On Oct. 1 2016, The Knockturnal attended the premiere screening of Hamilton’s America at The New York Film Festival, and the panel discussion that followed between the film’s director, Alex Horwitz, the production’s stars Lin-Manuel Miranda and Renée Elise Goldsberry, and historian Ron Chernow.
In the most meta moment from the panel that followed the premiere screening of the documentary Hamilton’s America, a 19-year old NYU student who almost missed his shot at asking the last question (but like his idol, took it) asked playwright, composer, lyricist, and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda what he would tell his 19-year-old self, because 19 seems to be like such an important year to Alexander Hamilton, and to Miranda.
In the show, Miranda echoed the words of Mobb Deep to encapsulate the hunger that a young Alexander Hamilton had on the island of St. Croix and upon his arrival to Manhattan, trying to rise up from his desperate situation.
“I’m only 19 but my mind is older, these New York City streets get colder, I shoulder every burden, every disadvantage, I have learned to manage… the plan is to fan this spark into a flame.”
Well it turns out, Miranda met the film’s director, Alex Horwitz at age 19 in college. And at 19, he started writing In The Heights, his first Tony-award winning Broadway musical and foray into using hip hop and Latin beats to represent his unique and oft-ignored background in his art. He did it to distract himself from the stress of a long distance relationship. “You’ll survive this,” he’d tell that kid, “At that age you are feeling more feelings than you’ve ever felt. I was never more giddy or depressed.”
That passion was met by fellow film editor Horwitz, though Miranda maintains Horwitz was much better at it, which came in handy when the idea came to start filming this, before anybody knew what *this* would be, shedding a new light on what a breathtaking feat it was to document this new piece of our history.
“I knew that it would follow the life of Alexander Hamilton, I didn’t know where Lin would go with it. I think you were still thinking concept album,” Horwitz explained, “But I said, ‘Whatever it is I don’t care, it’s you telling the story of Alexander Hamilton.’ So everything that came was an incredible bonus, the hit of the show, the trip to the White House, we’ll take it.” And what a get it was.
So how long did it take Horwitz to sift through all the different strands of what this story had to offer?
“A little while,” Horwitz deadpanned. “We filmed for over three years, we captured nearly 100 hours of footage, the film is about 82 minutes. So there’s a lot left, and as you pointed out, there are all these different threads.”
In a rare glimpse into the actors’ antics while taking a break backstage, the film features a freestyle battle between Miranda and Renée Elise Goldsberry, who won the Tony award for featured actress in a musical as Hamilton’s muse and sister-in-law, Angelica Schuyler. For some reason she seemed to think it wasn’t her best work, though Horwitz stated for the record that she “actually spits fire.”
Goldsberry was just glad this moment made the cut, because she maintains that Miranda’s “most brilliant work comes out just in the moment and it’s never written down,” so there’s at least one on record. (“But most of the rest of them would not be appropriate for PBS,” he says in parentheses.)
The panel continued to marvel in sheer awe for how Miranda could give new life to historian Ron Chernow’s biographical work, the spark of inspiration that famously came to Miranda while on vacation from In The Heights.
“Hamilton is singular, I will never write another Hamilton,” he says. But, there’s a million things he hasn’t done, so just you wait.
Goldsberry was also blown away by how Miranda could write in the “most distilled and perfect way” about both parenthood and womanhood, two things he hadn’t ever experienced. She credits her win and artistic achievement to Miranda’s astute empathy in his writing and ability to see two sides to every story, which also allowed the characters to expand from two- to three-dimensional, with complicated dynamics and morality.
So when asked why he wrote Aaron Burr as more than the villain we knew, “Because he was more,” Miranda replied naturally. “He was one of the earliest feminists, giving his daughter Theodosia a better education than most men got,” at that time and by being a manumission abolitionist, he helped ban the slave trade in New York.
He reiterated the revelation that the cast members had while researching their roles, especially the actors of color who portrayed murderers and slave owners, which was that “we are all more than our worst act on our worst day.” As an aside, he added that in another fortuitous coincidence that would cement his tied fate to Hamilton, it turns out his neighbor in Inwood was one of the last living descendants of Burr and he “didn’t want to make him mad.”
One of the audience questions came from an immigrant who “chose America” as his home, but was starting to question his choice in the current climate. He asked Miranda as a child of an immigrant and an artist how he gets through it and sustains inspiration to create. Miranda illustrated another instance of duality in the birth and current makeup of our country.
“That’s a part of our American narrative, people come here from different places and help make this country great,” contrary to the fear mongering dispelled by certain politicians. Still, he noted that “there is a long history of using the word immigrant as an epithet of distrust of the latest group of people who have gotten here. And it is a very easy thing to do for a politician, and it happens every 20 years or so, usually around an election cycle, they point to the people that most recently got here and say, ‘They’re the reason you don’t have a job.”
While “both things can be true,” he said of the potential for an immigrant’s success against the constant obstacles they face, Miranda advises, “If it bothers you, vote.”
Chernow followed up with the point that just as Miranda changed the face of America then by way of his historical fictional casting, by 2040 more than 50% of the population will be what were previously considered minority races, “which will change the face of America, period.”
