NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Lin-Manuel Miranda and screenwriter Quiara Alegría Hudes about their new film In the Heights, based off the Tony-award winning musical Miranda created and starred in.

Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

ANTHONY RAMOS: (As Usnavi de la Vega, rapping) Lights up on Washington Heights...

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Before there was "Hamilton," there was another Tony Award-winning musical by Lin Manuel Miranda called "In The Heights." It's a story about deciding whether to hang on or to move on, about belonging to a community while striving for more.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

RAMOS: (As Usnavi de la Vega, rapping) I am Usnavi and you probably never heard my name. Reports of my fame are greatly exaggerated.

CHANG: Now Miranda has turned it into a movie, along with Quiara Alegria Hudes, who wrote the book for the original musical and the film. When I talked with them last week, it occurred to me the main character in this story might actually be a neighborhood - Washington Heights. Miranda grew up nearby and lives there now.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: My first piano lessons when I was a little boy were on 181st Street. And so it's the exact story Usnavi tells you.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

RAMOS: (As Usnavi de la Vega, rapping) Even farther than Harlem, to northern Manhattan, and maintain, get off at 181st...

MIRANDA: Get off at 181st and take the escalator...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

RAMOS: (As Usnavi de la Vega, rapping) I hope you're writing this down...

MIRANDA: ...And seeing that bridge looming over 181st Street, even though you're standing on the highest point in Manhattan. I think there's lots of metaphors for the fact that this has always been an immigrant neighborhood.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) In the Heights, I flip the lights and start my day.

MIRANDA: We live on a mountain in a city. And then also it's just always been the first chapter in a lot of American stories.

CHANG: Well, you know, so many of the stories tucked into this work are about striving to have more, to be more, to also move beyond the neighborhood.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

LESLIE GRACE: (As Nina Rosario, singing) I stayed wide awake, climbed to the highest place on every fire escape, restless to climb. I got every scholarship, saved every dollar, the first to go to college...

CHANG: But the neighborhood, at the same time, pulls people back. It gives them identity and community. And I was wondering if you can talk about portraying that tension when a community is part of your identity, but it also pushes you to want more. Like, Quiara, I know you grew up in West Philly, and, Lin, you grew up in Inwood in Manhattan. Was there a similar push-pull for either of you growing up?

QUIARA ALEGRIA HUDES: One of the things that I related to a lot with Lin when I first met him was our parents came from Puerto Rico. And they didn't get to just drop and plug and play in a community. They had to build the community. So when you inherit that, it's like, well, how am I going to build?

And I think they knew earlier on than I did that part of the way I was going to build was by telling, telling the story. You know, they were honestly too busy doing the work to tell about the work. And so my mom and pop kind of saw this in me from early on and were pushing me. But part of that building work - actually, I had to leave the community. I had to go get educated in other ways, and I had to learn other spaces.

And there's a line in the movie, which is, we're a people on the move. That really comes from my personal experience from my heart, where it's like, you know, it's not that - just that we're from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. No, actually, we're from Lares. We had to leave Lares for political reasons, go to Arecibo. Then we had to go to the Bronx. Then when my mom's apartment got robbed, they moved down to Philly. Then I went - left and went to college, you know, and it's - the journey continues, and the relationship with home gets more robust, more complicated and, I think, more rich.

MIRANDA: It's so funny. Something happens when you stay in a neighborhood. I live walking distance from where I grew up. I can walk to where I took piano lessons as a little boy from the apartment I'm talking to you now, and I can then walk 15 blocks north and find the exact spot in the Cloisters where I was writing my angstiest teen poetry...

(LAUGHTER)

MIRANDA: ...Staring at the Hudson.

CHANG: Yeah, with the wind blowing through your hair (laughter).

MIRANDA: No one has ever felt as deeply as I feel right now. And that's part of my morning run now. And I'm the father of two kids, and they live in this neighborhood. And that's not the George Washington Bridge. That's their bridge.

HUDES: I have a big smile on my face because I'm just really into this definition of home, which is where you wrote your angsty teen poems. Oh, right. I wrote my angsty teen poems by the LOVE statue in Philadelphia.

CHANG: Oh, my God. I love this. Well, you know, one of the most memorable lines from this story...

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

OLGA MEREDIZ: (As Abuela Claudia) We had to assert our dignity in small ways.

CHANG: ...It's something that Abuela Claudia says.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

MEREDIZ: (As Abuela Claudia) Little details that tell the world we are not invisible.

CHANG: Which one of you wrote that line?

MIRANDA: That's all Quiara.

CHANG: Quiara, what does that mean to you?

HUDES: That line for me is evocative of my own childhood, of every tiny little lesson that abuela would give me, that Titi Jenny (ph) would give me, that Tia Moncha (ph), Tia Rosa (ph). I think about how my abuela taught me how to cook rice. And she giggled and laughed at me like, oh, poor Qiqi (ph). When I asked her, like, OK, well, where's the measuring cup, she's like, no, no, (speaking Spanish), we - put it in your hand. These are the little things. And she took pride in telling me that. And that is part of our dignity, passing on our little bits of wisdom, you know, not in some grand scale, but just in eye contact and close contact from generation to generation.

CHANG: And, Lin, I mean, you went from playing Usnavi, the lead, in the original Broadway production more than a decade ago to now playing the Piragua guy.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

MIRANDA: (As Piraguero, singing) Piragua, piragua, new block of ice, piragua.

CHANG: Tell me, why did you pick that role in particular this time around?

MIRANDA: Quiara picked it.

(LAUGHTER)

CHANG: OK, Quiara, why did you assign Lin the Piragua guy?

MIRANDA: Well, I'll tell you this. The way I sort of went about playing it actually became a way of honoring my grandfather. My dad's dad, Abuelo Guisin, passed away the week after "In The Heights" opened on Broadway. He didn't get to see any of the success of "Heights." And so when I, you know, got cast in the role, I just said, I'm going to make this a love letter to Abuelo Guisin. So I'm wearing his glasses around my neck. I've got his cowboy novels. The opening shot is me reading one of my grandfather's, like, dime store cowboy novels. I'm wearing my socks way too high. I wish you could have been there when my family in Puerto Rico saw the movie for the first time because the screams of me being in abuelo cosplay basically...

HUDES: They knew exactly who you were.

MIRANDA: They were like, Guisin.

HUDES: Listen; one of these days I'm going to create some abuela cosplay for myself. I've always dreamed of writing a piece that's called "Las Vatas" (ph). And their superhero abuelas that wear house dresses and that's their cape. So that's going to be the one day.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

MIRANDA: (As Piraguero, singing) But I keep scraping by.

CHANG: Well, I want to finally ask about the timing of this movie because it's going to be among the first wave of summer films to open in theaters as the pandemic is slowly winding down. How do you think that timing might shape how people take in this story?

MIRANDA: I think it's enormously poignant. We filmed this in the summer of 2019 before the pandemic hit. And I know when I see a picture of two people standing close together, I've been marked by this - are they OK? Are they vaxxed? Is this all right? And this movie is such a love letter to the power of being in community with each other, of being out on the curb, of hugging, of dancing together. It is such a reminder of the power of that. I'm really hopeful that it's giving folks a reminder of how we used to be and how we can hopefully one day be again.

CHANG: Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes, thank you so much to both of you.

MIRANDA: Thank you.

HUDES: Really nice to talk. Take care.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEIGHTS")

HUDES: (As Benny, singing) OK, we got traffic on the west side. Get off at 79 and take the left side.

CHANG: "In The Heights" is now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes also have a new book coming out next week with the backstory on the musical and the film. It's called "In The Heights: Finding Home." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.