“All the fears a New Yorker should have”: Lin-Manuel Miranda on the reboot of the cult film “The Warriors” | Lin-Manuel Miranda

WWhat movie from your early childhood do you remember most? Probably not The Warriors, Walter Hill’s violent thriller about gang warfare in New York City. But as Lin-Manuel Miranda says with a grin, “Our friend’s older brother had a VHS…” That’s how four-year-old Miranda saw the film that Hamilton’s composer turned into a musical concept 40 years later. album with playwright Asa Davis.

He describes the vile mood in the room while watching the video. “Here’s something you shouldn’t see. But let’s see. This is what New York is Really like at night.” The 1979 cult film follows a Coney Island clan as they head home from the Bronx after being falsely accused of murdering the leader of the city’s largest gang. They face “all the fears a New Yorker should have,” Miranda says. “Falling on the railroad tracks. Wrong cop, wrong night. Walk into the wrong area at the wrong time and some crap comes up that has nothing to do with you.”

The film is anchored by a rock soundtrack with angsty synths and songs like Nowhere to Run played by a mysterious DJ “for all you boppers.” It was adapted from Sol Yurick’s 1965 novel (itself inspired by Xenophon’s ancient epic Anabasis about the Greek army’s return home), and Yurick made references to rock ‘n’ roll, the Beatles and pachanga music throughout his story.

The album followed the same pattern as Jesus Christ Superstar and Who’s Tommy, which were released on records before becoming stage musicals. The first one was our “north star,” Miranda says. “You listen and create a story in your head. The sounds are very character specific. Mary Magdalene is in 5/4 and sounds like the dreamiest folk song you’ve ever heard, and then “King Herod” is like a burlesque. You have this rock Jesus. And Judas has the coolest bass lines.”

Davis and Miranda put together playlists reminiscent of what a Warriors musical might sound like. When I ask what songs they chose, everyone pulls out their phone. We’re on a three-way Zoom call, and the minimal decor of the smartly dressed Davis contrasts with the cluttered shelves behind Miranda, whose baseball cap quotes Hamlet (“words, words, words”). They bring their original ideas to life: Roy Ayers, The Strokes, Cardi B, Ruben Blades, Beyoncé’s All Night. “Ms. Lauryn Hill is on Ready or Not,” Davis says. Hill was one of the casting successes, and it was here that the concept album format trumped the stage production: “We booked all these incredible artists that we would never have had for eight shows a week,” Davis explains. “So for the opening number we got to have Marc Anthony, Shenseea, Kim Dracula and all of our legendary emcees.”

The album kicks off with the thunderous “Survive the Night,” where dancehall star Shenseea DJs the five boroughs of New York City, each featuring top rappers. “Writing poetry for some of our greatest writers is very, very, very, very, very (give it five very,” he insists) daunting,” Miranda admits. In the case of Staten Island, he said, there was no “Plan B.” It had to be RZA and Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang Clan, who nicknamed their hometown Shaolin and even mentioned The Warriors on their debut album.

The album was executive produced by Queens-based Nas. “It’s Nas’s favorite movie too,” Miranda says. The pair were discussing another project when Miranda mentioned what she and Davis were doing, “and his eyes popped out of his head!” Miranda felt the pressure: “Do I have a Queens metaphor that he hasn’t tried in his long and amazing career?” He came up with a chess metaphor for the Queen’s Gambit, then “played him my verse, I did the vocals, and he listened to what I asked him to rap.” Nas nodded. “This is one of my proudest moments as a lyricist!”

In his novel, the all-male, “battle-ready” Coney Island gang “The Dominators” (renamed “The Warriors” in the film) form both a family and an army, their exaggerated masculinity leading to a veritable pissing contest. The film, released amid a wave of other gang films including The Wanderers and The Outsiders (which is now a hit Broadway musical), went halfway to generating sympathy for the gang – and omitting the gang rape scene that appears in the novel .

Miranda’s main change was to make all the warriors female. The decision was inspired by the Gamergate incident in 2014, which he characterized as “terminally online guys doxxing women who dared to like video games.” Such misogynistic behavior reminded Miranda of the film’s “malignant chaos” caused by Luther shooting Cyrus, the all-powerful leader of the town’s gang who was proposing a truce between the tribes; Luther then blames the Warriors. The Miranda and Davis gang share a sisterly solidarity as they essentially take back the night. Cyrus is now also a woman, played by Lauryn Hill.

The film is less violent than the novel, but it became the center of controversy after outbreaks of violence were associated with screenings in 1979. The Washington Post noted that “it’s hard to shake the feeling that the film is in some ways socially irresponsible.” Davis had never seen the film when Miranda asked her to collaborate; She reacted most to Cyrus’s offer of a truce at the beginning, which is then brushed aside as the action picks up steam. “In 1971, there was a real-life meeting of all the gangs in the Bronx led by Benji Melendez of the Ghetto Brothers. And another famous gang truce in 1992 after the Los Angeles riots,” she says. “So there’s something very real about that moment when Cyrus says, ‘Can you dig it?’ I’m like, “I Maybe dig!”

Davis, whose plays include the mixtape Angela, which features her aunt, political activist Angela Davis, as a character, turned the truce into a dream of peace that permeates the album. The 1971 meeting, she notes, helped shape “the cultural conditions that officially created hip-hop in 1973. There’s been a shift from a gang fighting other gangs to a team fighting other teams as an MC.” , like great dancers, like graffiti writers, like DJs.” She views the album as “a love letter to the origins of hip-hop.”

Collaborating with Davis gave Miranda a welcome contrast with Hamilton, “which I mostly wrote alone, sweating, in chronological order.” Working with Encanto soundtrack producer Mike Elizondo, they identified genres including ska, punk and R&B for each gang’s lyrics and found a way to portray the furies who never speak. Skinheads Turnbull AC from the Bronx perform salsa. “While the Warriors were in business, (label) Fania was revolutionizing salsa music around the world. And these artists mostly lived in northern Manhattan and the southern Bronx.”

Warriors features several former Hamilton stars, including Phillipa Soo, who was brought in to record the demo. “It was all very secretive,” she tells me. “And like a family reunion.” Hamilton alumni Sasha Hutchings and Jasmine Cephas Jones were there, as well as Amber Gray, whom Su met at her first professional gig after drama school. Their shared history helped forge a bond between the seven warriors and their newest recruit, Mercy, played by Julia Harriman, who, like Su, played Eliza in “Hamilton” opposite Miranda. Identifying so many different gang members was one of the main challenges. “The truly great writers,” says Su, “are able to capture an idea, an important plot point, or a character trait in a very short period of time.”

In the film, Luther was played by musical theater star David Patrick Kelly, who based his character on the New York Dolls after meeting them while working at the famous Max’s Kansas City nightclub. Kelly has a cameo on the album, playing a police officer. Miranda tried to write rap poems for Luther, “but the thinking was too regimented.” He was looking for a more chaotic energy. Davis suggested they use a metal singer, and Atlantic Records led them to the operatic growls of Tasmania’s Kim Dracula.

“I think everyone who listens to it is like, ‘What the fuck was that?’ – Miranda laughs. Luther’s demonic number Going Down compares stations on a New York City transit map to points in the Pac Man game where he portrays a ghost hunting the Warriors. (When Davis first watched The Warriors, she told Miranda, “It has to be a video game.” Being a superfan, he was one step ahead. “It is,” he responded. “I’m playing it!”)

The Warriors’ cult is so popular that fans even spend marathons retracing the gang’s route through the city. Miranda and Davis made their own way to the parks, subway stations and streets featured in the film, but they were doing a day walk rather than a night walk.

“We got to Coney at sunset,” says Davis, who grew up in Berkeley, Calif. “I really romanticized New York as a kid. This is the place where you go, like in the movie Fame, and dance on a taxi.” Miranda was born in New York a year after the film’s release. He recalls the golden age of ’70s films filmed there, including Dog Day Afternoon and The French Connection. “If you want the other side of love and peace in The Warriors, watch Godspell – you’ll see hippies singing about Jesus in the same places where the Warriors fought.

In the film, each gang has its own signature outfit, from Furies baseball uniforms to Warriors leather vests worn over their bare chests. When Miranda showed him at her film club, he put on a vest: “I had to go on a diet for a week!” The big question is: Will Miranda and Davis’ Warriors be able to suit up and take the stage? Miranda remembers the days when Hamilton tickets were gold. With The Warriors’ album, he says, “you’re not getting a soundtrack for a show you can’t see. You get what we did. It brings great satisfaction.” But he admits a theatrical version would be “huge fun” and they are open to the idea. All you boppers, the Warriors’ journey certainly won’t end here.