The sensational musical "Hamilton" tells the story of the founding father of the United States. The screenwriter, songwriter, and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda became famous overnight. On July 3rd, the movie version of this musical was launched on Disney+, and audiences who missed the theater can also see it. The British version of "GQ" talked to him about his creation during the epidemic, and the echoes of the current situation in the United States and musicals.
In addition to the interview, we invited the artist Long Di to write a review of "Hamilton" and analyze how this musical based on history has become a part of history. The play sings "Who lives/who died/who tells your story", which is an artistic expression and a narrative of history.
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Lin-Manuel Miranda has an alternate schedule for what he is doing now. The 40-year-old director was supposed to finish filming his directorial debut recently, the Broadway musical "Tick, Tick... Boom!" adapted by Netflix, but was forced to stop after only 10 days of filming. . He said that now he should adjust.
Instead, he had a conversation with British "GQ" through Zoom at home, talking about the movie version of "Hamilton" released this year, and apologized that the name displayed on his screen was not "Lin-Manuel Miranda" but "Lin-Sey". Bastian’s dad” is because the system “opens a school parent conference for me by default”.
For those who have missed one of the most important cultural moments of the past decade, "Hamilton" is a sensational Broadway musical. It makes Broadway musicals cool on its own. The play is written and starred by Miranda and tells the story of the founding fathers through rap, especially the brave upstart Alexander Hamilton.
The play received a record 16 Tony Award nominations, won 11 of them plus a Pulitzer Prize, and made Miranda famous in one fell swoop. He continues to play the leading role in Hollywood-he played Jack the Chimney Sweep in the 2018 Disney remake of "Mary Poppins Returns"-together with his musical debut "In The Heights" , Will be adapted into a movie next year.
Now, "Hamilton" will appear on our computer screens. Disney+ recorded this video in the last two performances of Miranda and hurriedly produced it during the epidemic. Miranda said: “When we realize that there won’t be any theater performances in the foreseeable future, we turn to say:'Oh, this is actually an opportunity to make people aware of the theater’s strength.'"
GQ : Let me talk about the important things first, how are you? In this new world we live in now, how do you deal with being isolated at home?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : I'm fine. I think it took me a month to figure out what the world has become. At that time I was shooting the movie "Countdown Hour" and was finishing my directorial debut. When the call came, we filmed the content for 10 days-in fact, when Netflix stopped all their production, we had already maintained social distancing on the set. So this is a month of doing nothing, you know, after the suspension of that large-scale work plan, I just want to figure out the new reality and what is going on in my son's kindergarten. It is only recently that I restarted my creative life and started writing again, because your life is closely related to what the world is like. I have a 5-year-old child and a 2-year-old child, so my own time ends when they wake up at 6 in the morning and will not restart until they go to bed at 9 in the evening.
GQ : Then can you start some creative work again?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : Well, in the alternative timetable-I think we all have alternative timetables and plans for our year... In the previous timetable, I filmed "Countdown "Until the end of April, then post-production. I have some other writing projects, which were originally scheduled for later. So when I knew that shooting would not restart soon, I started to do these things seriously.
GQ : "Hamilton" will be launched on Disney+, and one year ahead of schedule, which is incredibly exciting. Tell us how this decision was made.
Lin-Manuel Miranda : We realized early on that even if this is an off Broadway musical (off Broadway), it is hard to find a ticket. We realize that it is valuable to grasp how this play feels in the theater. We filmed for three days just before the week when the creators are leaving one after another. We were all gone by that Friday. So this may be the best rehearsal lineup in film history-we are performing, what we have spent a year doing. When the epidemic began, we already had about 75% of the content-the original material, after rough cutting, could be sold to Disney and cooperated with them. We did not make the final edit. We don't have a mix, which is very important in musicals. But when we realized that there would be no theaters open in the foreseeable future, we all began to change our thinking and said, "Oh, this is actually an opportunity to make people realize the importance of theater when there are no theaters open. ." So we started editing, and then it was like a race. We finished the final editing about two weeks ago.
GQ : What do you think of Broadway's future in general? Are you optimistic that the economy will rebound?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : I am optimistic. But I am not optimistic about any timeline. I don't know what the theater will look like after the epidemic, especially if there is no vaccine. The one book I have been reading during the lockdown is Stephen Greenblatt's biography of Shakespeare, Will In The World. I read this book because I want to know, what did Shakespeare do when the plague trapped people in their homes? One argument is: "He wrote "King Lear," what the fuck are you doing?" This is not entirely accurate. He did write some sonnets. Those are pretty good. But this is, you know, that kind of uncertainty. When we make a sound in a crowded place, it is real. To be honest, I am encouraged that, given that there is no show yet, it is actually time to solve some of the theater system issues that we need to discuss.
How to win "Hamilton" as diverse audiences as actors on stage? We are discussing, at this moment, only for ourselves—at this time, there is still a discussion of systemic racism in the United States—discussing how to make the behind-the-scenes look more like in front of the stage; discussing how to solve the problem of black and other people in the theater industry. Inequality in people of color. Behind the scenes and high-levels are still predominantly white, so I think people have a lot of time to do these things when they come home, and there is no excuse to say that they are busy with the performance of the season. So I can only speak on behalf of the "Hamilton" team, but we hope that when we return, we can return to a world where we have to solve these problems, and we have to have an indomitable dialogue.
GQ : You and the "Hamilton" team should be natural partners of the "Black Lives Matter" movement. But you did receive some criticism for not expressing your opinion in time. Was that just negligence?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : Yes, of course. I call it a moral failure. You know, I am their supporter. Since 2015, I have been posting content on social media about "Black people's fate is also fate". I remember when we first rehearsed "My Shot" (the middle song of "Hamilton"), we heard that the policeman who murdered Eric Garner was found not guilty. The atmosphere in the room was so heavy that we We were all in tears. But for some reason, the moral blind spot did not allow "Hamilton" and its social channels to stand with them earlier. So I think we are making up in this regard. You are right, we should be natural partners. We are a team of black-skinned and brown-skinned actors, and we spend every night on stage thinking about the origin of our country.
GQ : As you said, the purpose of this movie is to bring the experience of watching "Hamilton" in the theater to the screen. Have you discussed making it into a movie?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : Maybe not as much as you think. To be honest, I think I have hacked this system, because in fact we have a great live experience of the movie version, which has never been done before. I am grateful that what I spent six years writing has gained wide influence. The act of adapting a movie is an act of performance transformation—you turn it into a three-act thing. It has varying degrees of success. I have been working on the play "In the Heights" for 10 years. I think Jon Chu has done a great job. But this is not a repertoire. This is a movie. This is a big movie that I can't even dream of. But this is a conversion behavior. If I have learned anything, it is that the success or failure of the film adaptation depends on the passion of the director. Zhu Haowei has that kind of passion, and Rob Marshall has that kind of passion for "Chicago." The movie version of "Hamilton" also needs this kind of passion.
GQ : I always remember that when you hosted "Saturday Night Live" before the 2016 presidential election, you sang "Never gonna be president" to Trump's photos in the corridor. The song was funny at the time, but now it's hard to see. What do you think of this matter?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : The night before the show was recorded, we listened to the tape of "Access Hollywood". I think we have never heard such vulgar remarks from a presidential candidate. And in fact, that didn't become the end of his career, I don't know what it means. But no matter what this means, it is not a good thing. However, such a thing is unprecedented. But there are still millions of people who say: "This is the person we want."
GQ : What are your thoughts on the upcoming election?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : I think...I don't know. Like everyone else, I am not sure. I think people are definitely gaining momentum. I think many things you see on the streets and other places in the world are the country saying loudly: "This person does not speak for us" and "The integrity of our voting system is more important than ever. ". This is a big worry for me. But I have no doubt that most people in this country do not believe that this president can speak for them. In voting booths or mail and voting situations, we may discover ourselves. We have seen that there is no bottom line. There is no bottom line for that guy's behavior.
I believe that more people will stand up and speak. I am very excited that most of the protests are strong and peaceful, such as wearing masks and people distributing hand sanitizer... I have seen peaceful protests in my community. Unless we actually dismantle the system that built them, none of this will change. You know, it must have a follow-up—the slogan must follow meaningful changes. When I saw that Minneapolis intends to redistribute police funds to the community, I was very encouraged. When I saw some action, I was inspired. It is easy to speak on social media, but it is much harder to eliminate these inequalities.
GQ : When I rewatched "The Sopranos" (The Sopranos), I was surprised to see the young Lin-Manuel Miranda suddenly appear as a waiter in a restaurant. Do you have any memory of this?
Lin-Manuel Miranda (laughs): Whenever this content appears on my social media, people will say: "Lin-Manuel Miranda cameo!" I said, "Guys, this is not Guest appearance! That was my first TV show. "I was doing substitute work at the time. I was very young at the time, and you can see that I am looking down at the mark where I need to stop, because I have never had a mark before.
Frankly speaking, most of my memory is the kindness of James Gandolfini. Before the end of his long day of shooting, I was one of the last shots. We filmed his part first. He could go home after his part was completed, but he stayed-I think it was because he saw the tension of a young Puerto Rican in his first TV shot-face to face with me, Although he did not appear in the picture. Even after so many years, I am still grateful for his kindness, because I am not even on the actor list-I have another job.
GQ : This makes me wonder what your early auditions were like. Playing as a waiter is a rather old-fashioned role for you. Do you have many such experiences?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : Yes! This is also the origin of "In the Heights". I don't want to be a waiter or a gang member. I think I thought earlier than most people that no one would write the role of my dreams. I like musicals, and we only have "West Side Story". It was a beautiful play, but it was also an outdated play.
I just want to write about some of the roles where we are neither the waiter nor the janitor. So most of my life in the theater is trying to write the missing things. So even when I wrote "Hamilton," I didn't know anything about the founding fathers of this country. What attracts me is that this is a story of immigrants. Hamilton is a man from the Caribbean. He has to work three times to get half of the harvest. I instinctively understand this narrative because it is also the experience of my father and the experience of many neighbors in the community where I live. This is what attracted me, and then I had to learn other things. I think my writing career exists because there are very few Latinos in the drama.
GQ : You created the situation. I want to know what you are writing now?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : I am creating for a new project of Disney Animation. I can't tell you too much, I can only say that I am writing a new song, and I want the children to feel weightless. Now I also have children. They like animated movies and musicals, and I am creating for them. It's like, I don't have a clear image of the child in my heart, but he wakes me up at 5 in the morning: "Please call me the live version of Aladdin."
GQ : I think everyone wants to know if you are doing another stage play. Any ideas?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : Yes, but I can't tell you. It’s weird, I messed things up a little bit, because "Hamilton" is like a child born in public, right? Like, I didn't know that the Obamas would call and ask: "Do you have any thoughts about America? Can you show it on this stage?" But I did. That is the most public work I have ever written, as if I showed you the B-ultrasound pictures in 2009 and didn't finish it until 2015. So I can't write like that anymore, because I'm more scrutinized now. You know, the best way to eliminate impulse is to speak it out. I'm writing some new things, and I think these things will perform well in the theater, and I have time to do them.
GQ : Okay, without asking you to disclose the content, do I know how much you have done?
Lin-Manuel Miranda : I am writing the first three or four songs, once I figure out its true meaning, I will rewrite it. Because at the beginning, you think you know what it is about, but if you are lucky enough at a certain point, it will tell you what it is about. Then you will say: "Oh, damn, I thought I wrote this for that reason, but I actually did it for this reason." So I'm writing the first song from impulse, and then it tells me I do How much.
❶The road to success
In 2008, Lin-Manuel Miranda came across a 600-page Hamilton biography in a bookstore and bought it on a whim. At that time, he had just finished working on the last Tony Award-winning play "In the Heights" and began to conceive the next play.
When he went to New Mexico on vacation, he took this book with him. After reading the front part of the book, he found that Hamilton's life is very suitable for singing in hip-hop. So he found the author of this biography, the famous historian Ron Chernow, and invited him to be a historical consultant for this musical. Before Lin Manuel sang the first song he wrote, historians were suspicious, because singing the life of a founding father in hip-hop is unimaginable. Everyone's mindset is to interpret the life of the founding father in a serious way. However, after Lin Manuel sang the song with his fingers snapped, Ron Cherno was persuaded.
On May 12, 2009, 29-year-old Lin Manuel performed the first song of "Hamilton" at the White House. He said that he is currently writing a hip-hop album about Hamilton, the founding father of the country, and believes that only hip-hop music is best to describe Hamilton's short life. In the audience, the audience, including the Obamas, was amused. Lin Manuel said, laugh, I really think so.
At the end of the performance, Obama, who had just been sworn in as President for less than two months, and the audience stood up and applauded him.
Seven years after the White House performed, "Hamilton" changed from a song in 2009 to a hip-hop musical with 46 songs and a performance of nearly two and a half hours. The show was full on Broadway and it was hard to find a ticket. The Obama family became loyal fans of the show. The production team and investors generate 600,000 U.S. dollars in revenue every month.
In March 2016, Lin Manuel took the lead creator to the White House again to perform for the Obamas and a crowd of student audiences. It is still in the room seven years ago, with portraits of the Washington couple hanging on the wall.
In June 2016, this historical hip-hop musical won 15 Tony Awards. It became a cultural symbol. When the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury announced that Hamilton's face would be replaced from the 10-dollar bill, criticism arose. In the end, his image was successfully retained.
"Hamilton" has also become people's talk and show off capital. People who have seen the original version before the cast change in June 2016 will show off that they have seen the original cast. In the HBO series "Little Lies", the Silicon Valley senior woman played by Laura Dunn showed off to other mothers in her daughter’s kindergarten that they called and wanted to give me a ticket for "Hamilton", but I have actually watched it. Four times.
Four years later, on July 3, 2020, the day before Independence Day in the United States, the movie version of "Hamilton" was released on Disney's streaming media platform, which became a major cultural event in the United States under the gloom of the epidemic. At this time, Obama is no longer the President of the United States. On July 3, Trump still did not wear a mask when he appeared in public. From Friday to Sunday after the movie version was released, the Disney+ app was downloaded 513,323 times worldwide, of which 266,084 were downloaded in the United States.
❷ Revolutionary choice
The reason why "Hamilton" is so successful is that it presents historical stories in a way that is conducive to dissemination, and it reconstructs history in a way that fits the American spirit.
Among all founding fathers, Hamilton is an anomaly. He is the illegitimate son of his mother and lover. He was born on a small island in the Caribbean Sea and was later abandoned by his Scottish biological father. At the age of 10, his mother died and the property was taken away by her legal husband, leaving only 34 books for the Hamilton brothers. Later, they were adopted by a cousin, but it didn't take long for his cousin to commit suicide. Finally, he was raised by a wealthy man who appreciated his talent. Life on the island can no longer tolerate this talented and extremely motivated orphan. He came to New York, studied at King's College (today's Columbia University) with his own efforts, and became a lawyer after graduation.
Hamilton was the first to initiate a constitutional convention, requesting that the Confederate states, which were in the chaos after the War of Independence, send representatives to gather in Philadelphia for a meeting. After nearly four months of arguing and gaming, the delegates formulated the U.S. Constitution when he was only 32 years old. After the Constitutional Convention, he co-published "The Federalist Papers" with James Madison and John Jay. He wrote 51 of them. However, since most of his initial articles were arguing with opponents, there are not many complete narrative texts. In the eyes of many people who have studied American history seriously, the most famous author of "Federalist Anthology" is James Madison.
Compared with the image of the founding father who was mythically written in history, the protagonist of the musical "Hamilton" is obviously different. In the play, Hamilton is an imperfect person from the beginning. He is an immigrant, an ordinary person, a person from the bottom who succeeds on his own. And this is the story that the American society has always pursued. At the same time, the play begins to talk about the struggle history of immigrants before the American concept of the War of Independence. It starts with singing "Immigration can make things happen", and uses black and Latino actors to play the role of the founding father, which is more in line with Americans' behavior toward themselves. The identity of a citizen of an immigrant country.
In the play, the scandal in Hamilton's private life was also criticized at the time. This is in stark contrast with Thomas Jefferson, another founding father, who had descended from the black slave girl Sally Hemings, but nothing was mentioned in all the text communications he left behind. American society and even academia have debated the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings for more than a hundred years. Many people refuse to believe that Jefferson will have an affair with female slaves. At the end of the last century, DNA means proved the existence of this relationship. It's no wonder that Jefferson became the target of public criticism in this year's Black Lives Matters campaign.
Hamilton is different. He is a founding member of the New York Manumission Society. In the play, he sneered at Jefferson in singing, "Your debt has been paid off because you don't have to pay for the labor/we know who is farming".
The show is mainly presented in hip-hop, supplemented by elements such as British pop, jazz, etc., which laid the foundation for the widespread dissemination of the show. Compared with traditional musicals, music and operas, this is easier for young people to accept and spread.
It is a pioneering choice to use a group of minorities to play the role of the white father of the country, and to use popular music to tell the history of the founding of the nation that is often deified. After the movie version was released, the lead actor Leslie Odom Jr. (as Aaron Burr) admitted in the conversation that the most touching moment during the rehearsal was when the four minority actors rehearsed the fifth song. In the song "The Story of Tonight", they played the role of the founding father and sang their story. At that moment, he felt that this was a revolution.
❸Reality more complicated than drama
The creation of "Hamilton" began before the 2008 U.S. election and was performed in 2015. It is seen as a product of a hopeful (or hopeful bubble) Obama era. Hamilton has a non-American father, Obama also has a non-American father, and Lin-Manuel Miranda is also a second-generation Puerto Rican immigrant.
Now when the movie version is released, everything has changed. Now in the United States, the number of new crown cases has surged, and social movements are in high spirits. When viewers watch "Hamilton", they are not only happy and moved, but also more cynical reflections.
A young audience found the actor Leslie Odom Jr. who played Alan Burr and asked him what is the point of acting as a black man in a story about a group of white people? The background of her questioning was that among the fifty-five representatives who participated in the Constituent Assembly, a total of twenty-five were slave owners. They all compromised on the slave issue back then, and such a compromise is incompatible with the racial issue in the United States. The status quo is directly related.
The response of the creators was calm and positive. They told the questioner that the revolution is chaotic and people are complicated. These founding fathers were very young at that time and no one could be perfect.
Hamilton, as a controversial founding father, is far more complicated than what is shown in the play. He is portrayed as the founding father of the nation from nothing to success. He represents the entrepreneurial spirit and the voice of the common people, but in fact he does not believe in ordinary people and has always been a fan of elitism.
He believes that the United Kingdom has the best political system model, and proposed that the term of office of parliamentarians should be life. Although Hamilton is a representative of hard-working immigrants in the play, he is a supporter of the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, a stricter immigration restriction bill passed in 1798. So it can only be said that the main creator of the play reconstructed history to a certain extent when creating historical musicals, making the character of Hamilton more pleasing and dramatic.
❹Female, "rewrite the name in the story"
Another major feature of the success of this play is that the female characters have a heavy role in the play, which constitutes an important element of the play's narrative line and the empathy of the audience.
Through the depiction of Hamilton's wife and his sisters, the whole show presents the group of women behind the founding father. "Satisfied" is the favorite song of many people in the play. The audience regrets that Hamilton and his wife and sister Angelica could not realize the relationship. It sang the helpless compromise of two unsatisfied people. But in fact, when Hamilton knew Angelika, she had already eloped with her British husband to marry, instead of giving up Hamilton and having to marry a wealthy British husband. The so-called feelings between her and Hamilton are only inferences from a few words in the letters.
Angelica and her sisters are among the few women in the colonial period and the early days of the founding of the United States. They were born in upper-class families, received almost the same superior education as men, had poems and books, became confidantes or wives of the founding father, communicated with them and argued about the current situation and discussed all topics (except for Angelika to keep correspondence with Hamilton) , Also corresponded with Jefferson), and managed the family property when they went out for war.
Angelica sang in the play that when she saw Jefferson, she asked him to write a woman into the sequel to the "Declaration of Independence". This is reminiscent of John Adams’s wife who wrote to her husband, asking him not to forget women when seeking rights for the citizens of the New Republic.
But as mentioned earlier, the revolution was not perfect overnight. The American War of Independence did not bring freedom to blacks, nor did it give women the right to vote. At the beginning of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, white women ushered in what scholars called the “republican mother” period, and briefly obtained educational opportunities and social status promotion, because they suddenly had new identities and tasks—a better education. Give birth to better citizens of the new republic.
From the perspective of contemporary women, the assistance, support and tolerance provided by his wife Eliza to Hamilton during his lifetime, the preservation of his writing and spiritual heritage after his death, and the efforts to establish an orphanage, etc. Touched and regretful, she tied her husband together all her life. But compared to ordinary American women of the same time, the life she has experienced is fortunate and extraordinary. Most women do not have the opportunity to receive education. Writing and reading skills are really superfluous, while housekeeping and fertility are necessary. Another example is Jane, the younger sister of Benjamin Franklin, the father of the founding of the nation. She was married to a drunk husband and had twelve children. She was poor all her life; she kept communicating with her brother, using simple grammatical errors. English. My brother created the earliest library in the United States, but the library is not open to women.
The two-and-a-half-hour period of the musical cannot cover all aspects of the early founding history of the United States. The greater significance of this drama is to stimulate the audience's curiosity and interest in history, allowing them to explore the truth behind the drama by themselves. It tells people that history is fascinating, and what happened yesterday still affects the world today.
The movie version of "Hamilton" gives audiences all over the world the opportunity to enjoy this great musical, but it also reminds us that the charm of the theater cannot be replaced. The experience of watching "Hamilton" in the theater is a three-dimensional experience-from grabbing tickets to queuing to enter, sitting in the theater with 1,300 people, applauding, screaming, laughing and crying, listening to neighbors talking in a low voice, until the end The audience stood up to applaud and wept. This is a complete experience that the movie version cannot give.
But under the influence of the epidemic, we left the theater temporarily. Broadway will not open until early next year, and the work of many theater workers has been affected, and even the "Hamilton" staff recently took over the work of a truck driver. The lead dancer of the American Ballet, Isabella Boylston (Isabella Boylston) updates daily clips of exercise and dancing on Instagram, and creates online courses with other dancers to encourage people who are socially isolated at home to maintain a positive attitude.
The situation seems to be better for screenwriters. For screenwriter Zhu Yi in New York, “I didn’t have much influence on writing scripts. After the epidemic began, suddenly many new commissioned creations came to me to write scripts for various forms of online performances. ."
As an art form, drama will not die out because of the epidemic. As long as there are outstanding works, they can withstand the test of all uncertain factors. Just like the last song of "Hamilton" sang, "Who lives/who dies/who will tell your story", drama is a necessary form of expression for human beings to record their own history and emotions, and the drama on stage must be performed.
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Written by: Stuart McGurk, Long Di
Translation: Linzi
Image: Josh Telles / AUGUST
Stills: 2020 Lin-Manuel Miranda and Nevis Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Editor: Jin Jin
Operations Editor: Xiao Gugua
Further reading
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