- 4 days ago
Hamilton's America (2016) is an inspiring and insightful documentary that takes viewers behind the scenes of the celebrated stage production Hamilton. The film explores the creative process, dedication, and collaboration that bring the story and music to life. With engaging interviews, rehearsal footage, and captivating performances, it highlights the artistry, talent, and teamwork involved in creating a theatrical masterpiece. This documentary provides an educational and entertaining experience for audiences who enjoy music, performance, and storytelling.
Hamilton's America, Hamilton's America 2016, behind the scenes film, stage production documentary, family-friendly documentary, creative process film, theatrical journey, inspiring story, performing arts movie, engaging documentary, rehearsal footage, musical performance film, character driven story, teamwork theme, educational documentary, entertaining film, audience friendly movie, artistic storytelling, memorable performances, captivating documentary, theater lovers film, classic musical insight, informative movie, insightful documentary, live performance film, family-friendly entertainment, inspiring music film, creative collaboration, theatrical documentary
Hamilton's America, Hamilton's America 2016, behind the scenes film, stage production documentary, family-friendly documentary, creative process film, theatrical journey, inspiring story, performing arts movie, engaging documentary, rehearsal footage, musical performance film, character driven story, teamwork theme, educational documentary, entertaining film, audience friendly movie, artistic storytelling, memorable performances, captivating documentary, theater lovers film, classic musical insight, informative movie, insightful documentary, live performance film, family-friendly entertainment, inspiring music film, creative collaboration, theatrical documentary
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PeopleTranscript
00:00:00We're on Broadway, we're at the Richard Rogers Theatre, but at the same time, it feels exactly
00:00:26the same as when I was in Pirates of Penzance in ninth grade.
00:00:30It's such a kick to get to play dress-up and sing songs for an audience.
00:00:37I know there are certain actors who are like, once I get the wig, once I get the shoes,
00:00:41I know who the character is.
00:00:43I don't know that I'm like that.
00:00:45I do know that my posture certainly changes when I'm into clothes, but it really doesn't
00:00:50start for me until I see everybody else in their costume.
00:00:53And you get that moment of community where we're all agreeing to just create this world
00:00:57for people.
00:00:59There's the part of my brain that works really hard on making Hamilton historically accurate
00:01:04and exciting and high stakes.
00:01:06And then there's the charge and the adrenaline that comes from performing something and hearing
00:01:11a response.
00:01:12Places, please.
00:01:13All cast to places.
00:01:15Oops, I'm still married.
00:01:19President?
00:01:20Oh, hey, man.
00:01:21In New York you can be a new man.
00:01:25In New York you can be a new man.
00:01:30In New York you can be a new man.
00:01:35In New York you can be a new man.
00:01:38In New York, I trust you are.
00:01:41Alexander Hamilton.
00:01:43Alexander Hamilton.
00:01:44We are waiting in the wings.
00:01:46We're waiting in the wings.
00:01:48We've never backed out.
00:01:50We've never learned to take your time.
00:01:54Oh, Alexander Hamilton.
00:01:57Alexander Hamilton.
00:01:58When America sings for you.
00:02:01Will they know what you overcame?
00:02:05Will they know you broke the game?
00:02:08The world will never be the same.
00:02:15Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
00:02:16Your ship is in the harbor now.
00:02:18See if you can spot him.
00:02:20Another immigrant coming up from the bottom.
00:02:23He's in the least destroyed his rep.
00:02:25America forgot him.
00:02:27We fought with him.
00:02:29Me, I died for him.
00:02:30Me, I trusted him.
00:02:32Me, I loved him.
00:02:33And me, I'm the damn fool that shot him.
00:02:38There's a million things I haven't done.
00:02:41But just you wait.
00:02:44What's your name, man?
00:02:46Alexander Hamilton.
00:03:00Ta-da!
00:03:15Everything in my life is under construction.
00:03:17My wife Vanessa and I bought this place last year.
00:03:21We've been working on it almost a year.
00:03:23There's a piano under here, believe it or not.
00:03:27I'm in this crazy holding pattern right now.
00:03:31I'm just waiting for the next chapter of my life to start.
00:03:33There's a kid coming in November.
00:03:35Two weeks after the kid is born, we start rehearsals for Hamilton.
00:03:39And then that becomes whatever it becomes.
00:03:42And I'm just sort of...
00:03:45This is like the part of the roller coaster where we're just going up.
00:03:50That's one note I'm playing.
00:03:55And it's a full chord.
00:03:57So there will be some tuning.
00:04:00We're in the heart of Washington Heights.
00:04:05It literally looks like the set of In the Heights when you look out the window.
00:04:09I can't get away from my shows.
00:04:15My first Broadway show was In the Heights.
00:04:18It's about three days in the life of a block in Washington Heights, New York, where I grew up.
00:04:25Won some awards and it was pretty much a dream come true.
00:04:31The idea for Hamilton came to me totally by surprise while I was on vacation at In the Heights.
00:04:36I grabbed a biography off the shelf of Alexander Hamilton because I wanted a big fat book to read on vacation.
00:04:43And I found it deeply moving and deeply personal when I read it.
00:04:48It was just such a compelling ride.
00:04:50Lynn invited me to In the Heights and I went backstage and he said,
00:04:54Ron, I was reading the book and hip hop songs started rising off the page.
00:04:58And I said to him, really?
00:05:01I said, this is Tupac.
00:05:03This is Biggie.
00:05:04This is a hip hop story.
00:05:06This is my next show.
00:05:10So who's Alexander Hamilton?
00:05:11Besides being the dude on the 10, the best looking founding father.
00:05:15He was George Washington's chief of staff during the Revolutionary War.
00:05:19And he was our first treasury secretary.
00:05:22But before that, he was an immigrant.
00:05:24He was born in the Caribbean.
00:05:26But he came to our country and by sheer force of will and intellect, changed our country forever.
00:05:33I don't even really know if I knew who Alexander Hamilton was.
00:05:37I know he was on our currency.
00:05:40Alexander Hamilton is one of the unsung heroes of our country.
00:05:46Yeah, well, that's the way history works.
00:05:48Sometimes it takes a while for people to give you credit.
00:05:52Hamilton saw the opportunity when an immigrant could come to this country, get a little education, have some great ideas, work hard, and build something.
00:06:05Pretty amazing guy.
00:06:07Hamilton was born on the island of Nevis.
00:06:11Nevis is a very beautiful and colorful volcanic island in the Caribbean.
00:06:16But the day-to-day reality was very brutal and violent, like most of the Caribbean islands at that time.
00:06:22It was dominated by sugar and cotton plantations.
00:06:26Most people in America think of the slave trade as Africa to North America.
00:06:31But most of them went to the Caribbean.
00:06:33And so Hamilton was right in the middle of this huge, huge market.
00:06:37Even people who were not terribly well-to-do could have one or two slaves in Nevis.
00:06:42And his family did.
00:06:44Hamilton's mother, Rachel, had just fled an unhappy marriage when she met his father, James Hamilton.
00:06:48But under the terms of her divorce, she wasn't able to remarry.
00:06:51Which meant that Hamilton and his brother had to grow up with this stigma of illegitimacy, which was very real in those days.
00:06:58And so Hamilton goes through some really rough between birth and getting out of the island.
00:07:04When Hamilton was 11, James Hamilton abandoned Rachel and the two sons on the island of St. Croix.
00:07:10Not long afterwards, Rachel contracted a lethal fever, which she then communicated to Alexander.
00:07:17In the eye of a hurricane, there is a choir. For just a moment. The yellow sky. I was 12 when my mother died. She was holding me. We were sick and she was holding me. I couldn't seem to die.
00:07:39Hamilton suddenly found himself, at the age of 13, an illegitimate orphan in poverty. And so he immediately had to go to work.
00:07:48He worked for a trading charter as a kid. So he's getting first-hand economic education because the people who actually own it are off on ships trading. And he's in charge of the books back home.
00:08:00When I was 17, a hurricane destroyed my town. I didn't drive. I couldn't seem to die.
00:08:11A hurricane destroys St. Croix. He writes a letter about the destruction he saw, and it's so beautifully written that a newspaper publishes it.
00:08:21It was impressive enough and eloquent enough that people got together a charitable fund to send him to North America, to the North American colony, so he could get a real education.
00:08:30And that's how he gets off the island. He literally writes his way out of his circumstances.
00:08:34And it's so much the quintessential immigrant story of redefining yourself when you come to a new place.
00:08:39And the sense I got really early in Ron Chernow's Hamilton biography was the sense of, I know this guy.
00:08:46The fact that Hamilton left the Caribbean to come to New York to get his education, I always tell people, I'm just playing my dad in the show.
00:08:55Down to the hair.
00:08:57Tell me about coming to New York for the first time. What brought you here?
00:09:02I got a great opportunity to come and study at NYU.
00:09:07I left Puerto Rico when I was 18. I always thought Puerto Rico is just too small.
00:09:14I got to see more.
00:09:17I graduated, then I was involved in advocacy.
00:09:21But I realized that I wanted to do something different.
00:09:24So I joined the Ed Koch administration, mayor of New York City in 87.
00:09:30You know, in my experience, immigrants are never the lazy ones.
00:09:35They're not the stupid ones.
00:09:37They're the smart, hard workings because they have to work so much harder to make sense of their reality and succeed in that reality.
00:09:48I always saw my time here as a temporary thing.
00:09:53But then I realized that this is where I was gonna raise my children.
00:09:59Then we stay here forever.
00:10:01Hi, Puerto Rico.
00:10:02And that was it.
00:10:03And then you were a New Yorker.
00:10:04Alexander Hamilton is in New York just at the time as the tremendous ferment of the American Revolution is starting.
00:10:14On the common, what is today City Hall Park, Alexander Hamilton is delivering fiery speeches.
00:10:20He also had established his bona fides as one of the most feared polemical writers in New York.
00:10:27I really keyed into how much of a New York story it was.
00:10:31These blocks that I've passed all my life have all along been these incredible sources of rich American history.
00:10:37I don't think a lot of people know that.
00:10:39We think of the Founding Fathers.
00:10:41We think of them in some room in Philadelphia.
00:10:43You know, hashing it out.
00:10:44It's like a John Trumbull painting.
00:10:46But they were here.
00:10:47They were uptown.
00:10:48Like the Grange in Hamilton Heights on 141st Street, which is where Hamilton and his wife lived for the last few years of his life.
00:10:56This was Hamilton's study.
00:10:58And, uh...
00:10:59The right color.
00:11:00Right.
00:11:01Bunny green.
00:11:02This is a reproduction of Hamilton's laptop, or his traveling desk.
00:11:06He would write everywhere and anywhere.
00:11:08He rode under trees.
00:11:09He rode on, uh, on horseback.
00:11:11He rode in carriages.
00:11:12I mean, the tonnage of his writing.
00:11:14Exactly.
00:11:15The sheer amount that he had, he must have had something with him all the time to be writing on, because it never would have produced the amount that he did.
00:11:22Yeah.
00:11:23Oh, my goodness.
00:11:24All right.
00:11:25Can I touch the desk?
00:11:26No.
00:11:27No.
00:11:28Okay, I won't.
00:11:29That's cool.
00:11:30This just makes me feel like I had to go home and write.
00:11:33I started writing that first song that's just about his childhood.
00:11:39I wanted to sort of encapsulate that in two hip-hop verses.
00:11:44The strongest candidate is the candidate who wins the most elections.
00:11:48Barack Obama has won 29 contests.
00:11:51Hillary Clinton has won 13 contests.
00:11:53And I worked on it for about a year in the Heights while I'm still doing eight shows a week.
00:11:57Lin didn't say I was writing a show.
00:11:59Lin said I'm writing a song.
00:12:00So he said, I read this book, and I think there's something there.
00:12:04I think I might do a series of songs.
00:12:06I said, great.
00:12:07Go.
00:12:08I'd only written this one song when the White House called and said, we're doing an evening
00:12:13of the spoken word.
00:12:14But if you have anything on the American experience, that would be great.
00:12:18I said, I got a hot 16 about Hamilton.
00:12:21How does a bastard orphan son of a whore and a Scotsman dropped in the middle of a forgotten
00:12:29spot in the Caribbean by Providence impoverished and squalor grow up to be a hero and a scholar.
00:12:36The first day Lin brought the opening number of the show to me.
00:12:39I'm like, it's about history, but it's rap.
00:12:41Okay.
00:12:42Is it serious?
00:12:43Sure, whatever.
00:12:44I remember it wasn't until I actually heard it all the way through.
00:12:46I'm like, wow, this is real.
00:12:47There would have been nothing left to do for someone less astute.
00:12:50He would have been dead to destitute without a cent of restitution.
00:12:53Started working, clerking for his late mother's landlord.
00:12:57Trading sugarcane and rum and all the things he can't afford.
00:13:00Scaling for-
00:13:01When they posted videos of the evening, my performance went viral.
00:13:05And we were sort of off to the races after that.
00:13:07We realized there's a show here.
00:13:09I'm the damn genius that shot him.
00:13:11So I started writing songs at the amazing pace of a song a year.
00:13:21After two years of working, I had two songs to show for it.
00:13:24So you've written two songs in two and a half years.
00:13:26We're going to be very old by the time this is actually going to be complete.
00:13:30So why don't we expedite it a little bit?
00:13:32And so, you know, I'm writing as fast as I can, but that's how it gets done.
00:13:36You know, you set these deadlines and you meet them.
00:13:39I have more than once compared Lynn to Shakespeare.
00:13:42And I do it without blushing or apologizing.
00:13:45Lynn in Hamilton is doing exactly what Shakespeare did in his history plays.
00:13:50He's taking the voice of the common people, elevating it to poetry.
00:13:55In Shakespeare's case, iambic pentameter.
00:13:57In Lynn's case, rap, rhyme, hip-hop, R&B.
00:14:01And by elevating it to poetry, ennobling the people themselves.
00:14:05He is bringing out what is noble about the common tongue.
00:14:09And that is something that nobody has done as effectively as Lynn since Shakespeare.
00:14:14Yeah, I said it.
00:14:15How do you handle a financial situation?
00:14:18Are we a nation of states? What's the state of our nation?
00:14:20I'm fast patiently weighing. I'm passionate.
00:14:22He's smashing every expectation. Every action's an act of creation.
00:14:25I'm laughing in the face of casualties and sorrow.
00:14:28For the first time, I'm thinking past tomorrow.
00:14:30I write everywhere. I write on trains. I write wherever I can.
00:14:40And sometimes, a couple of days, I've written in Aaron Burr's bedroom.
00:14:45It's pretty amazing to be in the space where he was in the later part of his life.
00:14:50Talk about artists in residence, literally.
00:14:53This is my Hamilton writing desk.
00:14:55I sit here. I sit on the floor. I don't sit on the colonial furniture.
00:14:59Keep shooting off at the mouth.
00:15:02There's a song in the show called My Shot.
00:15:05And it's Hamilton's big sort of I Want song.
00:15:07It's the second song in the show.
00:15:09We see him make his group of friends.
00:15:11The Marquis de Lafayette.
00:15:13John Lawrence.
00:15:14Hercules Mulligan.
00:15:15And Aaron Burr, who is a colleague and a friend.
00:15:18And I'm sort of putting him into the song.
00:15:20Because these are guys who are oil and water.
00:15:22But they come up together.
00:15:23They're revolutionaries together.
00:15:25They're soldiers together.
00:15:26They're lawyers together.
00:15:27They're elected officials together.
00:15:29And at some point, one shoots the other.
00:15:32Yeah, I come out in the first three minutes of the show and I say I'm the damn fool that shot him.
00:15:39And so what that tells me as an actor is that that is not a secret that we're keeping.
00:15:47That's not a piece of the puzzle that we are hiding behind our back.
00:15:52So then what it's about is about the fracture.
00:15:56It's about watching where exactly the moment is that it all changes.
00:16:04Whereas Alexander Hamilton was an illegitimate orphan kid from the Caribbean who was born into shame and misery.
00:16:09Aaron Burr was really born into American aristocracy.
00:16:12It looks like he's going to have this very luxurious life.
00:16:16By the time Aaron Burr is two years old, his mother's died, his father's died.
00:16:21He's farmed out to relatives who bring him up.
00:16:24He then goes to Princeton College, graduates by the time he was 16.
00:16:28So that Burr was as much of a prodigy as Hamilton was.
00:16:32And so it's the first of many strange parallels in the lives of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
00:16:39A lot of the revising process is continuing to check in on that relationship.
00:16:43It is the most important relationship in the show.
00:16:45So right now I'm working on lyrics, working Burr into the second song in the show.
00:16:49There's a section where they're doing shots and saying what they would do with their shot.
00:16:55So Lafayette, whose command of English is not so great, goes with my shot.
00:16:59I dream of life without monarchy, the something stress in France will lead to anarchy.
00:17:08Anarchy.
00:17:09How you say?
00:17:10It's all anarchy.
00:17:11When I fight I make the other side panicky with my shot.
00:17:14My shot!
00:17:15And then Hercules Mulligan, who was a tailor's apprentice, says,
00:17:18My shot!
00:17:19Yo, I'm a tailor's apprentice, and I got young knuckleheads and local parentis.
00:17:23I'm turning up rebellion, cause I know it's my chance to socially advance.
00:17:27Instead of sewing some pants, I'm gon' take a shot!
00:17:30Um, and then Laurens, who is a fierce abolitionist, goes,
00:17:34But we'll never be truly free until those in bondage have the same rights as you and me.
00:17:38You and I do or die, wait till I sally in on a stallion
00:17:41With the first black battalion, I've another shot!
00:17:44And so now I'm working on Burr, sort of jumping in on this, going,
00:17:48Geniuses, lower your voices.
00:17:50If you keep out of trouble, then you double your choices.
00:17:53Shooting off at the mouth, shooting from the hip, shooting the...
00:17:56Just into something, shooty, shooty, shooty, shooty, shooty, shooty shot.
00:17:59And I haven't figured out how it works yet.
00:18:01Geniuses, lower your voices.
00:18:03You keep out of trouble, and you double your choices.
00:18:05I'm with you, but the situation is fraught.
00:18:08You've got to be carefully taught.
00:18:10If you talk, you're gonna get shot.
00:18:12And then Hamilton comes in, and...
00:18:15As was his genius, synthesizes it off.
00:18:18Bro, check what we got!
00:18:20Mr. Lafayette, hard rock like Lancelot.
00:18:22I think your pants look hot, Lorenz, I like you a lot.
00:18:25Let's hatch a plot, blacker than the kettle, call in the pot.
00:18:28What are the odds that God should put us all in one spot?
00:18:30Pop, let's pop in conventional wisdom, like it or not.
00:18:33A bunch of revolutionary man, you wish you an abolitionist.
00:18:36Give me your position, show me where the ammunition is.
00:18:39And then I want him to sort of stun his friends into silence.
00:18:42Oh, am I talking too loud?
00:18:44Sometimes I get overexcited, shoot off at the mouth.
00:18:46I never had a group of friends before.
00:18:48I promise that I'll make y'all proud.
00:18:50A little beat of silence.
00:18:52And Lorenz goes,
00:18:53Who's got this guy in front of a crowd?
00:18:55And then we go into the chorus.
00:18:57And I am not going away my shot.
00:19:00I am not going away my shot.
00:19:02And you won't just like my country.
00:19:04I'm not scrappy and hungry and I'm not going away my shot.
00:19:08We gon' rise up, time to take a shot.
00:19:10Time to take a shot.
00:19:11We gon' rise up,
00:19:12Time to take a shot.
00:19:13We gon' rise up,
00:19:15Rise up,
00:19:16Rise up,
00:19:17Remember that you can rise up,
00:19:18Rise up,
00:19:34Hamilton didn't really meet Lafayette, Lorenz, and Mulligan all at once in the same bar,
00:19:38bar but we're gonna meet them all at once because we gotta go we've got a lot of story to tell and
00:19:44we want to get you out before les mis gets out next door i'm a big fan of musicals that attempt
00:19:50to wrestle history to the stage and everyone writing a musical about history is standing in
00:19:55the shadow of sondheim and standing in the shadow of john weidman why do we go to history why is real
00:20:01life more interesting than whole cloth it's interesting because what happens is when you
00:20:05live through history you don't know it's history you know yeah and so you have to talk to john john's
00:20:10a historian i only write historical shows with john because i love going to school and learning but
00:20:15history i couldn't get into it as we say and i think maybe john was the person who got me interested in
00:20:21history very late in life in all the shows that steve and i have written together including assassins
00:20:26you reach a point i think where the research is over and you then invent the character who actually
00:20:32existed in history but they're still partly defined by what they did because that's that's the
00:20:36advantage absolutely and that's what the audience will bring into the theater with them so you have
00:20:40to be aware of that but they live in a kind of a penumbral area where they are who they were but they
00:20:45are also who you want them to be well that leads me to a really good bit of advice you gave me early when
00:20:51i was writing hamilton i was drowning in research and what you told me was just write the parts you think
00:20:57or a musical and that forms its own spine you'll be back soon you'll see you remember you belong to me
00:21:10you'll be back time will tell you remember that i served you well king george just sort of showed up
00:21:19in my brain it doesn't make sense on paper that he should be a character in this musical he's all the
00:21:25way across the ocean far from the events he and hamilton never met at the same time to give him
00:21:30these moments throughout the show robs the american revolution of its inevitability each piece of music
00:21:36is specific to an emotion and a character even though it's about history lynn has found a way lyrically
00:21:42and musically to connect it to now and so having the king george psychology be like a breakup song from
00:21:50britain to america i feel like makes it really relatable
00:21:53when you're gone i'll go mad so don't throw away this thing we've had
00:22:01cause when push comes to shout i will kill your friends and family
00:22:08to remind you of my love none of the shows we're talking about are documentaries none of them are
00:22:18are book reports with songs added i mean ultimately they're they're an artist's inventions yeah i got
00:22:24into the history through the characters john got into the history that surrounded the characters and
00:22:30then we met there he sparks me and i sparked him yeah or as george firth said i collaborer him and he
00:22:35collabbers me
00:22:50and then go to the chorus and then go to lauren's i made up live to see
00:22:54right and lauren's was the bringer of that the cabinet meetings are really my favorite part of
00:23:00the process they are when i bring in a song to my collaborators let's say the story of tonight
00:23:06and i go here's what i've written and then we pull it apart i don't want to lose that okay okay
00:23:13that's worth saving to me so does that mean started then not not started in the basement
00:23:17i wear a lot of hats in hamilton i'm the music director i'm one of the arrangers with lin
00:23:29manuel i am the orchestrator i am the conductor i am the keyboard player i take on all those duties
00:23:36just because i feel like i have such a strong opinion about how i think something should sound
00:23:41but also because i feel like i know what lynn is looking for i feel like i know how it is that i
00:23:46can execute his vision i don't think it's about tacking on another chorus unless you think it just
00:23:50needs that no i don't think we need it but i feel like andy's gonna have a million things to weigh in on
00:23:56choreography to me is the writing idea the lyric idea the emotional idea that then is exaggerated
00:24:03into a heightened state and it becomes physicalized what's amazing about our team is we're finishing
00:24:09each other's sentences all the time what lynn writes and alex arranges works for me choreographically
00:24:15and my ideas meet tommy's sensibilities so that's why our work can be seamless that's why it feels like
00:24:21one thing goes right into the next anything else with the hamilton washington back and forth you guys
00:24:25good i'm good okay um all right moving on as a very mediocre american history major i was exposed to a
00:24:32lot of these kinds of stories told in very different ways and what i wanted to try to do
00:24:38was remove any of the black and white nostalgia sepia tone and make this feel vital and vibrant
00:24:46here comes the general ladies and gentlemen here comes the general the moment you've been waiting
00:24:52for here comes the general pride of mount vernon here comes to george washington we are outgunned outmanned
00:25:01outnumbered outplanned we gotta make an all-out stand yo i'm gonna need a right-hand man
00:25:09we're meeting washington at the crux of the entire conflict um boston is over he's just lost new york
00:25:18his army is as close to being annihilated in that moment as you can imagine to meet him that way
00:25:23suddenly takes us out of the history books it takes us into the urgency of oh we might not win
00:25:29initially when the war begins there's a lot of retreating on the part of washington and what he's
00:25:34trying to do really is just keep the war going he's juggling how to get all of these soldiers out
00:25:39of harm's way and away from all of the ships that are still in new york harbor he has no one to turn
00:25:44to a pops hamilton have i done something wrong on the contrary i called you here because our odds are
00:25:52beyond scary your reputation precedes you but i have to laugh sir hamilton how come no one can get you on
00:25:59their staff sir don't get me wrong you're a young man of great renown i know you stole british cannons
00:26:04when we were still downtown nathaniel green and henry knox wanted to hire you yeah to be their secretary
00:26:09i don't think so now why are you upset i'm not it's all right you want to fight you've got a hunger
00:26:15i was just like you when i was younger head full of fantasies of dying like a martyr yes dying is easy
00:26:21young man living is harder it's really fair to say that without washington hamilton would not have had
00:26:28someone to enable him to achieve the things that he achieved conversely without hamilton washington
00:26:33wouldn't have had someone there to help him and advise him when you're in someone like washington's
00:26:38position you don't there aren't many people that you can truly trust hamilton had distinguished himself
00:26:43multiple times as a warrior it's probably one reason why he was frustrated that he was not then
00:26:49promoted as a warrior but then was promoted as a secretary and they became to george washington
00:26:58as you rally the guys master the element of surprise
00:27:01boom rise above my station organize your information till we rise to the occasion of our new mission
00:27:07here comes the general rise up what here comes the general rise up what here comes the general rise up
00:27:15what and his right hand man it's rare that you do a show where you have so many
00:27:33literal touchstones places that support the research that you've done it's helped keep the fire burning
00:27:38you know day after day doing the show eight shows a week and and being able to imagine yourself in a very
00:27:43real way in those same footsteps that would have been mr and mrs washington's room you're looking at
00:27:49just as they would have seen him i can't even imagine how much stress he must have been under
00:27:54i can't either all of them all those guys like how much stress they must have been constantly every
00:27:59day just you got 20 000 people out just right outside your door who are constantly you know
00:28:05trying not to die trying to figure out how to stay alive like literally trying not to die
00:28:11the front parlor would have been used by general washington's aide-de-camp's
00:28:15hamilton along with john lawrence they were the two prominent secretaries that work for washington
00:28:19here all the paperwork it took to administer the continent army is being done in this room here
00:28:25as washington's aide-de-camp hamilton's doing everything from sorting through intelligence to
00:28:30carrying out prisoner exchanges he's writing essays he's writing letters he's teaching himself about
00:28:35foreign currencies so he was really using the american revolution as a kind of crash course in
00:28:41history and politics just being in valley forge you realize how much ground they had to cover when
00:28:48he was like retreat attack retreat we're moving our men back it's like that's like miles that's like
00:28:54crossing state lines without a car or horse and carriage those are soldiers that are like foot soldiers
00:28:59the scope of it was just so much bigger and far more real yeah i'll be having reenactments out
00:29:06there yeah we do it every now and then we'll do cannon firing and that kind of thing will they let
00:29:10us fire a cannon we'll get you on a musket however you know there yeah that's nothing that's good
00:29:16you know i farted out of musket hamilton by all accounts was girl crazy and so throughout the
00:29:25revolutionary war he's not only searching for military glory but he's searching for the the woman of his
00:29:30dreams where are you taking me i'm about to change your life then by all means lead the way elizabeth
00:29:37schuyler it's a pleasure to meet you schuyler my sister thank you for all your service if it
00:29:43takes fighting a war for us to meet it will have been worth it i'll leave you to it eliza and
00:29:50alexander essentially met during a war hamilton was camped a couple miles away from the house that
00:29:57eliza was staying in this is the house where elizabeth schuyler came to visit with her uncle and
00:30:04aunt her aunt realized that you know it's hard to find a boy during wartime they've all gone to the front
00:30:11go visit auntie and meet her yes and she met the guy who was staying next door alexander hamilton
00:30:31everyone immediately noticed that hamilton and his future sister-in-law angelica were very enamored of
00:30:38each other hamilton met angelica first and oh their connection is actually really strong and intense
00:30:45and intellectual lynn actually credits angelica with being the smartest person in the show what
00:30:51she could do with her pen what she could probably do with the look was very very potent and probably had
00:30:58to be i've been reading common sense by thomas paine so men say that i'm intense or i'm insane
00:31:03you want a revolution i want a revelation so listen to my declaration we hold these truths to be self
00:31:10evident that all men are created equal and when i meet thomas jefferson i'ma compel him to include
00:31:15women in the sequel in this period women were still very much assumed to have a certain role but that said
00:31:23it's also important to note that the revolution politicized women it politicized enslaved people
00:31:29it politicized people who were there at the time living the revolution it's important to remember
00:31:33that's not just men who assume that the wives of the founding fathers also really had a place in
00:31:40history they worked as hard as the man did and abigail adams asked her husband to not forget the ladies
00:31:46look around look around and how lucky we are to be alive right now history is happening in the
00:31:54action and we just happened to be in the greatest city in the world in the greatest city in the world
00:32:02angelica
00:32:06i'm gonna fix myself a gin and tonic because the only thing in my fridge is tonic water
00:32:36and some ketchup there are three major projects happening right now it was our first day of
00:32:42rehearsal there's my infant child who turned two weeks old today and then there's the apartment which
00:32:48is finally ready um but now doesn't have people to help unpack it we worked really hard all weekend
00:32:55and this is as far as we got we start staging next week so we we have the week to learn all the music
00:33:0152 songs not including the ones i haven't written yet um today second song we taught was
00:33:06yorktown and hamilton's line then again my allies is expecting me not to mention my allies is
00:33:11expecting so you know we gotta go we gotta get the job done gotta start a new nation gotta meet my son
00:33:17like hamilton in that moment is actually where i'm at in my life it's like he's got one more battle to
00:33:24fight um before the war is over uh but he's also got a kid on the way and um his status depends on how he
00:33:33does um i'm in exactly the same place which is nuts um but i'm yeah i'm basically near the end of act
00:33:42one the battle of yorktown 1781 monsieur hamilton monsieur lafayette in command where you belong
00:33:54now you say no sweat we're finally on the field we've had quite a run immigrants we get the job done
00:34:03hamilton keeps badgering washington until washington gives him
00:34:06his first field command at yorktown and hamilton does not waste the opportunity he bled a bay net
00:34:13chart hamilton's men rose out of the trench under the glare of shells exploding in the sky above them
00:34:19they charged to the parapet of this fortification and within 10 minutes he had taken this fortification
00:34:25so hamilton who had dreamed of battlefield glory from the time that he was in his early teens suddenly
00:34:30has it big time at yorktown there were still skirmishes going on but for all intents and purposes
00:34:37the war ends with yorktown it's clear at that point who will be the the victor
00:34:46we booked a slot to open the show at the public theater home of hair and chorus line runaways
00:34:53passing strange countless other landmark musicals this is one of those nights
00:34:58where you feel the earth shake a little bit you feel the world start to change this is opening
00:35:05night of hamilton congratulations to all of you we've been working on this for five and a half years
00:35:11and here we are pushing it off into the world and to see people react to it and respond to it and be
00:35:17moved by this it's all you could ever hope for so we're thrilled my parents saw runaways on their
00:35:22wedding night this is in my blood
00:35:27i have never in my life witnessed a musical that has penetrated the american culture faster than
00:35:34hamilton it's called hamilton it's about alexander hamilton and it was at the public theater uh tarik
00:35:40you saw too right quest you saw yeah yeah what how amazing is this play it's life-changing
00:35:45after the first two songs you i looked to my wife and we're like this might be the greatest thing like
00:35:52we've ever seen ever and you kind of look around the other people saying like are we right like this
00:35:58is the best thing that's right we're all on the same but you can't say that because people are acting
00:36:03and performing but they're almost in tears we sell out our extensions as quickly as they go on sale
00:36:09and the decision is made pretty quickly we're going to broadway on sunday tickets go on sale for
00:36:16broadway hamilton richard rogers theater be there thank you for coming this afternoon
00:36:27our show opened on tuesday and the world blew up this is crazy i don't know what the future holds
00:36:36i know that our show opened and everyone freaked out that's where we're at
00:36:50we won we won we won we won we won the world turned upside down
00:37:04we won the world turned on down
00:37:24six years of labor these are the fruits i'm on stage with the fruits
00:37:32i've been a fan of the roots as long as the roots have existed maybe the most nerve-wracking
00:37:55performance i've ever done was when i knew amir and tarik were in the audience what immediately drew me
00:38:01in to hamilton was this was someone who you know was an mc in his own right sometimes in hip-hop we
00:38:08say real recognize real so um i could recognize immediately that that lynn was a real one and that
00:38:14this was a real story there's double and triple meanings and and layers upon layers i mean i've had to
00:38:21see hamilton eight or nine times to get references that i didn't get the first eight times that i saw it
00:38:28what what lynn was able to do is create different styles for each character so george washington
00:38:33raps in this very sort of metronomic way because that is similar to how he thinks it's all right on
00:38:39beat um you know lafayette has to figure it out lafayette is is rapping in a real like simple sort of
00:38:47like early 80s rap cadence at first and then by the end is doing these crazy double and triple
00:38:51time things in just two to four hip-hop bars you know sometimes they're more lyrics than in a whole
00:39:11you know classical song that's the crunchiest sound you'll ever hear on the beatbox both those lips
00:39:22are in detox yeah slapping the bass right now freestyling up in your face right now oh yeah
00:39:29because i'm gasping something because i'm right next to the ass of jasperson
00:39:32i grew up in the 90s and i think that's a golden age for hip-hop the lyrical dexterity of artists
00:39:39like mob deep and biggie and nas was just incredible when i was writing hamilton i listened to takeover
00:39:47and ether on a loop on a loop on a loop word hip-hop storytelling like like where do you start do you
00:39:53start with the story do you start with a lyric does it sort of unlock something else really i saw like a
00:39:59hole in the rap game you know all the rappers i looked up to were mega stars and um so if i wanted
00:40:05to put my little two cents in the rap game then it would be from a different perspective i thought
00:40:10that i would represent for my neighborhood yeah and tell this their story be their voice in a way that
00:40:16nobody has done it and i love the idea of telling the stories that you haven't heard told before and
00:40:22suddenly making that fair game because i think that's such an important part of expanding sort of the
00:40:28real estate that that hip-hop can cover yeah you know when it was my time it was like the phrase
00:40:33keep it real became the thing right so it was like tell the real story these things are my thoughts
00:40:39and let me express them it gives you freedom hip-hop no one can tell you you're wrong unless the rhymes
00:40:45are whack but but no one could tell you you're wrong because it's your truth yeah the hip-hop in the
00:40:52musical has gotten the most attention because it's the most novel and because hamilton sings in hip-hop
00:40:58but there's jazz soul r&b and just plain broadway show tunes as well hamilton doesn't hesitate
00:41:06he exhibits no restraint takes and he takes and he takes and he keeps winning anyway changes the game
00:41:15plays and he raises the stakes and if there's a reason he seems to drive and so you survive the
00:41:21god damn it i'm ready to wait for it wait for it speaks to burr and how he sees the world
00:41:29um a world in which he's seeing contemporaries who started further back than him lapping him this is a
00:41:36man who lost his entire family really and then lost even extended family i mean he he had one sister
00:41:44he even lost her if hamilton's response to loss is to go as fast as he can burr's response to loss
00:41:51is i'm not going to do anything until i know it's the right move i'm alive other people i love are dead
00:41:58there's a reason for that
00:42:06there's a reason after the war hamilton and burr qualified to be lawyers at almost exactly the same
00:42:26time they then move to opposite ends of wall street and they are the two rising young men in the new
00:42:34york legal establishment it was alexander hamilton who personally issued the call for a constitutional
00:42:41convention in philadelphia in may 1787 and gave a six-hour speech in which he proposed his own form
00:42:48of government in which he says that there would be a president who would serve for life on good
00:42:54behavior for hamilton to stand up and say you know hey let's get this guy in and sort of make him look
00:42:59like pseudo king life you know having just finished the revolution that was really controversial
00:43:04it's really after the constitutional convention that hamilton has his major impact on this debate
00:43:10and that is with what becomes known as the federalist essays it's going to confront people's biggest
00:43:15fears about this new constitution it's a commercial advertisement for the constitution i've read the
00:43:20federalist papers many times over as an elected official as a person who takes office
00:43:25by swearing oath to the constitution i pretty much want to know what that means right and so it's
00:43:31important not only to understand what the constitution is but to understand what the principles are behind
00:43:36it and that's why you look at hamilton that's why you look at the federalist papers that is the
00:43:41cornerstone of this beautiful idea we call the american experiment
00:43:44here we are back at the scene it's been a long way since 2009 yeah it's nuts the first lady tweeted
00:43:55last week alexander hamilton we are waiting in the east wing for you it's incredible it's incredible
00:44:00it's crazy it's very weird to have flotus quote your lyrics are you all excited yes i am i'm so
00:44:09excited well let me start by thanking the extraordinary performers from hamilton
00:44:21i saw the off-broadway version of hamilton and it was simply as i tell everybody the best piece of
00:44:27art in any form that i have ever seen in my life so thank you for taking the time out to spend an
00:44:34entire day here and to bless us with another performance today they've come here to spend the
00:44:40day with all of you i want you to take advantage of this time i'm not a really bright student in the
00:44:47history department i've learned so much from this musical that i wouldn't have normally learned in a
00:44:52history class and for you guys to convey history and name the manner that you did was that your initial
00:44:57goal to inspire kids like me in my high school we didn't have a theater program history was my drama
00:45:04program i saw each and every moment in history as the most dramatic moment ever which it was to the
00:45:09people who were taking part in it you might just take a second and look at it from the perspective of
00:45:14who's the protagonist who's the antagonist what's at stake you might find a world there to unlock
00:45:19here we are performing not just the opening number but an hour worth of material with our full company
00:45:29and our full band oh it feels like this sort of homecoming a full circle closing hey man mr
00:45:36president good to see you thank you for making time for us absolutely this is so much fun the first time
00:45:41you had me here was in 2009 right uh i was just supposed to sing something from in the heights i sang
00:45:46hamilton instead when you told us well i'm going to do a rap about alexander hamilton we said well
00:45:52good luck with that right yeah that's the typical reaction and uh after the performance i think all of
00:45:59us understood uh not only how much potential it had but what it did was capture the fact that you know
00:46:06the founding fathers were to some degree flying by the seats of their pants absolutely making it up as
00:46:12they went along yeah and the fact that the experiment worked uh was a testimony to their genius and you
00:46:19can draw a direct connection between what the founders were doing and what we do today yeah
00:46:27even today we really do follow the model of the executive from what washington established
00:46:33you know so many years ago the two-term presidency establishing a cabinet washington sitting at the head
00:46:40allowing for everyone to have their own influence in policy is uh is pretty significant he's going
00:46:46to have a very small cabinet and will turn out to be alexander hamilton as secretary of treasury henry
00:46:52knox's secretary of war edmund randolph as first attorney general and that thomas jefferson is secretary of
00:46:58state i think of jefferson as bugs bunny man i you know i think of him as this indefatigable winner who
00:47:06kind of comes in with incredible confidence um gets home he's already secretary of state and he's
00:47:12like all right well let's go is following us to revolution there is no more status quo but the sun
00:47:21comes up and the world still spins thomas jefferson has a lot to catch up on so when we meet jefferson he's
00:47:28still singing jazz songs and the rest of the united states has moved on to rap music and and he doesn't he
00:47:33doesn't know that nobody told him so what did i miss what did i miss virginia my home sweet home i
00:47:44want to give you a kiss come on i've been in paris meeting lots of different ladies i guess i basically
00:47:51missed the late 80s i travel the wide wide world and came back to this this is the whole war in france
00:48:00and comes back and is made secretary of state he was the perfect person to do this having come back
00:48:05from this diplomatic mission so it was his job to try to represent the united states and to let washington
00:48:10know about what he knew mr jefferson welcome home so what did i miss
00:48:28in jefferson's absence alexander hamilton has soared from obscurity to one of the top posts in
00:48:35government alexander hamilton as treasury secretary was deputy president in many ways
00:48:43hamilton has to create much of the federal government from scratch
00:48:46first budget systems first tax systems first custom service first coast guard first monetary policy
00:48:53first central bank which was the direct forerunner of the federal reserve hamilton had the core idea
00:48:59about uh an aggressive role for government to help build an economy hamilton created financial
00:49:07instruments that enabled people to trade and therefore facilitate the movement of capital
00:49:15while hamilton was treasury secretary there were only five securities traded on wall street three of
00:49:20them were treasury securities created by alexander hamilton the fourth was the stock of the bank of new
00:49:25new york created by alexander hamilton the fifth was the stock of our first central bank created by
00:49:31you know who alexander hamilton i look at alexander hamilton as the patron saint of wall street
00:49:39we're on the floor this is yeah we're living in hamilton's world here it's true and you know as i
00:49:45was coming down to meet you this morning i got the chills when you're actually here and you just
00:49:50visualize what was taking place 200 years ago it's quite extraordinary the problem was
00:49:56hamilton was the ultimate elitist he came from very humble background but he built an institution
00:50:04that concentrated wealth if you've lived through a period where the financial system has caused a lot
00:50:11of damage to the economy there's this fear fear over concentrated power and wealth and fear of the
00:50:18unfairness that might bring and hamilton's defining strength was to try to figure out what was the
00:50:23pragmatic solution in the interest of the most people what happens here has a direct impact on
00:50:31all of our lives we're all connected and the fact is is if you want that bridge built around the block
00:50:37from that school in your neighborhood you've got to raise money to do it more often than not it's going
00:50:42to be raised right here hamilton is picturing this robust strong central government that is the engine
00:50:50of finance and engine of democracy and unites our states jefferson is picturing this agrarian
00:50:56paradise where farmers are left alone and do their thing one could say that jefferson was could
00:51:03represent the populist interests at the time the small farmer the people living out in the country
00:51:09but were they forecasting a philosophical divide they run throughout a political system absolutely
00:51:15it becomes really clear and washington realizes this finally in 1792 things are not going so well
00:51:23between the two members of his cabinet
00:51:28so we're in the mansion's dining room and it's set for the 1790 dinner party of george washington and his
00:51:34cabinet it's set for that now it is set for that just if they walked in right now they would be ready
00:51:40a lot of people don't know that the fight over the debt plan and establishing a national bank
00:51:46it happened here the issue on the table secretary hamilton's plan to assume state debt and establish
00:51:53a national bank uh secretary jefferson you have the floor sir the states had borrowed heavily from the
00:52:00french from the spanish from domestic lenders to fund the cost of the war and there are these big
00:52:07debts there's 50 million dollars in outstanding federal debt 25 million dollars in state debt
00:52:13and hamilton wanted the federal government to assume responsibility for the state debt
00:52:19ow but hamilton forgets his plan would have the government assume states debts now place your bets as
00:52:25to who that benefits the very seat of government where hamilton sits not true oh if the shoe fits wear it
00:52:32if new york's in debt why should virginia bear it uh our debts are paid i'm afraid don't tax the south
00:52:38because we got it made in the shade jefferson's position is the southern states have ways of
00:52:44making income it doesn't make sense for us to bail you guys out hamilton's point being that a lot of
00:52:50the reason that you're okay is because you don't pay for labor where you are and uh you've got slaves
00:52:55working your farms hamilton insisted as a matter of national honor and to establish america's you know
00:53:01future uh greatness that it was imperative to pay off that debt in full if you assume the debts the
00:53:07union gets a new line of credit or financial diuretic how do you not get it if we're aggressive and
00:53:13competitive the union gets a boost you'd rather give it a sedative the fights between jefferson
00:53:19and hamilton that they had across this table are are the fights we're still having yes well i can't
00:53:24imagine what dinner around that table would have been like that night washington i'm sure is sitting
00:53:28there stone-faced trying to placate everyone at the same time hey turn around bend over i'll show
00:53:34you where my shoe fits madison jefferson take a walk hamilton take a walk hip-hop is a way for
00:53:43you know young men and young people to still uh test each other yeah to test each other without
00:53:48anyone being hurt and everyone you know can go back home at the end of the day but the stakes are not
00:53:54who's the best rapper the stakes are what direction are we going to go in as a country every rap battle
00:54:00sets a historical precedent that is the highest stakes you could have for a rap battle higher even
00:54:06than eight mile something that really sort of spoke to me when i was you know reading this story and
00:54:14beginning to research and write it is that moment uh when we trade away the capital in exchange for the
00:54:20debt plan and we call it the room where it happens um and what is what have you learned being in that
00:54:25room i mean we're in that room we're in the room where the sausage gets i'm in most of the rooms
00:54:30there's no doubt about it and you know what you learn is that everybody who comes to a room to make
00:54:36decisions they're bringing the constraints that have been placed on them by their constituencies and
00:54:44uh the only way anything gets done is if people recognize the truth of the person across the table
00:54:52two virginians and an immigrant walk into a room diametrically opposed foes you have to be able to
00:54:59get in their heads and see through their eyes in order for things to happen here's the problem
00:55:06mr president okay how are we gonna solve it i mean it's pretty simple they emerge with a
00:55:13compromise having opened doors that were previously closed check this out this is the room where it
00:55:21happened hamilton says you gotta help me pass my financial plan jefferson goes oh well okay come
00:55:26over for dinner i'll invite madison we'll work it out and now it's an office building and this is where
00:55:31the smokers hang out from this building the room where it happened no one else was in the room where it
00:55:41happened the room where it happened no one really knows how the game is played the art of the trade
00:55:49all the sausage gets made we just assume that it happened no one else is in the room where it happens
00:55:56a lot of that debate was not really a debate about central banking it was a debate about about power
00:56:03the federal government came in and bailed out the states and so i guess in that sense it was the
00:56:12first bailout what did they say to you to get you to sell new york city down the river did washington
00:56:20know about the dinner was the presidential pressure to deliver on paper what looks like a very dry history
00:56:25lesson hamilton traded away new york as the capital in exchange for the passage of his debt plan
00:56:34um but if you tell it from the perspective of aaron burr who is watching all these people leapfrog past
00:56:41him into power it's a thrilling dramatic moment and it's also the turning point for burr to stop hanging
00:56:49back on his heels and lean forward and say i want in on this life i i want to be in the room where it
00:56:57happens the room where it happened he's a super fan of the arena he's watching hamilton in there making
00:57:04things happen and this is the moment where he decides oh my god i gotta get in there
00:57:13i've got to be
00:57:26it's picturesque in a way that words can hardly describe it every corner of this place has another
00:57:48essence of calm it's beautiful washington had been serving for 45 years of his life and he wanted to
00:57:59return home and actually enjoy the fruits of the labor that he had invested in in the in the building
00:58:05and in the establishing of the government itself washington is revered as father of our country but
00:58:10our understanding of history goes awry when we only seek or or care to listen to one part of a story
00:58:16from the moment i knew i was going to be playing washington that was the first thing that came
00:58:21into my mind the slave question the reality of the fact that he owned people i'll never make peace with
00:58:29it i tried to till i stood in the slave quarters and and there's there's no way to reconcile that
00:58:34if anything it brings to bear the entire truth of of who this man was and uh some parts are ugly
00:58:43some parts are abhorrent but there's nothing that i can do to change those things and and there's
00:58:50nothing in my portrayal that would suggest that we forgive any of that you can't pretend that they
00:58:56didn't do things right i mean there was a country that was founded and we're sitting here um there
00:59:02were great things that were done but there were terrible things that were done and for me the best
00:59:06thing to do is to see both of them look at jefferson you know jefferson wants to to uh do this myth
00:59:14around the uh the yeoman farmer wow easy for a slave holder to say the interesting thing about him
00:59:23is that he is the author the principal drafter of this document that says all men are created equal
00:59:29and that is a paradox you don't have to separate these things with jefferson he can have written this
00:59:34incredible document and several incredible documents that we all sort of with with things that we all
00:59:39believe in and he sucks um you know i think those are both true and those have to be both true i think
00:59:47we really have to stop separating them because that's where you get into trouble that's when you stop
00:59:51letting people be whole people i disagree politically with a lot of rappers that i listen to you know
00:59:56what i'm saying there's like sort of rampant misogyny and homophobia and a lot of rap music that
01:00:01doesn't make them less brilliant rappers they're both true these are not perfect people these are
01:00:08deeply flawed people but they made contributions and i think what this means is we have to acknowledge
01:00:17right now in the 21st century how much of what we have today is built on the backs of people whose
01:00:26contribution never gets acknowledged what we're trying to do with the cast and the larger gesture
01:00:33of this show is say here's a group of people that you think you can't relate to maybe we can take down
01:00:40some of those barriers and allow a reflection to to be truer what i think is that there's something
01:00:49incredibly pure and fun about the casting that our imaginations really will let us take these leaps
01:00:58um and that we don't have to be so closed-minded especially in the theater that it can be about
01:01:06can be whatever we want it to be washington had an extraordinary american life i think the most
01:01:26extraordinary thing he did was step down the presidency ensuring that this american experiment would
01:01:34continue without him by modeling a peaceful transition from president to president he puts us eons ahead
01:01:43of every other fledgling democracy on earth
01:01:54we're going home
01:02:05history has its eyes on you yeah
01:02:07history has its eyes on you yeah
01:02:11history has its eyes on you yeah
01:02:24we're gonna teach them how to say goodbye
01:02:28teach them how to say goodbye
01:02:30i think it's so important to take george washington off the pedestal these were real people who lived
01:02:50and died i think one of the things we really tried to do with the show is show them all as flawed
01:02:54um there's no one who's there's no saints in the show not a one it's really logical to ask the question
01:03:03given all of the ways in which he's extreme what kind of a guy was hamilton um i would say to a lot
01:03:10of people a lot of the time uh he was an arrogant irritating ass
01:03:16his big flaw his inability to shut up his tenacity his drive they're all great things in the war it's
01:03:25great when we see him writing to congress and saying we need more stuff um but in the absence
01:03:30of a common enemy um that virtue goes inward they go from assets to flaws and that explains things
01:03:38like the reynolds scandal this young woman mariah reynolds shows up at hamilton's door one night
01:03:43she gives him this sob story about her husband who abandoned her she asks him for money she needs
01:03:49his help and he felt bad for her so he ended up giving her some money but that turned into
01:03:57an affair her husband ended up finding out about the affair and decided to make some money out of it
01:04:05hamilton forks over the blackmail money and continues the relationship for about a year
01:04:12the story leaks but with fuzzy details and hamilton gets accused of speculating in treasury
01:04:18securities with james reynolds so he decides he's going to write a pamphlet in which he argues and
01:04:25in his mind this is the truth that no no no he's a perfectly correct public figure he's never done
01:04:31anything bad as a public figure but as a private figure he just committed adultery and paid blackmail
01:04:35for it it really reads like a cross between a dissertation and a dear penthouse letter um he's not
01:04:41bragging but the language is complicated eliza was so traumatized by the publication of the reynolds
01:04:49pamphlet that she never publicly commented on what had happened what we have is a letter from angelica
01:04:57to eliza saying you married in icarus and he flew too close to the sun
01:05:02i'm erasing myself from the narrative let future historians wonder how eliza reacted when you broke
01:05:15her heart i love the notion which is true that eliza burned a lot of their correspondence she
01:05:30wanted hamilton to be known for his political act so i recast that burning of the letters
01:05:36as an act of anger and acknowledgement of betrayal she didn't really have options she couldn't just
01:05:47leave him she had eight children on top of that there were a lot of hardships the second act of
01:05:55hamilton's life centers around the loss of his child his eldest son philip is gunned down in a duel
01:06:01about hamilton the duel began over a disagreement because georgie eaker had said unkind things about
01:06:07philip's father as ridiculous as it seems that philip would go and duel for his father and other
01:06:14people would duel anyway back then you know it's the same as people going out and fighting somebody or
01:06:22you know because they said something about their mother or they said something about their family
01:06:26or their sister or their brother or their dad hamilton was absolutely unhinged by the death of his
01:06:35son and when you see paintings of hamilton from those later years he suddenly is aged tremendously and
01:06:42it definitely is a somber note to his final years can we get back to politics please yo every action has
01:06:50its equal opposite reaction john adams the bed i love the guy but he's in traction poor alexander
01:06:57hamilton he is missing in action so now i'm facing aaron burr with his own faction it could be argued
01:07:06that burr was not a very good politician in that election of 1800 when it's burr and thomas jefferson
01:07:13and burr comes really close to becoming the president of the united states he's backed in
01:07:18that race by two different parties that is how malleable his beliefs were people say boy burr is a
01:07:28handy guy to have with you in an election because he doesn't have really strict principles hamilton
01:07:33writes a letter saying he has no principles like why is that good this cannot be good it ends up that
01:07:39there's a tie between burr and jefferson gets thrown into the house to be decided and so there's
01:07:44hamilton facing the future of one or the other of these men who he really doesn't like are going to
01:07:48be president jefferson has my vote thomas jefferson becomes president aaron burr becomes the vice
01:08:06president when jefferson ran for re-election burr goes back to new york state and runs for governor
01:08:13only to find that he is again thwarted in his ambition by alexander hamilton and burr loses for
01:08:20for governor you know at this point burr flies into a rage it seems like at every stage of his career
01:08:26the man blocking his path of advancement is the same alexander hamilton
01:08:36alexander hamilton is the patron saint of our museum nice and so yes you're in hamiltonian country
01:08:43leslie but we'll do our best uh to try and give a little bit of a balance for you here as we go
01:08:49all around you original hamilton artifacts and some others we've brought up but why don't
01:08:53we take a look at some of the treasures that we have here awesome lynn leslie this is a book
01:08:59published in 1804 a collection of the facts and documents related to the death of major general
01:09:06alexander hamilton you want to read some of those or sure political opposition can never absolve
01:09:13gentlemen from the necessity of a rigid adherence to the laws of honor and the rules of decorum i
01:09:21neither claim such privilege nor indulge it in others bear one day reads in an albany newspaper
01:09:28that alexander hamilton at a dinner party has uttered a despicable opinion about him burr challenges
01:09:35hamilton to a duel a reply it's several pages sir i have maturely reflected on the subject of your letter
01:09:45of the 18th last and the more i have reflected the more i have become convinced that i could not without
01:09:49manifest impropriety make it the avowal or disavowal which you seem to think necessary
01:09:54hamilton could have ended the whole affair just by apologizing if he had inadvertently given burr
01:09:59offense it is evident that the phrase still more despicable admits of infinite shades from
01:10:05very light to very dark how am i to judge of the degree intended or how shall i annex any precise idea
01:10:12to language so indefinite if you and i were getting into something i would send you you know i might piss
01:10:17you off on twitter and then you send me a text and i send you a text back and then it's on i mean
01:10:23these guys had to they wrote long letters you know an impeccable penmanship there was so much time
01:10:31for it to cool off for it to not get to where it got to and it goes on can you imagine getting a letter
01:10:39like this back you're like wait i sent you a paragraph you know what i mean i have the honor
01:10:43to be a dot him i think from a modern outlook the practice of dueling makes absolutely no sense
01:10:51right because it means two guys go out onto a field in early morning and shoot at each other
01:10:56because they're angry at each other what does that accomplish right seemingly nothing but people didn't
01:11:02duel to kill each other which is a really hard thing to get your brain around they went to a dueling
01:11:06ground to prove that they were brave enough to be there and thus were men of merit your letter has
01:11:12furnished me with new reasons for requiring a definite reply i have the honor to be sir your
01:11:17obedient aid dot burr wow that's great that's fantastic lawyered it's burr looking at his life and
01:11:24saying wow at every point along the way my barrier was you what do you have to say for yourself
01:11:31hamilton smart ass as he is saying you're gonna have to be more specific than that i say a lot about
01:11:38you these are 18th century dueling pistols the first thing to do is you would pick up your weapon
01:11:46and you would keep it vertical and you would put some powder in and then you would take out the rammer
01:11:54you'd invert it and ram the powder down okay and there's so much time to apologize
01:12:05at dawn on a july morning in 1804 uh traveling in separate boats um hamilton and burr travel up the
01:12:11hudson river to uh weehawken across the hudson river from where west 42nd street in manhattan is
01:12:18hamilton had a lot of insecurities and vulnerabilities about his reputation because of his origins over the
01:12:23course of his life 10 times he almost got involved in a duel all of those times he negotiated his way
01:12:30out and and most affairs of honor that's what happened unfortunately with burn 1804 they don't
01:12:36manage to do that and we get to his final moments there's just him and this bullet coming at him
01:12:53and all the thoughts that can ping through his brain between that bullet leaving the gun and hitting
01:12:59him i imagine death so much it feels more like a memory is this where it gets me on my feet several
01:13:05feet ahead of me i see it coming do i run or fire my gun or let it be there is no beat no melody
01:13:13he does a tally sheet this is this is hamilton he thinks about um the things he's done in his life
01:13:23he thinks about the country he's leaving behind that didn't exist when he got there
01:13:29he thinks about the people he's gonna see on the other side lauren's leads a soldier's chorus on the
01:13:35other side my son is on the other side he's with my mother on the other side washington is watching from
01:13:41the other side teach me how to say goodbye rise up rise up rise up and then the last moment the snag
01:13:51that keeps him from going there is eliza because he leaves her behind with a lot and then he does
01:13:57it anyway he points his gun up at the sky in that final moment my love take your time
01:14:02i'll see you on the other side i'll see you on the other side
01:14:15raise a glass to free
01:14:28there's a lot more he could have done the fact that it went down the way that it did is a tragedy for
01:14:41both of them and for all of us you know it was a fighter and a survivor for a long time
01:14:50he had risen to a certain station in life by the time him and hamilton ended up on the grounds and
01:14:59weehawken he wasn't friendless he wasn't jobless i mean he had risen to that station based on
01:15:06relationships and based on accomplishments i think that our show is doing a really good job of
01:15:14reminding us that all of us are more than one thing now i'm the villain in your history
01:15:27i was too young and blind to see
01:15:33i should have known i should have known the world was wide enough for both hamilton
01:15:41and if that's all you're looking at is our worst act on our worst day any one of us could be painted as
01:15:51a villain it's really about the totality of someone how much time do we get on this earth
01:16:01we don't know they don't tell us at the outset how much time we get
01:16:04um it's something i've been sort of grappling with and terrified with i think we all grapple with it
01:16:11i think we all grapple with the paradox of knowing tomorrow's not promised but making plans anyway
01:16:20you know hamilton walked into that duel he had a lunch date with a client on the books that same day
01:16:26you don't plan for your life to end let me tell you what i wish i'd known when i was young and dreamed of
01:16:35glory you have no control who lives who dies who tells your story president jefferson i give him this
01:16:44his financial system was a work of genius i couldn't undo it if i tried and i tried
01:16:51hamilton built our modern economy and once we built it here in the united states the rest of the
01:17:00world looked around and said pretty good idea alexander hamilton i think is one of the more uniquely
01:17:06american founders because this man came from nothing and rose to the highest levels of serving this
01:17:13country he proved the condition of your birth should not determine the outcome of your life
01:17:18alexander hamilton is somewhere going thank you finally someone has given me the respect i created
01:17:26this whole fine i created what money is in the bank systems i i created all that i got no thanks for
01:17:33that it wasn't easy to get to where we are today but it was dictated by and led by a vision we're a
01:17:40blessed nation to have had our founders such remarkable men i think when faced with the incredible
01:17:48three lifetimes hamilton lived while he was on this earth it forces you to reckon with well what am
01:17:55i doing with my life that's the that's the thing you're always up against when you're writing something
01:18:01that's big it's god can i be proud of this at the end of the day if this show opens and closes in a day
01:18:08will i regret the six years i put into it the tony goes to hamilton
01:18:20i'm well aware that the outside part of my life the whole zeitgeisty moment that is happening
01:18:26if this were a movie there would be newspapers spinning and flash bulbs that's what this section
01:18:32of the movie would be and the tony goes to and the tony goes to tony goes to hamilton hamilton hamilton hamilton
01:18:45alexander hamilton was a dreamer i stand on this stage tonight surrounded by dreamers
01:19:02i keep waiting for life to go back to normal we've finished unpacking our apartment
01:19:11my piano's still out of tune haven't gotten around to that yet
01:19:15i knew that hamilton was going to change my life but i didn't anticipate how much we'd help hamilton's
01:19:25legacy in turn not just hamilton but also eliza for whom hamilton's legacy was so important
01:19:32i put myself back in the narrative
01:19:43i stop wasting time on tears i live another 50 years it's not enough
01:19:49hamilton captures the spirit of american entrepreneurship and making it and hustle
01:19:57i think if hamilton were alive today he would look back and say uh america succeeded beyond his wildest dreams
01:20:07you could have done so much more if you only had time and when my time is up have i done enough will they tell your story
01:20:18i feel like hamilton chose me he reached out of the chair now book and grabbed me and wouldn't let me
01:20:28go until i told his story i can't manufacture another hamilton i'll never write another hamilton
01:20:33hamilton is singular the man and the creation of the show i feel like my responsibility is just to sort
01:20:39of keep my eyes open and live it as slowly as possible because i am aware musical theater does not get off the
01:20:45arts page often um and here we are oh i can't wait to see you again it's only a matter of time
01:21:01will they tell your story
01:21:16will they tell your story
01:21:23who tells your story
01:21:31all right drop the beat
01:21:38oaks on the next train oh yeah and it's coming from downtown in uptown yeah renee's always breaking
01:21:44it down oh man throw me in the garbage because i can't compete with her decolletage
01:21:50man yeah i'm rapping in french i am the hench man i'm a mench really i'm a mench man yeah don't put me on
01:21:57the bench i'm the next man to get onto this freestyle cypher i'm a 25 to lifer i like you this is freestyle for
01:22:04the doc i don't stop i'm hip-hop yeah i got that chips and guac ah cause i'm spicy as hell oh yeah
01:22:11so you go run and tell that tell them i'm good at it too renee's a beast backstage she wouldn't show you
01:22:16every day every day he knows what to say
01:22:28and peggy
01:22:30and 경
01:22:31and
01:22:43and
01:22:44and
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