According to Ben Mankiewicz it is the favorite movie musical of Justice Sotomayor, Alice Cooper and me.
Mankiewicz didn't actually mention me nonetheless it seems it is the one thing binding the three of us together.
I am not partial to musicals, in fact not, other than also Rocky Horror - any other I will pass by in favor of house chores.
Ben had as guests before the airing - Rita Moreno, and the actor/dancers who played Riff and Bernardo. I felt it was a somewhat labored discussion, but Rita discussed her upcoming involvement with the production of a remake. She had two criticisms of the 1961 production:
1) that the use of pancake makeup to unify the Puerto Rican (she said hispanic) players was painfully artificial since hispanics are of a near infinitely broad racial spectrum, and
2) she didn't on balance care for Natalie Wood's performance, which she felt was inauthentic largely because Wood could not understand what it was to be a latina.
Now - I have to say that I also have thought Wood (much as I love her) was miscast, but last night I did take a more favorable view of her in the role - I think Moreno didn't see her as fiery and hyperemotional enough, that her sweet gentleness was unhispanic perhaps.
..anyway - I went to sleep and woke this morning thinking on this subject of actors having to be of the ethnicity they are portraying, and mean to let alone the idea that actors are or have been, wrongfully not cast in roles that they might naturally play in favor of those that wouldn't. I mean, who can forget Peter Sellers playing the character inspired by Charlie Chan in Murder by Death, or Tony Randle in The 7 Faces of Dr Lao? Can you really see Jackie Chan in those roles?
...and was the part of Tony played by an authentic Polish actor?
Must a junkie be played by an authentic junkie?
When the George Floyd movie is made will the part of Derrick Chauvin have to be played by an actual murderer?
What is acting, after all? Is it not playing the part of someone you are not?
