Hi all! I attended a WSS virtual discussion with Tony Kushner as the guest speaker, and this is some info I got --
After "Lincoln," Spielberg invited Kushner to lunch and asked him to write WSS. At first Kushner was like "Wow, this guy is crazy," but then after hearing his vision and knowing it's a new adaptation of the stage show, he was onboard.
As confirmed earlier, the story is set around the time when San Juan Hill was in the process of being demolished in order to build Lincoln Center and how that affected the Puerto Rican community.
The filmmakers did everything they could to make the story authentic, even down to the specific way that Puerto Ricans make their coffee (which was eventually cut from the script). They even realized that the way today's Puerto Ricans would phrase things is different from how Puerto Ricans in 1957 would say something. Some cast members and crew members would even call up their grandmothers to confirm how certain things were said back in their day.
There is a lot of Spanish spoken in the film, without subtitles.
Kushner wrote lengthy biographies of every character so that the actors could use them to dive deeper with their characters. The lengthiest one was for Valentina (Rita Moreno), the widow of the Jewish drug store owner. Hers was interesting because Valentina is around the same age as Rita, so her biography included what her life was like in Puerto Rico before the 20th century and how she wound up in this NY drugstore in 1957. Kushner is not sure if the actors used the biographies in their performances except for David Alvarez and Rachel Zegler. Alvarez and Zegler asked "Where did our parents come from?" and things of that nature, and the moderator said you could see in their performances of their brother/sister relationship that they used the bios.
The Jets in the new film are white teens whose parents are from immigrant groups that had come to the US and had mostly moved up the ladder, while the Jets and their parents are people that were left behind and didn't make it and were disorganized in various ways. They are street rats, violent, and racist. The Sharks have come together to protect their community from the Jets.
Kushner felt that the creators of the show (Sondheim, Laurents, Bernstein, Robbins) tried to maintain the balance seen in Romeo & Juliet with the Montagues vs Capulets, but they kept getting thrown by it because they were progressive and knew racism and xenophobia were wrong, so their sympathies were more with the Sharks, however, there were places in the show where they made mistakes and tried to maintain the balance of having good people on both sides, but the fundamental truth of WSS is racism is wrong. The Jets are clearly racist in the original and the Sharks aren't, even though they seem to share some common ground; therefore, in this new version, the prologue is very different and you know clearly whose side you're on almost immediately.
According to the moderator, it's a long film that covers a lot, but it doesn't seem long.
The new movie is closer to the original Broadway show. Kushner grew up with the original cast album and didn't see the 1961 film until college, so when writing this movie he went back to the 1957 source. He thought the order of the songs in the Broadway show was more interesting and daring. For instance, he liked how in the show, Maria sings "I Feel Pretty" at the top of Act Two and she doesn't know but the audience knows that her life is basically over. It's poignant that she goes from the heights of joy to the depths of despair. It's safe to say "I Feel Pretty" will be after the rumble in this version. No word on "Cool" or "Krupke," but I'm leaning more on their stage placements.
In terms of "America," the new version will be a hybrid of the 1957 lyrics (primarily Rosalia's part in the introduction of the song, and some lines not used in the 1961 film like "Nobody knows in America Puerto Rico's in America."
) and the 1961 lyrics with the argument between the men vs the women.
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