Romeo and Juliet: 'An incredibly great story'

October 31, 1996
Web posted at: 9:30 a.m. EST

From Correspondent Sherry Dean

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- The ultimate love story is once again being brought to the silver screen. But this time "Romeo and Juliet" has a modern look -- and it isn't "West Side Story." (1.2MB/28 sec. QuickTime movie)

Starring two of Hollywood's hippest stars -- Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes -- "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet" is a cross between music video, apocalyptic vision and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

Beyond the modern setting and grinding rock 'n' roll score, director Baz Luhrmann said his No. 1 goal was to make the story more easily understandable for modern audiences.

Check out the streaming Vivo movie "William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet." (2 min. 14 sec.) Download a player Vivo's technical FAQ

So Shakespeare's ageless prose is done with an American accent, a move that pleased co-star John Leguizamo, perhaps best known for his role as Miss Chi-Chi in "To Wong Foo: Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" (1995).

"What we tried to do with the Shakespeare was instead of making it sound, you know, so histrionic, British and European, we tried to make it sound colloquial," said Leguizamo. "We tried to talk in our accents. Leonardo in his L.A. kind of sound and me in my New Yorkish kind of sound."

Luhrmann, who drew rave reviews for his debut film "Strictly Ballroom" in 1992, explains it another way.

"It's just an incredibly great story with this amazing street language," he said. "It's not about being Shakespeare or not (being) Shakespeare."

For Danes, at age 17 already a veteran of a half-dozen films and the TV drama "My So-Called Life" (1994), the hardest part was not the language, but the tragic ending.

"It was so frustrating. Even while we were shooting the scene, I was like, 'Can't we just shoot a happy ending, just to know that there's a happy ending on the shelf out there?'" Danes said.

The 21-year-old DiCaprio, a best supporting actor Oscar nominee for "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" in 1993, said he was drawn to the film because of Romeo's strength.

"He was written as one of the original rebels," DiCaprio said. "But in his world, he's rebelling against hate."

Still, there have already been nearly a dozen previous versions of Shakespeare's 400-year-old play, including Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 classic. Do we really need another? "Romeo and Juliet" co-star Harold Perrineau thinks so.

"This film is going to communicate to people now," Perrineau said. "You can keep reinventing it and rethinking it. You can keep changing the surroundings and the circumstances and the piece is still going to be timeless."

Related sites:

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• Romeo and Juliet Home Page (from Twentieth Century Fox)
• Romeo and Juliet Page (The Hammer Entertainment Center)
• Romeo and Juliet (script from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare)

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