Tribute Film: 2016 Records of Achievement Awardees Ron Chernow, Thomas Kail & Lin-Manuel Miranda

my god how does a bastard orphan son of before and the scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by Providence impoverished is koala where what to be a hero when the scholar the $10.00 founding father without a father I got a lot father by working a lot harder if I being a lot smarter by being a self-starter by 14 then you placed him in charge of the trade and charter and the slaves were being slaughtered I caught it away across the waves our Hamilton kept his guard up inside he was longing for something to be a part of the brothers red bag still marble border and a hurricane came devastation reigned and our mayor saw his future drip dripping down the drain hood up into his temple connected to his brain and he wrote his first four friend around the syphilis kid is insane man ripped up a collection just to send into the mainland get your education don't forget forwards you can and the world is gonna know your name Alexander Hamilton there's a million things he hasn't done but just you wait just wait [Music] this is the first year when we're honoring three honorees and it's so perfect so appropriate to bring Hamilton to the stage with lin-manuel Miranda Tommie kale and Ron chernow it is a great triumvirate one of the things I find most exciting about this award this year is celebrating Ron chair nose work in using the records of the United States to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton in addition to Ron making an accessible text book a to creative geniuses who have brought their talents to tell the story in a manner that has never been used before which has so captured the public in a new way it's a unique celebration of American history [Music] [Music] yeah I'm the damn genius that shot him my point of entry with Hamilton was his power with words when I first met Lynne back in 2008 one of the first things that he said to me was that Hamilton's life was a classic hip-hop drama and of course I had no idea what he was talking about he's a fighter but he's also a writer this is a guy who wrote an essay about a hurricane that destroys st. Croix and that's the thing that gets him off the island and that's a hip hop character to me that's what my favorite hip hop artists do they write about their circumstances they write about their world and if they write about it well enough they transcend it one of the things that Ron's book did so admirably that we wanted to try to also reserve was he created a story about someone who had real propulsion history is not just a series of events in our show needed to have a story and not just be this happened this happened this happened it really takes a brilliant writer a brilliant historian to bring those things to life to pick out exactly the high points to figure out what will resonate with people what will really tell the story what will advance the story it was a massive effort simply to master the facts of his life and by the time I sat down to write the Hamilton biography I had somewhere between thirty and forty thousand four by six index cards of information as soon as I had his blessing to start writing we just sort of started talking I would call him and ask him questions about that era if you know if if Hamilton's at a party what's his drink of choice you want the big stuff and the granular stuff you can make lyrics from what I think the show is also doing is making people question and think about a time in our country when everything was possible and to have a place to go where you can interact with those original documents and see what what came from someone's hand and brain and heart and quill is one of the treasures of our country the best thing that's happened to me in my career was getting to meet Tommy Cal the week after I graduated from college it's really fun there's a lot of late nights and there's a lot of laughing and there's a lot of inside jokes but the end result is we're all making the same show and Tommy applies that diligence to me and my writing and he applies it to David Korins with his set and he applies it to Andy blank and Bueller in his choreography and he's also just another smartest people I know what I found in Lynn is someone who was interested in digging in the same direction I was if Lynn had a shovel and he was digging a hole I would just go jump in the hole and start digging and then at some point I'd say what are we digging for the trust that we formed outside of the rehearsal room is what allows us to be in the rehearsal room and not doubt and not question it was always marvelous working with Lynn and Tommy because they both had such deep integrity such deep respect for the history it was very rare I think perhaps unprecedented for a biographer to be so deeply incorporated and they also felt that the history was so empiric that you didn't need to invent what you had to do was really capture it when you could imagine lin-manuel Miranda on vacation reading Hamilton and his mind is clicking he could connect the dots between what was going on in the 18th century and what's going on in the 21st century he was able to use Ron chernow research and to bring it to the present and to make it accessible to people so that they would love it and enjoy it and not even realize that they're getting a history lesson and I've been amazed at how many parents have told me that their 11 year older 12 year old is sitting there reading my eight hundred page book with the dictionary at their side and plowing through it that the entrance and Hamilton is that intense I had a feeling that twenty and thirty year olds were gonna dig the show I didn't think it was gonna be nine year olds memorizing every song for birthday parties I didn't think it was gonna be seventy year olds taking their grandchildren and finding their own way in that is how history stays alive and stays constantly refreshed and vital as a musical I'm very proud of Hamilton as it is it's everything I know about writing musicals right now I hope to learn more and keep learning over the course of my career as a piece of history it's maddeningly incomplete it's a jumping-off point it's a drop in a bucket it's a spoonful of ocean history is an argument without an end and so I like to think I read an authoritative ography of Alexander Hamilton but it will not be the last word my hope is that both Broadway continues to find new audience and that people go and seek out in DC a National Archive in their own town a Historical Society find themselves wandering the stacks of a library that would be enormous ly satisfying for all of us we watch young people take ham with it as a jumping-off point for telling their own stories for telling stories untold by their history books by digging into the archives and finding that story that hasn't seen the light of day or a best-selling book or a play yet but is waiting to be told the archives are full of them [Music]

Channel: ArchivesFoundation

Views: 41,506

Rating: 4.9812207 out of 5

Keywords: Hamilton, Ron Chernow, Tommy Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda, National Archives, Alexander Hamilton

Id: zeA1DwnI20Y

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2016