West Side Story’s Ansel Elgort and Mike Faist on Steven Spielberg’s Genius

With director Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story now playing in theaters, I recently got to speak with Ansel Elgort (Tony) and Mike Faist (Riff) about making the fantastic remake. During the interview, they talked about what it was like working with Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski on the cinematography, what it really takes to make a movie on this scale, what surprised them about working with Spielberg, what they wish more people knew about making a musical on this scale, which of their friends and family were the most excited hearing they’d been cast in a Spielberg movie, and more. In addition, Elgort shares a great story about what Daniel Day-Lewis did for Spielberg on the set of Lincoln. Based on the critically acclaimed 1957 Broadway musical with music by the legendary Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, West Side Story first made its way to the big screen in 1961. Directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, with a screenplay by Ernest Lehman, the film went on to win 10 out of the 11 Os