One thing that changed in this storytelling for our entire crew, 300-plus people at Sony, was during the lockdown, we really started going into major production last February. So, from February to February we were working very isolated. We were connected like this through Zoom, and it was the power.
This movie in so many ways became a life raft for a lot of us who, you know, we all came together every day, and this brought joy to us, and we knew we were talking about something that was connecting. The theme was about connecting. It’s about friendship and collaboration, and that’s what we were doing, too. So, I know that it wasn’t something that we had to. And then Lin wrote it right into the song “Keep the Beat,” which is where we all were last summer trying to figure out how to make a big CG musical in thousands of different houses over the internet.
QUIARA ALEGRÍA HUDES (co-writer): When I first came on to “Vivo,” Lin-Manuel had already been developing the characters of Vivo and Andrés. The vibe of Vivo and Andrés was very refined, masterful, virtuosic musicians that lived a humble life but really represented the full accomplishment of a tradition that they performed in La Placita in old Havana. So, you can see on this notecard, I was writing adjectives that encapsulated Vivo. That he’s got panache, he’s graceful, he’s controlled, right?
When Gabi comes into his life, she’s, like: “Improvise!” Well, his version of improvising is still very refined and controlled. Her version of improvising is going buck wild. Like Jackson Pollock, throwing paint at the walls and letting chaos reveal its truth to you. So, we really set up at the beginning, this world of dazzle, swagger, you know, the suave musicians playing together. I wrote this quote on one of my notes: “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it needs to say.” That’s where the love song comes in. Of course, Kirk said we were writing a musical about musicians, but of course, musicians are humans. And at the core of this journey, what initiates this journey is regret and an incomplete love story that Vivo just feels determined to honor and to complete.
How many times in life do we get to reopen a chapter, re-do we get to reconnect with someone we’re estranged from and get another opportunity to close that circle in-in a new way? That’s the world. That’s the world of act one. But as Kirk said, we wanted to go somewhere really different, and we knew this would become an adventure in delivering that love song. That’s when we started dreaming up the character of Gabi. She’s a party!
The opportunity to take these classy, refined Cuban musicians, and throw them in with this diaspora, Key West, Floridian agent of brilliant chaos known as Gabi was really exciting to me. Kirk and I spoke about “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” as a model of when you have to take a journey with someone who’s really different from you and really irks you.
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