'For the culture': The moment arrives for 'In the Heights'

NEW YORK: As a student at Wesleyan, Lin-Manuel Miranda began writing what would become "In the Heights,” the musical that would launch him as a playwright and performer and that would lead, two decades later, to Jon M. Chu’s upcoming lavish big-screen adaptation. He was motivated, like any confident young artist, by ambition. But also by something else.

"It was a lot of fear, honestly,” Miranda said in a recent interview. "I had a real wake-up call when I was 18, 19 and starting to study theater. The fear was: I’m going into a field that has no space for me, that has no roles for me. It was sort of that thing of: No one’s going to write your dream show. The cavalry isn’t coming.” When "In the Heights” opens Friday, it may feel very much like reinforcements are arriving. The movie, a street-level song-and-dance spectacle to rival the MGM musicals of old, is an exuberant celebration of the Latino immigrant experience, of a diverse neighborhood, of a teeming summertime New York, of life.