Steven Spielberg and the Cast of 'West Side Story' on Reenvisioning the Classic Musical

i never seen you before you're not puerto rican is that okay this movie is a movie that redefines all movies it's incredible and you're all incredible so congratulations and i'm going to start with you the queen rita first of all yeah okay all right what can i do for you shut up what you have been doing for us for the past 60 years i wondered if somebody had told you 60 years ago that you would be sitting with this cast in this moment and i know you have said i originally wanted to ask you what it was like to win an academy award but i heard you say it's really about the work so i want to know working on this how profound was it for you because valentina has such a pivotal role in this movie how profound and deep was it how deeply did it can i explain briefly who she is so that the audience knows what i'm talking about valentina is the widow of doc the man who used to run the candy store where the jets hung out now the question as to what huh i'm old how about what wasn't experienced how profound was this for you like how deeply did it resonate the actual work i heard that you made the cast cry in a table read when you sang a certain song in the film and yes everybody's nodding that that's true but then there's shots behind the scenes of you dancing with the jets and the sharks so just you can talk about that experience it's been it's been the rarest and most sublime experience of of my life and that it would come at 90 because i will be 90 in a few days from here from now uh it's it's sublime it's thrilling it's weird it's uh there's something insanely strange and rare about doing a scene with anita when she almost gets assaulted in the candy store scene because i remember that very clearly that i remember bursting into tears when i shot it because it opened up so many wounds that i never even knew had not healed so i i have been through the gamut of every kind of emotion you can imagine and then to be in it again and to have a role written by tony kushner who i think is only brilliant and has made this in the best possible way more clear uh more socially minded film than it was before uh is extraordinary i could go on but i know you would love to talk to other people i would love to talk to you for hours though as well um i'm gonna be arranged but not today okay okay because i have so many questions rachel you're maria i think for anybody who's been on youtube and has seen you know some of the original productions either in school or local would say you were born to play this role and i wrote down the words in the screening magic because you are pure magic on screen just astonishing but i'm wondering for you because you did play this role before how much working on the film version did maria evolve for you and who is maria to you now yeah i mean maria was so wildly different from what i think anyone has probably seen her as before you know you go back to the source material she's juliette capulet she's virginal and naive and doesn't really have much agency um and as she evolved in the 57 original play the 61 film she kind of remained that engineer part that didn't have as much depth and i know that it was very important to tony kushner to incorporate the historical context of what was really going on for her at the time and i got pages and pages of backstory from him about her mother and her father and how long she's been in the country and who who actually wanted her to come to the states and that was actually anita who convinced bernardo to bring her to new york and i just remember having this conversation with stephen on the first day of rehearsals and and saying i just want to do a good job and he said are you scared and i said of course i'm scared and he said use that and um and i did and i think it made a world of difference she's not sure of herself but she is very strong-minded and she's not afraid to stand up to bernardo she's not afraid to stand up to tony she's not afraid to stand up to anita and i think it's a really cool thing for young women to see in a latina role that has constantly be seen we've constantly been seen as just a very silent virginal engineer did you i heard that you manifested getting this role what do you specifically do to manifest asking for a friend i'm pretty sure the public just thinks i tweet and then it just comes true um that's that's really what it is no i i i visualize and i put good out and i i truly believe in the universe and putting good out getting good back in and just sharing the love and i a little bird told me that when you were just finishing shrek the musical when you got the role can you just tell me about that moment where you said can i finish the musical yeah i actually just been cast in shrek when i got cast in west side story and it was my senior year musical and that place that school cultivated my love of what i get to do for a living now and so one of the first words out of my mouth when steven told me i got the part was is it okay if i finish my senior musical and he moved the schedule around for me it was very sweet [Laughter] it was the most uh the high most highly anticipated high school musical i think uh in new jersey so i saw it yeah ansel saw it ansel came to see i mean before she comes on stage it's like a high school musical and then she comes on stage and the energy in the theater is like boom it's just so big and it's past the back row and it was like seeing lebron james like the highlights of him playing high school basketball where it was like totally unfair and it's like he's gonna go that's what it was like watching rachel do sharks wow very sweet that's my best review that i've ever gotten you will forever be compared to lebron james that's the best analogy i've ever heard a million years that i think i'd get compared to an athlete but here we are height difference slight height difference i'll go to you i think one of the most important things in watching this film is you really have to believe the love story between the two of them because this is truly what it's about it's it everything around hinges on that belief and when i watched the two of you together in that gymnasium scene i had this moment if it reminded me of the first time and hopefully everybody's had this moment in their life when you see somebody and you instantly know your life has changed forever and i'm wondering how you two created that together like did you how did you how did you work on that on creating that moment well i mean we we had a lot of time i know that this isn't a love at first sight kind of thing but we had a lot of time together you know mutual respect admiration and like you know time to bond throughout making you know rehearsal yeah but also you know there's you have to also give credit to yanush and steven and also the writing of it all because the and the dancers in between you and the costumes and everything tells that story and makes you really feel that love the first time that's the romance the romance is everything happening around us truly that's what makes it dramatic and dangerous but i felt like there was something i guess this is just from me from tony like in terms of character when there's something about maria that just feels like good and in this world where like there's so much like roughness and like kind of bad characters and like a dark history for tony like he sees this girl and she's so clearly just like there's just goodness and maybe it is also just the white dress and then when they do like go under the bleachers like she yeah this this is clearly like this is what's going to turn everything around this is what's going to lead to that path of goodness because that's where tony wants to go now did i hear that the fire escape scene you improvised you weren't supposed to sorry interruptions you were supposed to climb up but then you climbed up anyway no yeah no it it was just that when we you know they're always trying to be really safe and stuff so when we were in washington heights and there it was like the outside fire escape yeah it was like don't start climbing it but i couldn't help myself and i loved climbing so i just started climbing the fire escape and then they ended up using it and that was my real reaction of being like no no no no and if that take is hilarious and he just pulls himself up it's kind of hysterical because it's a bit of an unguarded moment because so much of the musical is so like the scenes are so choreographed and it felt a little bit raw and a little bit spontaneous so i was happy to find out that that was a spontaneous moment um ariana oh my goodness your performance is extraordinary and the america scene is something by first of all the way it was shot but you're dancing in it and that's one thing that this film really got so right is the athleticism of all of you and the dancing what was most important to you about bringing to life this role of anita you know with this fabulous woman sitting next to you and i know you two had a lunch maybe at the beginning of filming and what did you talk about and then you had this amazing scene together you know this amazing scene together that was again such a seminal moment in the movie if you could talk about all of it basically i was like let me prioritize those answers um you know i don't really i think when when i really think about you know what now lives on the screen i would say i'm most proud that she is a very different anita like our anitas are not the same like they have the same characteristics they both are women who know their mind they have agency they speak their mind they have you know goals dreams ambition all of that but we are inherently different than he does and i'm really proud of that i would say that i truly enjoyed the dancing um because that's what i'm built to do it was built to be a triple threat um and to example threats yeah i suppose i don't what's the what is the fourth what's that personality my sparkling personality and my humor no but i i you know justin peck and his team did an incredible job not only paying homage to the original robert's choreography but to create his own language his own curriculum of of steps and moves it is a full language and you can see the the through line through the movement that he created for the jets and the movement that he created with the sharks um it's it's really something to behold and quite frankly a herculean task to to do um so i'm really proud of what specifically you see in america um because it's a beautiful beautiful portrayal of this community and the way that dance is used it's just another way that the audience gets to know exactly who we are as puerto ricans and i love that and you know if i'm if i may interrupt one second because it's so important justin peck for those who don't know the name is the name of our choreographer he's from the new york city ballet imagine imagine having to deal with the jerome robbins choreography and say okay how do i not top this necessarily but how do i equal this what do i do i i'm astonished at him i think he did a genius job of placing his own imprimatur on the choreography of this astonishing movie i wanted to ask both um ariana and rita what did you learn from each other on set and maybe in that lunch that you had um what did we learn from each other not a damn thing i have absolutely nothing to offer let's just be real about it it's okay but it's a it's a nice question but really to me it does it's not a question that can be answered i would say for for me uh you lead by example you just sort of are you are this force of nature that comes onto a set and the way that you work i learned a lot from watching how you work um also strong women in the entertainment industry can frequently be called difficult women for simply speaking their mind and i really enjoyed watching how rita navigates a set and how she communicates with a director or a dp when she asks for what she needs you know and i think those examples are what you know lead the way for change and getting women into positions of power because we're not difficult it's not difficult when you ask for what you need it simply is you know yeah i'm very grateful for for that example that's lovely well i can only tell you that she is a ariana is a a ferocious dancer in the best sense of the word you well you saw it so you know she's extraordinary and the truth is that she's way far more superior dancer than i was because when i auditioned for this role i hadn't danced in years and years and years number one number two i'd never done this kind of dance which is interestingly enough called jazz i was a spanish dancer i did incredible heel work and i did the arms and all that but i didn't know how to dance that kind of dance so uh you know seeing her just absolutely revivifying all of this is thrilling i love watching her [Music] you know i wake up to everything i know either getting sold or wrecked or being taken over by people that i don't like first of all you too opposite each other and you know i was asking about the sort of the love aspect of this film but you two are you know of course your leaders of rival gangs how did you two create those sort of moments because i think in the original they talked about how both sides were sort of kept apart on set how did you guys create that tension i think there's a love story here i don't know what you're talking about something we're not willing to accept so we go through all that fuss and trouble yeah a little offended quite frankly i don't know what animosity you are getting from this film but uh uh no i i i know for me it was i think pretty easy man it was easy and i don't like you yeah it's nice it's that easy and i think we what helped a lot was that we had this ensemble backing us up kind of like being there for us um and kind of guiding us through this journey of what we're supposed to do as the leaders of these gangs um i thought i don't know i remember when we shot the rumble scene um which was like a whole week of night shoots i just remember the intensity in that room every day but it wasn't it wasn't like i hated you or you hated me or the sharks hated the jets it was just intense and we all were feeling this um these emotions and we were all there in the moment present and i mean we were all doing we all knew that we were doing this thing together yeah and i think like especially for the rumble david and i had rehearsed this knife fight and like choreographed it for months now and we had been working on it and it was just like okay here's the moments of doing it and um you know i i think i told you this but it's like that moment i know i'm like spoiling it for someone that has never seen west side before but like there's a knife fight and i'm like something that bad things happen and but there's that moment you know when that thing happens and like we're looking at each other and uh i mean it's like a realization of wait i don't actually hate you i just yeah i'm scared i'm scared of losing my territory i'm scared of losing my family it's just it's almost realizing that it's not personal it's we're both afraid and this is how we deal with our fears yeah and there was like this commonality and this understanding between the two characters in that moment in that particular moment at least when i was like looking at you in that moment i was like oh that's when the love happens that's when the love happened yes but it really was like an acceptance and like oh i i see you for who you are wow it was interesting it was very interesting yeah i'll never forget that moment i never thought it would it was gonna end up being like that it was just something that happened in that moment and we kind of just rolled with it because you had your realization i had my realization and we were just both like well this is it this is what our mistakes have led us to well i had heard david for you like i know so many people auditioned there was like an open call they actually went after you you were like off the grid somewhere and you like came to like a facebook message and they sought you out for this role and then on top of that you needed to gain weight so you had milkshakes and fried chicken and i want to know how i have your life how does this happen like how i have no idea um i just i think it it's so hard to explain it just kind of happened just like it just kind of happened to you i don't think any of us really thought that we would be doing this right now and i think it just the opportunity presented itself and we just gave it what we had in our hearts and that was that happened to be what they were looking for yeah and i think i think it's as simple as that you know i don't think they were chasing me you know so it's not about that i think um i was just so excited to be able to like start working on this character and and start bringing this to life um so for me it was it just kind of unfolded itself naturally and i was trying to keep up with what was unfolding mike one last question before we get wrapped i know you guys you both talked about how the rehearsal process was the most beautiful experience of your lives i think and that intense like the steven spielberg of it all but the first day you filmed after all that when you actually they said action for the first time what was that moment like did it feel different than rehearsals it was an extension of it wasn't actually like different it was like uh okay now we're just gonna be here and you're gonna wear these things and we're just gonna do what we've been doing um which up to this point we've just we were just we were just doing the work we were just um getting to know ourselves and our tribes and spending time with each other and doing our work and so when it came to okay action it was just an extension of that you know and it didn't stop that process didn't stop i that's how i feel yeah absolutely i mean i feel like for me was a little bit different because i felt like i was definitely nervous until it was like all right action and then once the action it's like all the nerves out the window all the worries out the window i was there and i was president like that's why i like when it should be like the opposite i should be nervous when they when they say action but like for me i'm nervous in life and then yeah like i'm nervous in in normal life and then once they sell act you know say action it's like oh i can be now who i want to be so it's interesting [Music] [Applause] if you go with him no one will ever forgive you first of all it's my understanding that you described making this film as the apogee of joy something that you almost cannot put into words can you explain why and how that was that it was your best experience in ct it was my best experience since et because on et it was a small family and a family that just did just there was such fidelity inside that family i became a i wanted to be i want to be a dad for the first time because of e.t but having now being a dad of seven kids and five grandkids with a six on the way um i found another family only a very large extended family a family of of the hispanic let let the next experience a family of actors and technicians and art artists in every single department and it was a joyful experience to put so many dance numbers on the screen that made me feel i mean i probably dropped 25 years i i can't dance to save my life but i was dancing inside every day on those sets with all those amazing performing artists vocal artists the the the art of choreography the art of of of just just such great actors and i really felt that that by the time west side story was over just like i felt on et i did not want to do that last shot i did not want to have to say cut print and it's a wrap on the i'll tell you a story on the last shot rita moreno came to me and said can i stew the slate because i did this late for the robert wise west side story he let me slate the last shot can i slate your last shot and i said absolutely but it was the last shot and so rita was standing by with the slate i did the first take she came and she slated it but i didn't want the film to end so i made rita go out 14 more times unnecessarily to slate the last shot before i finally threw in the towel and said okay that's it we're done i never wanted to be done with that movie wow well i know the 10 year old you was brought the broadway album for the first time it meant so much to you um after the last frame in the film before the credits rolled it's just said to dad can you sort of explain that well that was to my father my father loved west side story he always he wanted to see the movie he didn't live to see my west side story our our west side story um but he always asked me about it and he was 103 and a half when he passed when i was shooting the movie when he was like 101 and a half he was in a wheelchair in los angeles i was shooting in new york but he was on the ipad constantly on facetime and they'd hold the ipad up and my dad would watch us shoot a lot of the scenes and he just loved it so much and i didn't get the film finished in time to show him and he passed so i thought well the next best thing i can do is dedicate it to my father who i so deeply loved yeah and that's why it says four dad at the end beautiful what was the song that ten-year-old stephen was belting out the most at the dinner table at the dinner table i was always belting out the most officer krumke and my mom and dad let me let you know they they bought the album to play for me and i memorized all the songs but i'd sit at the dinner table with my mom and dad saying my father is a bastard but i mean i would say bastard you know as an sob my grandpa's always plastered my something's pushing tea my sister wears a mustache my brother wears a dress my parents were crying and saying you can't say sob at the dinner table you can never say the word bastard again and i would say but mom dad you gave me the record why'd you give me the record if i can't say sob and bastard so west side story started a lot of rows in our house earlier um watching this film i was in awe of the shots some of the camera angle was high then it was low there was a reflection in the puddle i know you you spend months planning these shots and it's truly i think you even bested yourself but how can you talk about the complexity of it versus some of your other films is it more complex i know there was a temple of dune opening you know musical number but how does that compare to like a musical doesn't compare a musical takes such collab collaborative partners a musical takes a marriage between the choreographer and the director a musical involves casting people who can wear have to wear four hats they have to be able to sing they have to be able to dance they have to be able to act and they have to be able to exist without doing any of those three things and still draw your attention in stillness it's an extraordinary requirement to be able to earn the the right to perform in any musical let alone west side story which is why it took a whole year to cast the movie for me and for cindy told my casting director but i but i also found that they're a musical just because of the idiom of that or the genre it creates such a sister and brotherhood because people work we've worked four and a half months in rehearsal i've never done rehearsals on any film let alone four and a half months just to rehearse the dances and and and this and the scene study and to get the storyboards i storyboarded every shot and i also on my iphone uh videoed and recorded all the rehearsals and i got all my camera angles during that four and a half months of rehearsal period and i cut all my little iphone videos together put the music to it and if i didn't like it i'd throw it out and start again the next day so i had a lot of rehearsal so every time i set up the camera that the camera was telling the story it wasn't just because the shot was cool and because the angle up high was cool it was because every shot helps to advance the story and create a deeper involvement for the audience to get emotionally into the storytelling so i don't think i did anything in west side story with the camera that was arbitrary or that was slick at all was in the service of the story one thousand percent i want to talk about the late stephen sondheim i know you you've talked a little bit about how you would look to him when he was on set to know if you got something right i don't know if that was in rehearsals and you would almost know more by his expression can you give me maybe give me an example of that or or a moment that really you know you got his blessing how he felt about the film and and what that meant to you well with the fact that steve was with me every day during the pre-recording sessions we recorded all the vocal artists and stephen was there at the recording studio sitting next to me every single day he didn't directly interface with the with the actors because that was janine tosuri's job she was our musical director and he never interfered with her interpretation but he i would watch steve's face because he always listened to the singing with his eyes closed and he'd be smiling and then suddenly he'd go like that because he heard not not a bad note maybe he heard a pitchy a pitchy moment and that can always be fixed with a sec with another take but he would hear an interpretive something that didn't interpret the way he always imagined his words being interpreted and he would always talk to me about that and he would always say to me and to janine it's very very important that the actors don't concentrate on their vocal performance just get them to concentrate on who they're playing who these characters are because if they believe who they are emotionally and if they get to know their characters deeply the music will be second fiddle to that don't worry about the music just understand who you are that was exactly janine chisori's entire philosophy too so in that sense steven and geneva are on the same page but what an honor was to sit next to steve for three weeks and then he occasionally came to the set and hung out with me and he was such a friend he became a good friend over the course of four years and his sudden loss was a profound loss to all of us wow we just didn't expect it i thought he'd outlive my dad wow um before i go i'm sort of a two-parter as a last question first of all if in the future some director said i want to reimagine one of steven spielberg's films which film would you be most interested in seeing reimagined by maybe a future director and also about the ritual do you leave set a day early is that something i heard that you've done since jaws i don't know if that's true or not or if i don't i know i used to leave the set a day early when it was just like a special effect going off i didn't have to be there for but i don't do that anymore that was my that was in my youth in my in my in my silly blind youth um but but the the whole thing about um what was your question about uh a film that of yours if somebody was traveling of mine i i don't know i'd like somebody i would love someday to somebody to to remake hook and turn it into a full musical not me but somebody else and i wouldn't i wouldn't mind seeing um if somebody ever remade without me if somebody ever remade a film like uh always it was a love story that that that that didn't get any traction uh but i really it meant a lot to me and i'd love to see that story which was also a remake of a guy named joe by victor fleming and that was the original source material for me those are the two films i'd love someone else to remake someday life matters even more than love [Music] if i'm not mistaken you've talked a little bit about working with stephen and kind of being that fly in a wall and you said you found it fascinating just to watch his process from how easy he finds certain things to even the challenges so if you could sort of allow us to be a fly on the wall in what you experienced well first of all he's such an open-hearted person and he he always leads with his heart and that's that's so so evident when you first meet him um clearly there's there's the kind of shock and awe you have to get past when you're when you're realizing that you get a chance to work with this legend but that goes very way very quick quickly at least it did for me because he's he's exceptional at getting people to kind of uh just get on the same page and say let's let's do something let's try to do it the best we can there are so many examples of of watching him work that were we're just such a great education for example i remember i remember we were shooting a scene it was a little scene after um tony and marina come out from behind the uh the bleachers and he i think he had storyboarded it one particular way and the the way that the we were going to shoot that day was proving to be a little bit more challenging than he expected and he just very very matter-of-factly said well sometimes you think you know how you're going to do it and then you don't know and and he just kind of had to do what he needed to do to get it done in that moment and you just realize in those in those situations that these are just people who are so good at what they do and are dedicated to finding the right answer and are not afraid to say i don't know how this work this one works and because of their skill and their their desire to get it right you just watch them get to work and uh yeah that to me was just a little thing that that spoke volumes to me what was the best note he gave you tone it down oh seriously in one in one scene he's like a little less a little less uh it was it was a big scene so so uh he was he was right about that um but you know he had all kinds of insight to krupke that i i used as cornerstones of of my of my character one of which was was this this idea of him constantly having an ulcer he he said he very very early on he said i think that krupke is duodenally challenged and it took me a second to understand what he meant yes it means the lower intestine and i.e ulcer um so yeah that that to me i think is is kind of where his mind was in terms of setting this character up as as being someone who's constantly not only at odds with the job that he had to do but literally at odds with himself kind of internally in in complete uh discomfort about about what was happening in his world and the other thing he he said which is another great little insight is that i think this guy probably would prefer to be in the back room filing papers rather than out in in in the community kind of on the on the razor's edge of trying to kind of you know stop these warring warring you know groups coming together and always trying to kind of keep them at bay and how exhausting that was and how scary and dangerous it is wow those are and it's interesting because when you're saying that that was those are specific things that make your character fascinating and sort of set it apart and make it a reimagining of the original being that you are so esteemed in the broadway community um could you talk a little bit about the fact that you were with the exception of rita probably the most veteran actor on the set that this is a lot of young actors that sometimes have never done a movie before and just that energy i think you've talked a little bit about it being around those people that are on the precipice of this huge stardom and something huge if you can kind of talk about that well there's there's one there's one story that i've told a couple times that i think exemplifies the kind of spirit that was evident on set and uh mind you i i i spent uh five days uh you know when we were in the gym shooting dance at the gym sequence which in my opinion could be a movie in and of itself yeah so i felt so lucky to be just watching that every day but you have you do have a lot of uh extraordinary young actors and dancers who haven't been on film and i'm i'm no you know expert in in being a film actor i've done my fair share of them and i i have an awareness of some of the things that you do and don't do on a set one of which is it's kind of it's kind of not it's not usual for an actor to go over to what's called video village and watch a scene over the director's shoulder and it's kind of a no-no because that's their domain and that's their that's where they get to paint that's their canvas and you kind of want to let you don't want to interrupt that but but in this film it was so beautiful because after all these big dance sequences you'd have 30 young extraordinary people who are just impossibly talented running over to to stand behind him and watch watch the watch what they had just shot and at the end of it everyone's saying yay just super excited about what they had just done and and that to me i think it really is the lifeblood of this film it was it was really evident last night at the screening the first time i saw it and we had pretty much the full cast there but the sense of pride and the sense of of accomplishment and ability i can't i can't say this enough the dancers in this film i just i'm astounded by what they've done yeah uh so so that is a um that is a little story about about about the community that we that we had making this film was there a scene where they were i heard they were messing with you or something like it was either the jets or the sharks and you were like is this a gag no no i i was convinced that steven spielberg had had told pulled all of the jets aside and said listen whenever the camera isn't rolling please bother brian as much as you can it turns out they were just naturally gifted that that they were all doing their jobs very well uh even when the camera wasn't we were all in character and so uh you know there wasn't a moment when someone wasn't poking me or stealing my baton or like untying my shoe or using my hat as a frisbee it was it was it was it was constant and i think it really really helped you feel that energy and a lot of the behind the scenes stuff has been as fun to watch as the film the incredible film itself um something that i talked to uh rachel and ansel about yesterday that i thought was really funny was that when she was cast in it she was doing shrek the musical in high school at the time and said can i just finish it before we start west side story having been shrek was that a good move on her part and were you also did you also say to stephen hey can i just finish this before i do your movie or did you not dare i was well beyond it uh so so i did i didn't have the need to kind of say can i go back and sit in you know make up for for two and a half hours every day uh but interestingly janine tesori the composer of shrek the musical was our music supervisor and worked with with you know rachel and ansel and and mike and ariana and uh is an extraordinary gifted gifted composer and um uh uh facilitator of performance so um yeah i heard that story the other night and i i joked that you know i i they wouldn't let me audition for her version so i was unfortunately i couldn't play shrek to her fiona did you do any of the numbers behind the scenes with rachel did that come up at all no but maybe maybe that's the next version of shrek is the is the live action version of just rachel and myself doing it uh somewhere maybe as a puppet show i don't know i gotta think this out okay um being that you are such a veteran of broadway um i'm gonna ask a broad question but what is officer krupke and the story of west side story meant to you as an actor and an actor of the theater um over the years and the tremendous um gift bestowed on you to play this beloved character well that's the the answer part of my answer is in your question it is a gift it really is because west side story for me and for so many people is a cornerstone of my experience of what it means to um want to be a part of the the community that makes musicals that makes theater that wants to pursue art uh in that particular way and uh the standard is so high the bar is set so high with you know stephen sondheim's work leonard bernstein's work jerome robbins work uh arthur lawrence work the the foundational element of it not just not to not to forget william shakespeare uh on which the whole thing is based so it's it's an extraordinary thing to be a part of this iteration where the history of it is so um palpable to me um and that was evident last night with with original cast members of the movie who were in attendance which was which really really was special and uh and now now i can say that i am i am you know carrying the baton along with the rest of us the cast to try to do our best to honor and uh and create something new and exciting which i think we've done i i heard that um stephen sondheim i don't know if he worked with him on set but had some interesting notes and sometimes steven spielberg would just look to him to get his reaction and he would know right there by his reaction if he they got it right did you have a personal experience with stephen sondheim like that no i didn't i didn't i didn't get to cross paths with him on set unfortunately um i i had had the honor of of singing for him and at in a concert in in dc that marvin hamlisch was the uh the conductor for with the with the uh the orchestra there um so i was lucky to have that little interaction with him but um yeah i heard that story last night and i thought that was really a great uh a great example of both of both men in the sense that uh steven spielberg knew and was was was um desirous of of stephen sondheim's reaction to how things were going whether it was a positive or a negative and so he was a barometer that he needed and wanted there um and it's also a testament to to sondheim and his kind of what i've come to learn and i'm constantly learning in in the unfortunate pat his passing and sad passing that he was such an honest um uh and and and uh kind of undeniably honest artist in the sense that what he wanted to uh uh explore and uh on earth was not always pretty and uh and and i'm sure he was always very honest in his um in his assessment of things as well uh to everyone's credit you know everyone's benefit um so yeah that's that's a great story of two people kind of being in the in the boat steering together you

Channel: Rotten Tomatoes

Views: 199,039

Keywords: West Side Story, West Side Story 2021, West Side Story interview, West Side Story movie, ansel elgort, ariana debose, david alvarez, drama, interview, mike faist, movieclips, musical, rachel zegler, rita moreno, rotten tomatoes, steven spielberg

Id: k0pMsewvTms

Length: 41min 39sec (2499 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021