The scene pictured/heard below is one of the reasons Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (20th Century Studios, 2021) is the film version that resonates with me more than any other film version that ever was, or will be.
Above the Sharks: The soundtrack version of the anthem of Puerto Rican independentistas, “La Borinqueña”. And here’s the same anthem in a sweeter version
For one thing, the music remains intact. In fact, the music is better arranged and better placed in WSS2021 than in the 1961 version. More on that later.
For another, the script—meaning the dialogue, character arc, exposition, etc—is far, far better in the hands of Tony Kushner, not only a brilliant scenarist, but a stone New Yorker of my generation, and one of the few writers who knows how to take a big chunk of America in all its complexity and give it back to us in digestible form, no mean feat.
I have other reasons to like Kushner. He scripted the role my son’s godmother was most famous for—the original Angel in his stage work about the AIDS crisis (AIDS took the life of the man I was in love with, in ’91) Angels In America (picture of Sigrid Wurschmidt and Robert DiMatteo here). Here’s a sample of his chewy good dialogue. It comes right after the Sharks break into the anthem of the independentistas and exit stage right, to whistles and applause among the vecinos:
Lt Schrank (to the Jets): We’re outnumbered, boys. Thousands more are on their way…and once they’re here, they pop out kids like crazy, am I right? … Work with me, fellas! Or they’re going to drive you off your turf! … Most of the white guys who grew up in this slum climbed their way out of it. Irish, Italians, Jews… Nowadays their descendants live in nice houses and drive nice cars and date nice girls you’d want to marry. Your dads or your grandads stayed put, drinkin’ and knockin’ up some local piece who gave birth to you—the last of the Can’t-Make-It Caucasians. (beat) What’s a gang without its terrain, its turf? You’re a month or two away from finding out, one step ahead of the wrecking ball. And in this uncertain world, the only thing you can count on is me. I’m here to keep the civil peace until the last building falls. And if you boys make trouble on my turf, Riff, hand to heart, you’re headed to an upstate prison cell for a very long time. By the time you get out, this will be a shiny new neighborhood of rich people in beautiful apartments…with Puerto Rican doormen to chase trash like you away.
Okay, as exposition it’s a lee-tle too much on the nose and just a lee-tle bit too prescient. But yeah, in a little over two hundred words—really, the first big speech in this let’s face it Shakespearean play—Kushner the playwright has given us the genuine patter of a New Yorker.
[more later]
"I'll Be Dead Before You Break My Heart" 