Weekend: ‘In the Heights’ to make its debut.
Bay Area native Jon M. Chu may do for musicals what 'Crazy Rich Asians' did for rom-coms
It was a crushing but inevitable decision to make, shouldering another unexpected delay in the migration of LinManuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ musical “In the Heights” from its 2008 Broadway stage roots to movie screens everywhere.
But Warner Bros., director Jon M. Chu, Miranda and the rest of the cast and crew realized their buoyant Latinx-fueled cocktail, which puts a new, contemporary spin on the Old Hollywood musical template, needed to stick out the pandemic until audiences could feel safer about heading to theaters to watch it on a big screen.
And after nearly a year’s delay, the wait is over. “In the Heights,” a proud celebration of a predominantly Latinx neighborhood in New York, lands in theaters and starts streaming on HBO Max today. The film will also be screened at San Francisco’s Oracle Park at 6:30 p.m. Friday, part of San Francisco Pride Week and the annual Frameline film festival. (See more Pride and Frameline coverage, Page 6.)
“This is a big summer movie and it deserves a big summer release,” says Miranda, who, as the creator and star of “Hamilton,” knows a thing or two about big productions. “The benefit of that wait — knock on wood — is that our release will coincide with feeling safe about going to the movies again. … Jon made a really big movie. Bigger than I ever dreamed that it could be, and it so deserves those big screens.”
Chu, a Palo Alto native, says the film’s release also coincides with many Americans feeling more upbeat after a miserable year of lockdowns, COVID-19 fears, and racial and political upheaval.
“We call it the vaccine for the soul,” Chu said. “We didn’t know that going into it. We knew we were communicating a very specific point of view — this community (Washington Heights) — and what it feels like to go through death, a blackout, feeling powerless and what it feels like to dust yourself off and get up again.”
“In the Heights” takes place over a three-day span during a sizzlin’ hot summer and introduces us to a huge cast of characters with big personalities. The central character is Usnavi (“Hamilton’s” Anthony Ramos), a lovable bodega owner with big dreams and a killer smile. There are also saloon workers and owners, a beloved abuela (grandmother) and a stressed-out former Stanford student who wants to be back in her ’hood.
Some songs and characters from the stage version didn’t make it into the film adaptation, while two characters — Daniela (stage veteran Daphne Rubin-Vega) and Carla (Stephanie Beatriz) — have become love partners along with business partners, to bring even more representation into the mix.
The result is a love song to a community that shaped Miranda’s life. In the process, “Heights” and its expansive Latinx cast puts a new face on the traditional American musical.
It was a learning and listening experience for Chu, currently working on five projects including a big-screen adaptation of “Wicked,” another musical with an inclusiveness theme. He is so passionate about “Heights” and its message about belonging that he and his wife gave their son — born during the filming — the name Jonathan Heights.
“Even though I’m not from there, I know what it feels like to grow up in an immigrant community. I wanted to say that word. I want him to hear that word over and over in his life.”
Chu might well be best known for “Crazy Rich Asians,” but he’s not an overnight sensation and is no stranger to filming dance sequences, having directed two “Step Up” movies while serving as executive producer on others. He’s also well known for his superhero dance series “The League of Extraordinary Dancers.” Oh, and there are those two Justin
Bieber concert documentaries and the action films “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and “Now You See Me Too.”
But it was the success of “Crazy Rich Asians” — which has made close to $239 million at the box office and helped change the game for big-budget romcoms with its Asian cast — that launched him into the realm of Hollywood A-listers. The 41-year-old didn’t anticipate how much impact “Crazy Rich Asians” would have.
That changed “When I saw the audiences show up,” he said. “When I saw
the people bring their aunts, their uncles and their grandparents who hadn’t been to the movies in years. When they got to share it and also when non-Asian people got to share it, share (in the) food, share in the discussion and have a real conversation of the state of representation that really showed me how important the specifics are in a story like this.”
He hopes the Latinx community embraces “In the Heights” like that.
Since he isn’t Latinx and wasn’t intimately familiar with Washington Heights,
Chu gathered input from those who grew up there. Chu spent three months in Washington Heights with Miranda and Hudes as his guides.
“They showed me where they got their cafe con leche. They showed me the corners where the songs were written. But Lin had never seen them performed in the space where they had been written.”
For Miranda, it’s been an emotional experience.
“It’s been very hard to make it through this junket without crying because it really is truly overwhelming,”
he said. “You write these songs inspired by a neighborhood in a place you love, but putting it onstage is an act of translation. We’re doing our best approximation of what the George Washington Bridge looks like.”
In the movie, that’s the real George Washington Bridge you see. Nearly all of the film was shot on location, although the weather didn’t always cooperate, especially on a two-day shoot for the showstopping musical number “96,000.” It’s a paean to Ethel Merman and the musicals Miranda grew up on and was filmed at the historic Highbridge Park pool and involved 500 extras and cast members. Fit-and-start storms rumbled through and created a mess.
“It was raining every 30 minutes so we had to shut down everything,” Chu recalls. “But we had amazing dancers and background people that stuck it out with us.”
The 41-year old Miranda certainly stuck it out to see this movie get made. He wrote the rough draft while a sophomore at Wesleyan College. After bouncing from studios since 2011, it landed with Chu as a director in 2016.
But Hollywood didn’t warmly embrace the idea of making it.
The reaction went something like this, Miranda recalls: “‘There are not really any Latino stars that test internationally so we can’t make your movie.’ Which is, of course, a self-defeating cycle.”
Critical in making “In the Heights” happen, Miranda said, was Chu.
“He was the key at the end of the day because what he was able to do with ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ is create a lane in which none existed.”
With “In the Heights,” that lane just got a lot wider.