West Side Story: Spielberg casts films from the Latin American community

Steven Spielberg, director of the new film adaptation of the musical West Side Story, said he insisted on selecting actors from the Latin American community for appropriate roles. The 1961 film has been criticized for depicting Puerto Rican band member Shark as a white actor.

Spielberg told the was striving for a more authentic appearance. "The first thing I said was that every shark, male and female, had to come from the Latin American community," he said. Latinx is an alternative description of Latin or Latino and refers to Latin American descent or ancestry.

In September, to mark Latin American Heritage Month in the United States, the Annenberg Inclusion Imitative report highlighted the lack of representation of Latin America and Latin America in the film industry both on and off-screen, Variety reports.

Only 7% of the highest-grossing films of 2019 included Spanish/Latin American main/main actors, an estimated 4.2% of directors in 1,300 movies in the 2007-2019 survey. 

"We just wanted this film to work the way we want every Puerto Rican in the Latin American community, and that was a task from the start," Spielberg said in an interview with Tom Brook of Talking Movies on today's show. 

West Side Story is a love story ready in the 1950s on the Upper West Side of New York between two warring gangs of teenagers - the Jets and the Sharks. 

Their rivalry gets complicated when Tony, a member of the white Jets gang, falls in love with Maria, the rival sister of the Sharks. Spielberg has long been a fan but never directed a musical. "I thought I wanted to direct a musical because I knew I couldn't sing and dance," added the director of ET, Jaws and Schindler's List.

"It's a great way to dive into a genre that I would never physically have, except to be ready to tell a story in that language.