Going mainstream
Pittsburgh native Don Roy King helped bring ‘Hamilton’ from stage to Disney+
Can “Hamilton” provide viewers that experience of being “in the room where it happened”?
As the Disney+ streaming debut of the Broadway blockbuster ramps up your Fourth of July weekend on Friday, Pittsburgh native and award-winning “Saturday Night Live” director Don Roy King said he expects it can. But it will be different.
“You don’t get to walk into a big room filled with people and get the smell of the sets and have a program to look through, and to have the whole room go dark and then have this tidal wave of light coming at you as the curtain opens, and for you as a group, experience this story together,” he said. “It’s not that experience.” However, King said, “I kind of compare it to watching a football game in a stadium as opposed to watching on television. It is different, but in many ways, better.”
Capturing the occasional close-up is something that “puts you in the best seat in the house,” he said. “There might be things you don’t normally grasp when you sit back and watch the big picture.”
“Hamilton creator and star LinManuel Miranda agrees. In a press statement, he noted: “This is the bestrehearsed movie in the history of movies, as each performer has performed their role hundreds of times. No one has had this seat in the house … it is better than the best seat in the house.”
King, a graduate of Gateway High School and Penn State University, knows the thrill and the roadblocks that come with transitioning a “live” event to the big, or in this case, smaller screen.
Although he’s won nine Emmys — almost all for directing “Saturday Night Live” — King’s theater background includes live-to-screen versions of Broadway shows such as “Memphis: The Musical” (2011), “Romeo and Juliet” with Orlando Bloom (2014) and a TV special of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” (2002) that brought home the intricacies of the process.
“When it was first discussed in the early ‘90s, my initial reaction was, ‘I’m not sure it can be done,’” he said. “I had seen some stuff on PBS over the years and it always seemed hard to watch.
“The [show’s] performers were a little too big and effusive for close-ups. And the sound was echo-y and the lighting was steep and sharp. It was a little disarming, rather than charming.”
Going on the theory that many people will never be able to experience a hit Broadway show, King and others kept trying.
The basics involve shooting multiple live performances. During the “Smokey Joe” shoot, he said, “we realized this is viable.”
But will “Hamilton” be the phenomenon everyone hopes it will be? The original production generated huge buzz, and a celebrity following, when it played at the off-Broadway Public Theater in New York City in 2015. What had once been called the “Hamilton Mixtape” moved to Broadway the next year, and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and Tony Award for Best Musical.
Hollywood’s adaptations of Broadway hits have been, well, hit or miss. A cautionary tale is that of “A Chorus Line.”
Wrote The New York Times’ Vincent Canby in 1985: “‘A Chorus Line,’ which opens today at the Paramount and other theaters, is less a movie than an expensive souvenir program.”
The show’s original creative and directing team declined to be involved, and the result was a David Attenborough movie that reduced a story about the joys and heartache of being a performer to, well, a bunch of choppy close-ups and garbled relationships with little chemistry between actors.
“The look, the feel, the magic of the relationships, there was none of that,” King said.
But he added that some, such as versatile director Elia Kazan (“A Streetcar Named Desire”), were able to take their films from stage to screen with great success.
There’s something to be said for a faithful re-creation of an original with the original cast. People have paid exorbitant amounts of money to see “Hamilton” on Broadway and have filled seats for several national tours, including a month in Pittsburgh last year, and another scheduled for 2021.
The movie, though, brings with it the voices on the album that captured the imagination of many who have never seen the show: Miranda as Alexander Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr, Daveed Diggs as Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Jackson as George Washington, Renee Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler and Jonathan Groff as King George has major cachet.
Original director Thomas Kail oversaw the film shoot.
“From what I’ve seen of the trailer it looks like they’ve approached it much in the same way we’ve done with ours, or most of ours, and that was to capture performances as they happened in front of live audiences.”
“Hamilton” was filmed at the Richard Rodgers Theatre over two performances in 2016, with close-ups done between performances. Six cameras were used, also a Steadicam, one on a dolly and one on a crane.
That same year, Miranda hosted “SNL” in October. King remembered him as “brilliant, he did a rap monologue out of nowhere that was ‘SNL’-related and was just delightful … I loved when he was there.”
London’s National Theatre has been filming its stage productions for years and many have graced screens in Pittsburgh and can be streamed online. PBS’ “Great Performances” also has stage productions, although they are often plays, not musicals, and often not from Broadway.
Netflix recently jumped into the Broadway business with “Springsteen on Broadway,” and Nickelodeon did a nice transfer of Broadway’s charming “SpongeBob SquarePants” musical.
Not every move from stage to screen has to be literal. “West Side Story” took its sweeping drama into the streets in 1961. Steven Spielberg’s version is expected to be released as a holiday film this year.
Even Miranda’s Broadway hit “In the Heights” ventures into the world as well. The latter was to be released June 26, but has now been pushed to 2021 due to the pandemic.
“Hamilton” was originally to be presented on Disney+ next year but it was moved up on the schedule as a stay-at-home treat.
King laughed when asked if his knowing Miranda might get him an early peek at the film.
“I wish, but on July 3 I think I will be there.”