed these details, but just shook them off because I love the music and story of West Side Story. I didn't really expect a couple of elitist, high profile white Jewish film makers like Spielberg and Kushner (who I do respect when they make films about things they are familiar with) to get stuff like this right. Of course, they could have done a better job of researching that period. Anyway, I still like the good things in the film, will see it again next week, and will buy the blu-ray. Unfortunately the Latino members of my family and friends are less forgiving because that is their history and legacy up there on the big screen for all posterity and not really mine. |
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| re: I Love the New WEST SIDE STORY but My Latino Family and Friends Hate it! | |
| Posted by: Guillaume 08:56 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
| In reply to: I Love the New WEST SIDE STORY but My Latino Family and Friends Hate it! - BroadwayTonyJ 01:55 pm EST 01/14/22 | |
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| Wonderful insights, BroadwayTonyJ. Thanks for sharing that! | |
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| re: I Love the New WEST SIDE STORY but My Latino Family and Friends Hate it! | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 01:24 am EST 01/16/22 | |
| In reply to: re: I Love the New WEST SIDE STORY but My Latino Family and Friends Hate it! - Guillaume 08:56 pm EST 01/15/22 | |
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| I hesitated for a long time to post these comments because (as I said in my post) I like the good things in this West Side Story very much -- and there are a lot of good things. I will be seeing it for a 3rd time at a local cinema on Tues., 1/18. However, I have been hearing a lot of contrary comments from the Latino members of my family and even from my former boyfriend, who not only is Puerto Rican, but he played a Shark in a high school production of West Side Story at Lane Tech High School in Chicago during the 1990's. I just wanted to make a balanced and honest statement about some of their feelings toward the film. |
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| re: Tony Kushner dishes about working with Spielberg and Sondheim on 'West Side Story' (spoilers!) | |
| Posted by: allineedisthegirl 02:01 pm EST 01/12/22 | |
| In reply to: Tony Kushner dishes about working with Spielberg and Sondheim on 'West Side Story' (spoilers!) - WaymanWong 03:47 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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| I got the impression that it was Spielberg who wouldn't budge. Throughout the interview, I assumed that "Steve" was Spielberg, and that when Kushner meant Sondheim, he said "Steven Sondheim." db |
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| re: Tony Kushner dishes about working with Spielberg and Sondheim on 'West Side Story' (spoilers!) | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 08:35 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 08:32 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
| In reply to: Tony Kushner dishes about working with Spielberg and Sondheim on 'West Side Story' (spoilers!) - WaymanWong 03:47 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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| The best discussion of the adaptation I've heard. I especially loved hearing that Kushner went back to R&J, to ascertain the period-specific limitations on the original Tony and Maria. The Juliet-Maria analysis is stunning, as we might expect. As is his breakdown of the steps of the romantic story proper, from physical infatuation to fully understood love. I had never really contemplate the stages, but must agree on the success of the new film: it has a small internal arc. He manages to be appropriately critical of the limitations yet never less than reverential toward the original's ironic cultural impact (as a boomer who saw the film as a child, I can attest). And I loved the report on the final sequence, how it was adjusted in production without consultation. And it's gratifying to know that Kushner's ego was momentarily bruised with Spielberg making substantial changes sans Kushner's opinion. Kushner acknowledges that it's a director's call in film, and in revealing his own artistic vulnerability in that moment, we learn something new about both men. Wonderful 30 minutes. | |
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| could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... | |
| Posted by: NoPeopleLike 08:25 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
| In reply to: Tony Kushner dishes about working with Spielberg and Sondheim on 'West Side Story' (spoilers!) - WaymanWong 03:47 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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| ...not thinking of themselves as actors (Josh Rivera in Hamilton, now playing Chino) | |
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| re: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 12:03 am EST 01/12/22 | |
| In reply to: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... - NoPeopleLike 08:25 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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| I have been amazed, when I ask my college students if they're studying acting, how many of them say, "No, musical theater", and I go, "that's also acting". Wherever that stigma comes from, it's bred into them early. | |
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| re: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... | |
| Posted by: KingSpeed 02:51 am EST 01/12/22 | |
| In reply to: re: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... - Singapore/Fling 12:03 am EST 01/12/22 | |
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| Are there two different programs at the school though? They may still be studying acting. It’s just the exact name of the major. I don’t know. I majored in musical theater and we took acting classes. | |
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| re: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 08:42 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 08:41 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
| In reply to: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... - NoPeopleLike 08:25 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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| What I heard: Kushner voiced an expanded -- rather than reductive -- appreciation of Rivera, whose experience in Hamilton struck him as less of an opportunity to demonstrate acting chops sans singing. Chino's scenes in this film are an entirely different use of Rivera's skill set. And arguably, Tony Kushner, who penned Caroline or Change and hugged its latest star on stage this past Sunday afternoon at the brilliant revival's closing performance, hardly thinks less of musical theater performers. | |
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| re: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... | |
| Last Edit: WaymanWong 09:11 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
| Posted by: WaymanWong 09:09 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
| In reply to: re: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... - Delvino 08:41 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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| Just to add to Delvino's thoughts: I didn't get the impression that Kushner was dissing musical-theater performers at all. He was praising Jose Andres Rivera and possibly alluding to Rivera's humility because Rivera ''didn't think of himself as an actor.'' Here's Kushner's quote: ''We got so lucky with casting. Josh shocked me after the first couple days of filming. I went up to him and said, 'Josh, you're an absolutely astonishing actor.' He was in the road company of ''Hamilton.'' His training is all musical theater. He didn't think of himself as an actor. But he is an absolutely brilliant actor with an immense heart. He'll go anywhere you ask him to go. ... What Josh does with Chino is phenomenal.'' |
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| re: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... | |
| Posted by: KingSpeed 02:49 am EST 01/12/22 | |
| In reply to: re: could have lived without the slight towards musical theater performers... - WaymanWong 09:09 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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| I don’t know. Sounds like he’s saying musical theater training doesn’t include acting training which, of course, it does. And he probably acts up a storm in Hamilton. | |
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| Thank you for sharing, loved this nm | |
| Posted by: wizrdofoz27 06:12 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
| In reply to: Tony Kushner dishes about working with Spielberg and Sondheim on 'West Side Story' (spoilers!) - WaymanWong 03:47 pm EST 01/11/22 | |
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