{"id":270482,"date":"2021-06-09T21:00:47","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T18:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/quiara-alegria-hudes-film\/"},"modified":"2021-06-09T21:00:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T18:00:47","slug":"quiara-alegria-hudes-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/quiara-alegria-hudes-film\/","title":{"rendered":"#Quiara Alegr\u00eda Hudes \u2013 \/Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Quiara Alegr\u00eda Hudes \u2013 \/Film<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

\"In<\/p>\n

Long before Quiara Alegr\u00eda Hudes<\/strong> wrote the screenplay for the new movie musical In the Heights<\/em><\/strong>, she wrote the book for\u2026well, the stage musical In the Heights<\/em>, sharing duties with songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda. But a lot happ<\/a>ened between those projects. She\u2019s kept busy. She\u2019s written more plays, more musicals. She wrote a children\u2019s book. She won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful<\/em>. Not asking her back to shepherd her Tony Award-winning Broadway musical about life and love in Washington Heights would\u2019ve been a crime.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the theatrical and streaming release of In the Heights<\/em> this Friday, I spoke with Hudes over Zoom. We chatted about seeing the movie with an audience, what you can do on film that you can\u2019t on stage (food close-ups!), and how her additional role as a producer allowed her to ensure the film remained authentic and true to the neighborhood in which it is set.<\/p>\n

When I interviewed director Jon Chu, he talked about how this is such an audience movie. So considering the state of the world, I\u2019m curious: have you had a chance to see the finished film with an audience yet?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, I have. A few times now. I think his description is so spot on. Leave it to Jon to be able to describe the movie better than the screenplay writer. But yeah, it was really fun. I got to see it in Chicago with a largely Puerto Rican audience, and it was so fun hearing where they gasped. Mostly it was the food close-ups and when Marc Anthony appeared on screen. Then I also saw it with a general<\/a> audience, which was the original Broadway cast, which is a more diverse crowd and for us, it was emotional knowing that decades of our lives have gone into creating this thing that\u2019s now a major motion picture.<\/p>\n

Yeah, you can\u2019t get food close-ups in a stage play. So that must have been a fresh experience for you as a writer, to have that kind of reaction.<\/b><\/p>\n

I remember I was trying to have a moment of stage magic where she opened a pot and steam curled out, but it really doesn\u2019t read from the back row of a Broadway house. [laughs]<\/p>\n

What is the energy like when you watch it on film versus the stage show? Is there a similar energy or vibe?<\/b><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a looser vibe in a movie theater. Well, maybe it\u2019s just right now in 2021, it\u2019s really novel to be in a room with people again. We have forgotten how to do that. But the vibe was really loose at both of the screenings I went to, and people were vocalizing much more than I think is accepted in a Broadway audience. In a Broadway audience, people paid a lot of money, and everyone is [shushing]. It can be a little like, \u201cCalm down, everyone\u201d for me sometimes. But people were dancing at some of the screenings I went to. People stood up and danced, or danced in their seats. It was awesome to see that.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s got to be a satisfaction in seeing that. That people have such a reaction that they have to let themselves be seen or heard like that, right?<\/b><\/p>\n

Absolutely. People brought flags. There\u2019s this song called \u201cCarnaval del Barrio,\u201d and we were really careful to try to get every flag in there that relates to Latinidad, Latin America. We had to pore over those shots over and over and over again to make sure. I could hear in the audience that if people saw their flag, they\u2019d exclaim. That is so cool, I love that.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s really cool. You\u2019re so intimately familiar with the show. How is the writing process different when you\u2019re adapting your own work for a different medium?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever played Jenga, you remove a block, and that really changes the balance of the whole structure, and then you have to put the block back in a new place to kind of rebalance it. That\u2019s absolutely the case. We knew going in \u2013\u00a0I knew we might have to cut some songs and we might even have to cut some characters, because it\u2019s an ensemble piece. There is no lead character. The lead character is their togetherness, their community, actually. So how many characters can a screen show hold? How many songs, while still letting those elements breathe? I had some clarity, but a lot of it was also trial and error. I knew that we needed to lose a character, so I cut the character of Camila \u2013 who, by the way, I love and is one of my favorite characters. What that does, how that kind of rebalances the Jenga tower, is I need to really spend the work and time to therefore make Daniela and Abuela Claudia even more central as the matriarchal leaders of this block. Not just Abuela Claudia\u2019s living room and Daniela\u2019s salon, but they\u2019re in the community leading in a broader and clearer way. So that\u2019s one example of the kind of balancing act.<\/p>\n

Was that your biggest darling that you had to kill? Are there any others that you\u2019re still mourning?<\/b><\/p>\n

Oh gosh, yes. I mourn so many of them. The song \u201cHundreds of Stories,\u201d that was painful to cut. One of Nina\u2019s most beautiful songs is called \u201cEverything I Know,\u201d and it\u2019s like a power ballad that she sings, where she has a real change of heart and turnaround and understands the sacrifice that her parents have to make and the sacrifice that she emotionally has to make to survive at Stanford might actually be worth it. She really doubts that that bargain is worth it at the beginning. To be honest, I love that song, and we kept trying it for the screenplay. But it didn\u2019t work, and the reason is about fifteen seconds into the song, you already get it. Because the camera can go in close. The close-up shows us her face, it reveals so much, and it kind of made the song obsolete. I still really miss that song.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a discipline for writing for the stage \u2013\u00a0knowing that you have the proscenium and the audience and that you\u2019re working in this very specific space. But as you said, the camera loosens that up. You can have close-ups, see close-ups of food, get different types of reactions. As someone who is so accomplished on the stage, you suddenly have a whole new toolbox to play with.<\/b><\/p>\n

One thing that comes too mind is there\u2019s a big dinner scene that\u2019s about halfway point, and it\u2019s always been the fulcrum of the show. On the stage and on the screen, the family dances together. But it\u2019s a small family, it\u2019s a small space, and it\u2019s a big Broadway stage. It oftentimes felt a little underpopulated on stage. But on screen, not only is the room appropriate to the size, but we could get the camera down to waist level. I was like, \u201cI really want to feel like I\u2019m inside the dance. I don\u2019t want to be watching the dance from a distance.\u201d So [cinematographer] Alice Brooks really got the camera down, sometimes to shoulder level, sometimes to face level, and sometimes to hip level. That is actually what it feels like when my family gets together for a meal and we dance together, just social<\/a>ly and playfully. You\u2019re in the action, you\u2019re with the bodies, you\u2019re moving together.<\/p>\n

It sounds like you were really active in the film beyond writing. You have a producer credit, and I\u2019ve heard so many horror stories of writers who were tossed aside when the cameras roll, but it sounds like you were a valuable resource. It sounds like they actually wanted your input on this during the production, right?<\/b><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t originally going to be a producer on the film, but it became clear to me that they were leaning on me and asking me for a lot of cultural input and a lot of language input. And I thought, if they\u2019re asking, it\u2019s because they don\u2019t know. And they\u2019re willing to admit they don\u2019t know. I would like to be on set providing these answers and providing this perspective as the only Latina producer. [We had] a team of phenomenal producers, and they brought a tremendous amount to the table that I know nothing about, like actual film production. For me, it was a much more artistic and cultural side of production I brought, from anything like casting to \u2013\u00a0here\u2019s one example. Before we even did the dance calls, I told the choreographer, Chris Scott, who was really asking my opinion and wanted to talk about the dance, I said, \u201cIt\u2019s so important that we have elderly people as featured dancers in this, because otherwise it just does not reflect the truth of how we dance in the community.\u201d You see in the movie, in carnival, this whole thing starts when this elder woman stands up and does these beautiful dance moves with so much strength. She looks like a tree, man. That\u2019s what starts it. You\u2019ll see \u2013 I\u2019m pointing out my window because I live in Washington Heights \u2013 you see viejos schooling the kids in terms of dance here. So those are the kinds of conversations I was really happy to be having as we moved from script land into production land.<\/p>\n

How much detail goes into writing dance sequences and musical numbers? A screenplay has to be written to really give the details to the reader, to the actors, to the crew. How much detail do you put in, and how much is left to the director and the choreographer after the fact?<\/b><\/p>\n

Jon Chu storyboarded every single dance number in the piece. And I could be a little bit off about this, but I believe he did a very rudimentary story-based non-dance-based version, too. So even before Chris Scott got involved, he\u2019d be like, \u201cI want them to dance on the side of a building.\u201d He would do an exploration of what that might look like. So yeah, it was beated out before it even got to the choreographer point. Jon has a really incredible background knowing how dance and story can become one and service each other. So yeah, some of the music numbers, like \u201cWhen the Sun Goes Down\u201d when they\u2019re dancing on the side of a building, that\u2019s his vision. I never had them dance on the side of a building. I think it\u2019s so brilliant. Others, like \u201cBlackout,\u201d I beat out story by story because there\u2019s a lot of story beats that have to happen in there.<\/p>\n

My favorite number in the movie is Abeula Claudia\u2019s big number. It\u2019s a wonderful little short story embedded into a larger story. It\u2019s such a beautiful song. It\u2019s beautifully staged. I\u2019m curious about writing that scene. It\u2019s earlier in the show than it is in the movie, am I correct about that?<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a little later. It\u2019s at a different moment, for sure. That\u2019s an example of one that I did write out beat by beat, in terms of the story. I was imagining the \u201cA\u201d stop at 191st Street. If you enter the subway station at 191st and Fort Washington, you have to walk down a series<\/a> of steps. Then you go through the turnstile and then there\u2019s a precipitously steep escalator that feels like it\u2019s maybe three or four building stories [tall] \u2013\u00a0it feels like it goes deep into the Earth \u2013 that is frequently broken. And so what happens is, that stop, which does service a lot of elderly people, you see elderly people walking up and down 150-200 stairs. I was like, \u201cOK, I want it to be the hottest day of the summer, she stars out the song singing \u2018Calor, calor,\u2019 and the escalator\u2019s out of service and she has to walk down the steps.\u201d Then I imagined that she gets on the subway and she sees her history in the reflection of the windows in the subway car. Then that becomes a reality of the spaces we\u2019re working in. Jon Chu didn\u2019t end up choosing that particular subway stop. Instead, he chose one that has a really long tunnel that\u2019s flat. Once he chose that location, he then had the idea that it\u2019s going to be lit up, she\u2019s going to turn around and see this very long heavy perspective, because it\u2019s such a deep tunnel, line of her ancestors behind her. That\u2019s something that the idea comes from the space itself. That was not a script idea, that was not a storyboard idea. The space told us what to do there. The thing I love about that is, it shows us Abuela Claudia had an abuela, too. Even the mother has a mother. Even the grandmother has a grandmother. It\u2019s not just the youngins who have an abuela. She\u2019s looking back on all she\u2019s accomplished in her life. So that\u2019s a long-winded answer to the subway question.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In the Heights<\/em> hits theaters and HBO Max on June 11, 2021<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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“#Quiara Alegr\u00eda Hudes \u2013 \/Film” Long before Quiara Alegr\u00eda Hudes wrote the screenplay for the new movie musical In the Heights, she wrote the book for\u2026well, the stage musical In the Heights, sharing duties with songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda. But a lot happened between those projects. She\u2019s kept busy. She\u2019s written more plays, more musicals. She…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":270483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net\/wp\/wp-content\/images\/in-the-heights-trailer-oscars.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1568,1570,89816,10294,19730,108840,1553],"class_list":["post-270482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-featured-stories-sidebar","tag-features","tag-in-the-heights","tag-interviews","tag-musical","tag-quiara-alegria-hudes","tag-warner-brothers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}