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Feb. 8th, 2022 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petzipellepingoHow West Side Story’s Anybodys Went From Tomboy to Trans Character
When Tony Kushner, Steven Spielberg, and actor iris menas reexamined the 64-year-old musical, they found a trans character in plain sight.
BY ISAAC BUTLER
When Steven Spielberg first approached Tony Kushner about making a new film of West Side Story, Kushner was wary of the project. “I thought it was kind of crazy,” the playwright, screenwriter, and frequent Spielberg collaborator told me. “It just seemed like a surefire way to make something that was going to fail.” But soon, Kushner found himself “casually reading bits and pieces of 1957 history.” He became fascinated with the slum clearance projects of the late 1950s and the destruction of Lincoln Square to make way for Lincoln Center. He began thinking about the lives of street kids and Puerto Rican immigrants. Soon, “it got exciting to me.”
( Read more... )
When Tony Kushner, Steven Spielberg, and actor iris menas reexamined the 64-year-old musical, they found a trans character in plain sight.
BY ISAAC BUTLER
When Steven Spielberg first approached Tony Kushner about making a new film of West Side Story, Kushner was wary of the project. “I thought it was kind of crazy,” the playwright, screenwriter, and frequent Spielberg collaborator told me. “It just seemed like a surefire way to make something that was going to fail.” But soon, Kushner found himself “casually reading bits and pieces of 1957 history.” He became fascinated with the slum clearance projects of the late 1950s and the destruction of Lincoln Square to make way for Lincoln Center. He began thinking about the lives of street kids and Puerto Rican immigrants. Soon, “it got exciting to me.”
( Read more... )
