Kenny Ortega: Musical TV and Movies to Inspire Generations

     From the moment he started to right now, Kenny Ortega has never failed to create, direct, and produce absolute magic on the screen. Every big thing he has made has inspired people, young and old, to remember that there is always magic (and music) in everything that you do, even if its something as small as going to high school or taking your sister trick or treating, all the way up to becoming a queen or doing a life changing performance at a high level venue. He has been credited as one of the best filmmakers and directors to work with by almost everyone who has worked with him and so far, he has never produced something that didn't become popular in some way. So how did he get to become as good as he did, and how does he continue to do it?

    Kenny Ortega started as an actor himself, especially in musicals, performing in things like Oliver! and Hair before he made the transition to choreography and directing. In his early career, he mostly worked as a choreographer, even turning down the leading role in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar, and he worked for live bands and performers out in California, but eventually he was also working on movies including Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. He also worked as a choreographer for music videos for stars like Madonna and Michael Jackson, and even choreographed many of Michael Jackson's live performances and tour dances. He made his directional debut in 1992 with the Disney musical Newsies, followed closely with Hocus Pocus in 1993. While Newsies is a beloved musical, Hocus Pocus was really the first example we see of movies and TV shows that set a tone for a generation and almost gained a cult following. To this day, the movie is an expected one to play on a cable channel during the month of October and is a classic family tradition to be watched during the Halloween season as well. At this point, Ortega was well known and well liked, and he had gained a reputation as a highly creative individual with a talent for directing and choreography, as well as an ability to work with all kinds of people to create incredible things with them.

    The next big conquest of Kenny Ortega was the wonderful High School Musical trilogy, which is a favorite of many people who were born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a generation that many refer to as "zillenials", not quite millennial, but not generation Z either. This was the perfect audience to receive High School Musical and it was, and still is, extremely popular. Many actors, like Zac Efron pictured above, have Kenny Ortega to thank for helping to jump start their career. Ortega both directed and choreographed all three films, and thus really made the trilogy what it was: something that was fun and entertaining, but also had morals and life lessons in it in a way that a young child was able to understand. I myself remember being inspired by the students being able to break out of their traditional and stereotypical high school roles and become something greater while still maintaining who they were. I grew up on these films, and can attest to how much they shaped my generation (although I was very upset when people didn't randomly break into song when I started high school). 

    Up next came the Descendants trilogy, which was an ingenious way to take old fairytales and make them modern, making them to be something that the generation is was marketed to, generation Z, would be able to understand and be interested in. It took classics like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and flipped the script in a creative way to make us pay attention to the villains and more specifically, their children. The movies carried the underlying message of how dangerous it is to make assumptions about people based on something they can't control, and how unfair it is to separate people based on those assumptions. Ortega tackled major world issues with this trilogy and made them something a young person could understand, likely leading to planting a seed in generation Z to fight things they saw unfair. Most recently, and my personal favorite, is a new TV show called Julie and the Phantoms where a teenage girl suddenly finds herself friends and performing with a band of ghost boys, trying to help them achieve their dreams. The TV show is amazing with representation, having characters that are people of color and those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, but not making the show revolve around that. Its just a normal part of the show, as it should be. This show is perfect for the times and makes it easy for children to understand representation and grow up on it, and for children to see someone who looks like them living the dream so they know that one day they can do it too. 

    I bring all this up because I wanted to point out two things: the motivation and the collaboration. Kenny Ortega is motivated all on his own to create these things. Sure, people will come to him with ideas, but ultimately he is the one who brings them to life and makes them the voice of a generation. He is intrinsically motivated to make sure there are life lessons to be learned in everything he makes, and he makes it a point to put proper representation into his projects the best he can. No one is ever asking him to do these things or making him do them, he does them because he wants to and because he knows its the right thing to do. He never wants to make something that won't leave people feeling happy at the end and also like maybe they learned something along the way, even if they haven't realized it yet. It's also important to point out the collaboration. The reason people keep hiring him back is because he is such a joy to work with and he heavily includes other people in his creative process. He wants to ask his actors what they think and what they want to include. Yes, he is intrinsically motivated, but any extrinsic motivation that comes out is coming from the desire to collaborate. I don't think anything he made would be nearly as good if he didn't actively work to collaborate and include everyone on set in his process. Its what makes the chemistry between actors so powerful and what makes the scenes so believable. Everyone is happy to be at work and working together, and I think Kenny Ortega is a big part of that. 

    So how did Kenny Ortega get as good as he did and continue to do it? Because he works with other people to make sure he is always keeping up with the times and never getting stuck in his old ways, and allowing his intrinsic motivation to flow through him to continue to make life changing projects that kids will remember well into their adulthood, and probably their whole lives. (Like me. Go Wildcats!)

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Recommended Works to Watch:

-Newsies

-High School Musical

-Descendants 

-Hocus Pocus

-Julie and the Phantoms

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Sources:

https://variety.com/2019/biz/spotlight/descendants3-director-kenny-ortega-receives-star-hollywood-walk-fame-1203275882/

https://www.dga.org/Awards/History/2000s/2007.aspx?value=2007

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Ortega