The Idea Hunter by Fischer Bill; Boynton Andy; Bole William

The Idea Hunter by Fischer Bill; Boynton Andy; Bole William

Author:Fischer, Bill; Boynton, Andy; Bole, William
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-10-28T01:25:18.601000+00:00


CHAPTER 5

Idea Flow Is Critical

WEST SIDE STORY IS ONE OF the most enduring classics of American musical theater. It has been revived recently on Broadway and performed over and over again in schools and regional theater companies around the United States. A Shakespearian tragedy made into a popular 1961 motion picture, it is a story of romance, and of rivalry between . . . Catholics and Jews?

If that doesn’t sound right, it’s because most people know West Side Story as a tale of bloodletting between white and Puerto Rican gangs on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But the original idea was to produce a play cal ed East Side Story, with the drama centering on hostilities between Italian Catholics and Jews, culminating in a Passover rumble. It was a bad idea, because the days of Catholic-Jewish rumbling on the streets of New York were numbered by the time the il ustrious creative team behind this production first came together in 1949. That team consisted of the composer Leonard Bernstein, the choreographer Jerome Robbins, and the writer Arthur Laurents. They each decided to shelve the idea and went on to pursue separate projects.

Six years later in Holywood, Bernstein was writing the musical score for On the Waterfront, the 1954 film classic starring Marlon Brando. By the pool at the Beverly Hil s Hotel one day, he ran into Laurents. The two were chatting when, at the same time, they both happened to glance at a newspaper someone was holding. The headline was about gang fights between California residents and Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles. As Bernstein recal ed later on, “Arthur and I looked at one another . . . [and] suddenly it al sprang to life. We could feel the music and see the movement. It was electric. We could visualize the future product.” What they visualized, of course, was the dance of battle between Puerto Ricans, who had recently begun their migration to New York, and white gangs.

Though Bernstein and Laurents had gone their separate ways in 1949, they had kept their problematic idea in motion. And they had kept themselves in motion. The composer and the writer stayed on the Idea Hunt even while enjoying a swim, agilely shifting toward another idea source (the newspaper) as they picked up their East Side Story conversation. Because the original concept was stil alive, it instantly morphed into something fresh when Bernstein and Laurents saw the headline. Upon their return to Manhattan, they put the notion to Robbins, shifted back to team mode, and the West Side Story project was reignited.

Here we want to make a point that may sound off-message: the goal of the Hunt is not necessarily to get a great idea, al at once. The objective is to set an idea in motion, letting it stretch, ripen, morph, or otherwise develop in col ision and combination with other ideas. That’s how an idea becomes great. Whether you have a good idea, a bad idea (like Catholic-Jewish rumbling),



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