Evita as Cultural Symbol is the recurring idea of the book. Evita: The Real Life of Eva Peron both begins and ends with references to Evita's cultural prominence in the 1990s. A musical about Evita's life had been created by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber called Evita and this led Oliver Stone to become interested in making a movie about her, since the musical was enormously successful. While he was noncommittal for years, a movie was eventually made with pop culture icon Madonna playing Evita.