Tony Kushner was wary of the project when Steven Spielberg first approached him. The playwright, screenwriter, and frequent Spielberg collaborators thought it was crazy. It seemed like a sure way to fail. But soon, he found himself reading a lot of history. He was fascinated by the slum clearance projects of the late 1950s and the destruction of Lincoln Square to make way for Lincoln Center. He started to think about the lives of street kids and Puerto Rican immigrants. It got exciting to me.
The original West Side Story focused more on the mechanics of its plot than on the real world in which it was set. Stephen Sondheim criticized the show for not containing any real characters and for leaning too hard on melodrama for most of his career. While the two men argued about it while the former was writing the new screenplay, his revision of the show stacks sociopolitical context, historical research, and character detail so densely that each moment relates to multiple levels at once. The musical is five minutes longer than the original, and it is fleet on its feet.
Spielberg's West Side Story proves that the controversial musical shouldn't be retired.
The treatment of the minor character of Anybodys and the way in which the revision of the role knits together so many of the themes of the script are fascinating. If you don't know who Anybodys is, or if you don't care about West Side Story at all, you could be forgiven. The role is a small one, atomboy, in the original who yearns to be one of the Jets but is shut out on account of being a girl.
The original creative team of director-choreographer, composer, playwright, and lyricist, as well as the writer Arthur Laurents, chose the odd choice of anyone to play the role of Anybody. She is the only character that has no history in the source material. She does not have a song. Even as she tries to be one of the boys, her girl-ness is always emphasized. When she first asks to join the Jets, she is told "The road, little lady, the road" by Riff. When the Jets are kicked out of Doc's shop, he announces, "Curfew, gentlemen." And lady. At the end of the musical, when she warns the Jets that Chino is looking to kill Tony in revenge for the murder of Bernardo, she finally gets acceptance, with Action telling her, "You done good, buddy boy." Anybodys fell in love with Action immediately after she accepted that she was one of the guys. She is so much a part of the boys that she participates in the harassment and attempted rape of Maria's friend, who came to warn Tony and help him escape Chino. At the end of the musical, Anybodys is exiled to girlhood by Tony in order to protect her from the oncoming violence. Beat it.
I have lesbian friends who have identified Anybodys as a lesbian, and trans friends who said that Anybodys is the first trans character in American musicals.
How did this character come to be? Why use her as a vehicle for exploring gender? There has been a lot of speculation about the origins of Anybodys. In interviews, they claimed they didn't remember where she came from. One historian speculated that she may have been based on Cheryl Crawford, who was a butch lesbian and was attached to produce the musical. The role is only in the show because the original creative team needed a part for one of their friends. She was a good friend of Robbins and was a dancer at times. He wanted a part for her, she had done a lot of things on the Broadway stage. I think Arthur Laurents came up with the idea of this character because there wasn't anything else for her to do. The character reflects this dilemma, just as Robbins' friend in the show was originally not a part of the show. Something richer and stranger was unlocked because of this linkage, something that gives the original material a sense of sophistication that it might have otherwise lacked. The four gay men writing about the Jets had an idea of what heterosexual street toughs sounded like. It was the ’50s when gender had this charge attached to it. There was a lot of anxiety about homosexuality, about gender, about maleness, about dominating mothers and fathers who wear aprons.
Audiences could see a character who refused to conform and refused the ironclad terms of gender, in a way that was bold and ironic. There are lesbian and trans friends of mine who say that Anybodys is the first trans character in a musical. I heard that before Steven asked me to write West Side Story, but as soon as I started working on it, I thought, Well, that's probably what we should do with this, because that's interesting. I said I would like to treat anyone as a trans character, not as a male character. Steven said that it was a great idea. Let's do that.
It's easier said than done. It's not easy to navigate between the Scylla of tokenism and the Charybdis of presentism. To avoid both, anyone would need to feel authentically trans from 1957. To figure it out, anyone could turn to research, reading books about sexuality in the 1950s and street gangs, and crafting an elaborate backstory that goes far more in depth than what we see on the screen. The Jets were people whose parents were probably drug addicts or criminals, or just abandoned them. He was born with a strong sense of his biologically assigned gender being wrong, so he had a life like that. This is a person who couldn't live pretending. It was one of the reasons that a trans kid ended up on the street, trying to find a place where he could fit in, in homeless shelters, and also out of a sense of wanting.
The actor who portrays Anybodys in the film, iris menas, was helped flesh out the character beyond his own life experience by the detailed backstory. I wasn't alive in 1957. Menas said what he knew. It was very helpful to know what kind of home they came from and where they would be working. The person was given a real body thanks to the research Tony and Steven did. The character in the film is explicit in his declaration that he is not a girl.
Menas said that anyone actually believing was the biggest piece of the puzzle. This is dropped right in. I don't know if we've ever seen a character like this before, because Trans people were so important to the 1950s fabric of New York City.
Stephen Sondheim solved the puzzle of being alive.
The research and background made it easier for the creative team to understand the menas identity. Menas said that a lot of trans people come in and a lot of that labor is on them in the room. A lot of education, a lot of emotional labor of reliving our traumas and telling our stories live, when we are just there to work, and build the character. I was able to add myself after I appreciated that. The willingness of men to add hirself to the part was important to Kushner. He said that Iris is a really brilliant person. It's really open and available. It is also unafraid to say, "I don't know that I would do that." but never in a knee-jerk way. Some actors just live to be contrarian, but you can tell that this is an actor who is engaged on a very deep level from the start, and just takes the work very seriously.
The character's pronouns were one issue that had to be worked out. If Anybodys was given a life beyond this two-and-a-half-hour film, we would see them explore other identities. In 1957, that kind of identification wasn't available. Menas said there are certain gender roles you have to adhere to. We went with he/him pronouns and what I would categorize as a transmasculine person, mostly presenting more masculine, short haircut, desire for the cut jaw, rough and tumble, taking on those qualities that we were so steeped in at that time.
iris menas said, "I think what is so profound is this solidarity withAnita."
The marriage of menas' lived experience with the elaborate period research and detail creates an incredibly rich character in the film, despite the part being a little bit larger than the original role. The character of Anybodys is complex and deep, revealing to the audience the character's defiant bravery and the immense cost that he bears for trying to live authentically as himself in a world that has no place for him. Spielberg has added in many moments where the audience watches people in Heteronormative spaces, while trying to find their way through the world. He becomes an audience surrogate in the film because he is seen by everybody in the film as he navigates the spaces. We are outside the Jets, looking in. The Jets have both the seductive qualities and the menace that is waiting to burst out. In a new scene, anyone can be the one to dish out some of that violence, beating up one of the Jets who calls him a "dickless wonder" and punching a police officer who tries to intervene in the fight.
In the film, anyone can find a kind of acceptance just as he does in the original musical. One of the Jets still says good bye. With an explicitly trans character hearing it, the line has a new meaning. In one of the film's most complex moments, it is also offered to anyone at the exact moment that membership in the Jets has ended. At that point, they are clearly not the Jets that we met at the beginning, but you are supposed to feel great for her. I wanted to make it clear that anyone was getting something that he was desperately wanting, at a time when he was sure that he wanted to have something to do with.
The film accomplishes this by having anyone warn her to leave rather than having her participate in the Jets humiliation of her. Menas said that the solidarity withAnita was profound. Anybody who has ever experienced a person projecting a gender identity onto them that is very misogynistic relates to Anita. I think it is a beautiful moment when you say, "I have been accepted, but do I really want to align myself with these actions that these boys are currently finding themselves in?" No.
The first time I watched West Side Story was on VHS. I knew how it would end, but I was not prepared for how I would feel carved out by it, a bit hollower than before. Spielberg pushes darkness even further by ending it with Chino's arrest instead of the symbolic reconciliation of the Jets and Sharks. If there is any hope at all in the film, it is nurtured by anyone who is allowed to chart a different path, to ultimately reject the most toxic aspects of masculinity, and survive.
