Like father, like son ...
Siempre, Luis HBO
The inspirational path from Luis A. Miranda Jr. to Alexander Hamilton was surprisingly short for Lin-manuel Miranda. “My dad came to the mainland at 18 on a scholarship,” Lin-manuel was saying the other day, ticking off some of the parallels he discovered between his father and the American Revolutionary figure he would turn into a hip-hop musical sensation.
“This guy was so relentless, he wanted to get out of where he was,” he said, quickly managing to confuse a listener as to which man he was talking about.
“He accomplished the task and, for me, that's what helped on a subconscious level: `I know this guy. I can write this.'”
The occasion for this rumination was the launch of yet another Miranda-intensive project — only this one revolves not around the son, but the father. Siempre, Luis (Always, Luis) is a new HBO documentary, directed by a close family ally, John James, that records the journey through time, politics and culture of Luis Miranda, who became a potent force in New York City's Puerto Rican community and a power player in the city's political inner circles.
The son's fame, heightened by the global success of Hamilton, no doubt jump-started public interest in the story of the father — who in turn has emerged as an important partner in the son's ever-expanding entertainment universe. During a joint interview with his dad, the 40-year-old Lin-manuel said Hamilton had “supercharged” his relationship with the 66-yearold Luis, propelling his father from the sidelines of his career to “playing full tackle.”
“One of the sources of tension,” Lin-manuel added, laughing, “was that he comes over to just be the granddad and play with my kids, and he says: `I just have to talk to you about these 10 things.'”
You get the sense from the 95-minute film that the driven Lin-manuel, who premièred his first Broadway musical, In the Heights, at 28, is the more laidback of the two. The movie explores Luis's early life in Puerto Rico, his time in the administration of New York City's then-mayor Edward Koch and especially the father-son efforts that brought Hamilton to San Juan in the aftermath of hurricane Maria.
James, the filmmaker, befriended Luis several years ago while working with him at a New York political strategy group.
In late 2016 or early 2017, he began following Luis around with a camera.
“I said, `That might be a good idea, he has a good story,'” Luis's daughter Luz recalled.
James records Lin-manuel asking his father whether he considers his two biggest achievements to have been managing the unsuccessful 2001 mayoral campaign of then-bronx Borough president Fernando Ferrer and bringing Hamilton to Puerto Rico. It's an interesting juxtaposition. What the two episodes share is one man's efforts to be the conduit for the completion of another man's vision. But each is also rooted deeply in Luis's own aspirations: to help realize the political power of a Puerto Rican politician on the mainland, and to bring help back to a devastated island he loves.