By Mark Kennedy, Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --What was to become the Broadway phenomenon "Hamilton" was still raw and unshaped when documentary filmmaker Alex Horwitz turned on his camera three years ago.
Whether Lin-Manuel Miranda's vision of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton would become a concept album or a musical or something else had yet to be determined. Horwitz didn't mind. He just wanted to be there beside Miranda.
"My take was 'I don't care what it ends up being. I just find it so compelling. Let me follow you as you continue to develop it,'" said Horwitz. "It was designed from the beginning to be a companion piece to 'Hamilton,' whatever that became."
Horwitz ended up being, quite literally, in the room when it happened. His documentary "Hamilton's America " debuts Friday on PBS as part of its Great Performances series, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the musical's creation and putting it in historical context.
The documentary maker, who befriended Miranda in college, didn't want to make a film about the making of the hip-hop-flavored musical. That had already been done with "Chasing Broadway Dreams," about Miranda's previous success with "In the Heights."
"I thought that this could be about history seen through Lin's eyes. That was the conceit of the film from the beginning," said Horwitz. "It's a sort of audio-visual liner notes that exists for all time now about this amazing, whirlwind experience he had."
Miranda allowed Horwitz extraordinary access, including a sequence in which he was captured composing the song "My Shot" while visiting Aaron Burr's home. Their friendship meant a level of comfort another filmmaker might not have gotten.
"He's much smarter than me," said Miranda, "so he said, 'Can I just start filming you writing your next thing?' in 2012, before we even knew this was a show. And the result is that he's got this great film."
The RadicalMedia documentary combines backstage footage with field trips to places key to "Hamilton," like actor Christopher Jackson, who plays George Washington, visiting Mount Vernon, and Leslie Odom Jr. who plays Aaron Burr, stopping by the Museum of Finance.
The film is also augmented by interviews with politicians and celebrities including President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Questlove, Jimmy Fallon, John Weidman, Nas and Stephen Sondheim.
"It is quite a motley crew in the best possible way. Where else are you going to get a film that stars Questlove and Hank Paulson?" asked Horwitz. "People returned my calls because of 'Hamilton.'"
Horwitz is the perfect man for the job. His father, director and writer Murray Horwitz, won a Tony Award in 1978 for "Ain't Misbehavin'" and his mother is a classically trained opera singer.
He was a researcher for visionary director Julie Taymor and became an experienced film editor for RadicalMedia, having cut Joe Berlinger's documentary "Whitey," and is a big fan of Ken Burns. He also wrote and directed the zombie short film "Alice Jacobs is Dead."
"It's in my blood. I am a musical nerd. I am a history nerd," he said. "I wanted this movie to scratch both those itches for me and everyone in the audience as well."
Horwitz had about 100 hours of footage that he boiled down to 84 minutes. He hopes it appeals to both "Hamilton" fans and newcomers to the show.
"I know that this film is not the work that 'Hamilton' is. This film is a shadow of that far greater piece, in my mind," he said. "But if I did half as good a job as a documentarian as Lin did as a composer, then I think it will at least be an entertaining and enlightening piece of material and a worthy companion piece."
Associated Press writer John Carucci contributed to this report.
Review: Writer-Director Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man”
Imagine you could wake up one morning, stand at the mirror, and literally peel off any part of your looks you don't like — with only movie-star beauty remaining.
How would it change your life? How SHOULD it change your life?
That's a question – well, a launching point, really — for Edward, protagonist of Aaron Schimberg's fascinating, genre-bending, undeniably provocative and occasionally frustrating "A Different Man," featuring a stellar trio of Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson and Renate Reinsve.
The very title is open to multiple interpretations. Who (and what) is "different"? The original Edward, who has neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes bulging tumors on his face? Or the man he becomes when he's able to slip out of that skin? And is he "different" to others, or to himself?
When we meet Edward, a struggling actor in New York (Stan, in elaborate makeup), he's filming some sort of commercial. We soon learn it's an instructional video on how to behave around colleagues with deformities. But even there, the director stops him, offering changes. "Wouldn't want to scare anyone," he says.
On Edward's way home on the subway, people stare. Back at his small apartment building, he meets a young woman in the hallway, in the midst of moving to the flat next door. She winces visibly when she first sees him, as virtually everyone does.
But later, Ingrid (Reinsve) tries to make it up to him, coming over to chat. She is charming and forthright, and tells Edward she's a budding playwright.
Edward goes for a medical checkup and learns that one of his tumors is slowly progressing over the eye. But he's also told of an experimental trial he could join. With the possibility — maybe — of a cure.
So... Read More