Steven Spielberg's WEST SIDE STORY - News & Discussion Thread — Page 10

Globefan said: "degrassifan said: "I feel like this thread has unofficially become the West Side Story movie thread, even though it stemmed from the Vanity Fair feature back in March, Anyway, here is Rachel Zegler in Vogue (print & online) talking about the new film and her version of Maria. Nice photo shoot as well.

Vogue:In 2021’s West Side Story, Rachel Zegler Will Deliver a Maria for the Moment"

Rachel is looking like Olivia Hussey's Juliet"

I strongly agree. I remember seeing that movie just finishing my freshman year of HS

https://fb.watch/3tAKVhgIQE/ Here is an interview Ana Isabelle (Rosalia) did and she talks a lot about the film.

degrassifan said: "Globefan said: "https://fb.watch/3tAKVhgIQE/ Here is an interview Ana Isabelle (Rosalia) did and she talks a lot about the film."

Thanks for sharing! All I got from the interview is that Rosalia and Maria have an intimate andtouching scene in the picture. Also, since Puerto Rico is part of America, the America musical number hasmore meaning to the Shark girls who are in favor of staying in the U.S. versus the Shark boys who are open to going back to PR."

I'm glad some of the secondary roles are getting more fleshed out

Globefan said: "Rachel Zegler is in the new Shazam sequel!"

I heard about it. It's crazy, her debut film isn't even out yet and still she's getting a lot of buzz and attention. This is correct in my mind.

I’m thinking either her audition was a success, or the Shazam people saw rushes of Rachel in WSS and decided to cast her in the sequel. Sort of similar to how Julie Andrews was cast in The Sound of Music after Robert Wise saw rushes of her in Mary Poppins.

degrassifan said: "I’m thinking either her audition was a success, or the Shazam people saw rushes of Rachel in WSS and decided to cast her in the sequel. Sort of similar to how Julie Andrews was cast in The Sound of Music after Robert Wise saw rushes of her in Mary Poppins."

Coincidental that you mention Robert Wise, given that we worked on the original WSS.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7346UCc20vcfrfZEMBMWLZ?si=zvX77_WUS8e26vxzkMdmOA&nd=1 Rachel Zegler was on Drew Gasparini's podcast and dished a bit about the film

She said that the way the film does I Feel Pretty fixes Sondheim's problem with it. She says that Bradley Cooper and the Obamas all visited the set. She went to as many of the recording sessions and orchestra recordings as she could. She watched Spielberg directing Rita Moreno's scenes. And she said that she hit her head and broke her Maria headband right before they filmed Dance at the Gym. She also said she auditioned for the Ivo van Hove revival. They filmed the balcony scene very late in production.

I hope Rachel gets to meet Carol Lawrence while she's still alive.

Just posting this for info sake. Not correcting anyone.

From December 2019:

A PRETTY ISSUE BY PETER FILICHIA

“Aren’t you going to say anything about the decision to drop ‘I Feel Pretty’ from the upcoming Broadway revival of WEST SIDE STORY?!”

Since the announcement on Nov. 15 that director Ivo van Hove and/or lyricist Stephen Sondheim decided to drop one of the most famous songs from the landmark score, not a day goes by when one of my readers or listeners doesn’t ask me that question.

Many musical theater enthusiasts have been terribly upset and have expected me to be equally as outraged.

(I’ll wait and see the show and then report on it.)

Whatever the case, perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised. Sondheim has had issues with “I Feel Pretty” since that August day in 1957 when the show had its first run-through in New York. As he recalled in Craig Zadan’s SONDHEIM & CO in 1974, “Some of my friends were out front. I asked Sheldon Harnick after the show what he thought, knowing full well he was going to fall to his knees and lick the sidewalk.

“But he said, ‘That lyric, “I Feel Pretty.”’

“And I thought that the lyric to that was just terrific … I had spent the previous year of my life rhyming ‘day’ and ‘way’ and ‘me’ and ‘be’ and with ‘I Feel Pretty’ I wanted to show that I could do inner rhymes, too. So I had this uneducated Puerto Rican girl singing ‘It’s alarming how charming I feel.’ You KNOW she would have not been unwelcome in Noel Coward’s living room. Sheldon was very gentle but I immediately went back and wrote a simplified version of the lyric which nobody connected with the show would accept.”

(That must mean librettist Arthur Laurents, composer Leonard Bernstein, and director-choreographer-auteur Jerome Robbins.)

“So there it is to this day,” Sondheim continued, “embarrassing me every time it’s sung.”

Okay, while we’re at it, would teens or young women in their early twenties say that Maria would be in “an advanced state of shock?”

Now here's a good question: when the movie musicals that come out during December are ready for test screenings, what time of the month would the studio do that where they're comfortable with the print to show to preview audiences? Now it would be a little hard to do that because of COVID and everything.

Good point. But it would be nice if this could be an exception; so we can hear something about this movie.