Page 7 - Pop History: Romeo + Juliet

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

We explore the making of Baz Luhrmann's 1996 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.Want even more Page 7? Support us on Patreon! Patreon.com/page7podcastKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What song from the soundtrack do we probably? Young hearts run free. Now, so that door, te do. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Love me, love me. Say that you love me. Feel me, feel me, feel me. I had a dream last night.

I can't get about that. I like that. I like that. It was really good. It was really good. Jackie, you do the love song that the choir sings? No, I won't. That's because I can't sing the way the children sing.

I can say, be not so long to speak. I long to die. All right, Bella, please. Oh, I long to die. She is being a bit of a Bella in this movie. Don't you, I mean, I don't, I know it's been a minute. We're not going to talk about just Twilight. I know that I do usually turn everything into Twilight.

but she is obsessed with Romeo and Juliet, so... What? It came from something. I'm serious? I will say, watching Romeo and Juliet, I honestly have to admit, I maybe saw Romeo and Juliet back in the day I was not obsessed. I saw it like once, but I appreciated it. But I was also like, again, I think this speaks towards the what was for girls and what

was for boys. Oh, 100%. And watching it again, I, A, thought to myself, thank God I'm not a teenager anymore, but also thought to myself, holy. shit, Bos Lerman captured being a teenager in a motherfucking bottle so perfectly and also managed to probably do the most faithful filmic version of a Shakespeare play. Right. And the sense that we'll get into soon about really what Shakespeare actually was about as an entertainer, as opposed to what I think is the bizarre, um, snootiness, gatekeepingness

of the Shakespeare lover. I think he was much more of like. like a punk rocker than anything else. Or like an artist, a musician. He was just poor as shit. He was writing about what he imagined the rich lived like. And he wrote for the people. So that's why it is. It does bridge the gap between classes or that is what his intention was eventually.

Because, you know, the globe, he's like performing, they eventually performed it at the globe and that kind of stuff. But at the time, William Shakespeare didn't make fucking shit. Yeah, and first of all, she didn't make shit. Interesting. She, the bard is a woman. You haven't heard that theory? Or that the bard is like 12 people. Yeah, yeah, either way.

And we will be referring to him as the bard all episode as well. Yes, that is right. Holding the Shakespeare love a disappeared before you. This really did bring my Shakespeare nerd out, but also brought my re-brought out my hatred of Shakespeare nerds. And I love how, because, okay, another element for me that I thought a lot about was my theater teacher hated this movie. And by the way, thanks, Mr. Stalworth. It was really great for you to hate on this movie. It was maybe the one way you could have gotten your class into Shakespeare's work.

I think you're right. But he hated this movie and he hated the scream acting, but I'm going to go ahead and say the scream acting is, again, lightning in a bottle of being a teenager. And even though it does seem a little extreme, it is actually like watching Claire Tade, screaming the top of her lungs, like in that kind of ladder part of the baby. I was just like, oh my God, I feel like a teenager again all of a sudden. She longs to die, man.

I get it. He kind of knocked it for like the scream acting and this, that, and the other thing was like, it's not a, you know, whatever, like being a snooty Shakespeare person. And again, it was like, I think, A, he's wrong. And B, that, like,

that was the perfect cross between. What's interesting to me is thinking back on like what Shakespeare would, bring to the globe. And I'm also going to go and throw this Shakespeare nerd thing at you guys. I saw a play at the globe. And I will say this right now. There are two instances when I felt like I fully understood a Shakespeare play in a sitting of one. And that would be Taming of the Shrew at the Globe and this motherfucking movie. And I want to relate the two because again, I do believe that Shakespeare wrote his plays for the groundlings. And that is like I was in the groundlings.

you're standing the whole time, but you're right up front. They're not playing the play to each other. They're not indulging. They're actually playing the play to you, and it's a lot of audience involvement, and there's a lot of effort to grab the attention of every single person in the audience,

whether you're in the top stands, whether you're the queen, or whether you're this dude covered in dirt trying to just get that play, play, play, lay, from them sex workers down there in the mud pits. Everybody was engrossed. And I think that this movie is the only time I have felt that. And yes, I am including Kenneth Braunaz Hamlet in that.

I'm including a lot of really well-done Shakespeare productions. This is more like Cold and Ranspeare. It is. I'm done. I've said my piece, but also. I do have a question. So when you saw Taming of the Shrew with the Globe, were people having sex in the mud down front?

Because it would be very interesting to watch them still try to maintain. the attention of the audience while sex workers are working in the mud in front of the stage. I say you should fully cosplay it. If you're going to do it, do it right. Do it all the way. So there was an actual person giving a person blowjob, but there was a guy walking around with a bunch of pocketpossies going, blow jobs, got your blowjubs, eh? And you would buy a pocket pussy

and you could fuck the pocket pussy while... It's quieter than getting an actual blowjob. It's like the Renfair version of that time period. It is as horned. as a Rhin fare is absolutely 100%. And it's phony. It's not realistic to the reality. But you're right. It is holding ranch spear much.

What about you two? Because I feel like this movie connects even deeper with the two of you. Connects to my fucking loins. This is Natalie's loins. Fully and completely. We talked about this. So this is a part of this, Romeo and Juliet is part of the Red Curtain trilogy of Bos Lermens,

which is strictly ballroom, Romeo and Juliet and Moulon Rouge. Now, I do think that the slight age difference between us of just the small amount that it is, I was obsessed with Moulon Rouge in the way that you were obsessed with Romeo and Juliet. Now, I do love Romeo and Juliet. I love this fucking version of it, and especially now watching it as an older person, as someone that the last time I watched it,

I was definitely more in the like theater nerd part of my life. So I thought that it was cool and fun, but I didn't think that it was what I wanted from my experience with it. Right. And that's dumb to say because it's hot and shit. I agree with you. Yeah, I was in the exact right age group for this movie to, this was made for me because I was, I think, 13 when this came out. So I saw it in the theater. It was my complete and utter sexual awakening.

It was my fashion decisions for several years to come. It was the soundtrack was everything to me. And also one of my first CDs I've owned. And I still love that fucking soundtrack. And I was trying to find a picture. I hopefully I can find it to put it on Instagram. But I had no idea that all of the imagery from it was completely religious because I had no experience in religion. So all like the religious iconography that's like on the CD case.

The Virgin Mary. Sacred Heart. I thought that was just from the movie, and I was obsessed with it, and I had painted on my childhood dresser and nail polish, like, huge. And it was, like, I was obsessed with this movie and with wanting to kiss Leonardo to Casaro. Yeah, so this is, was this, did you, were you into Leo before that? No.

Did you see Basketball Diaries? Did you want to fuck him in who's eating Gilbert Grape? Oh, yeah, that was it. It was the Gilbert Grape that did it. He's very talented. Oh, my God, yes. Even though you can't do that anymore, he fucking crushed that part.

That's a great movie. You should go rewatch it. It's so, it's good. It's good. It's one of those movies that just puts me to weird movie. Yeah, but Johnny Depp in that movie, hubba,

bu, blah, blah, blah. I did watch that movie way too often, but I did it for Johnny Depp between that movie and Benny and June. Oy, y, y'all, you don't even get me started. But I will say, I didn't really realize how into keeping

keeping Romeo and Juliet present in the script of Boz Lerman's adaptation of it that Boz Lerman really wanted to keep it. I don't think that that sentence made sense, but I think you get what I mean by it. He wanted to stay faithful to the original works of

William Shakespeare, and actually his intention was, I want to make, and I have the quote and I'm sure I'll read it in a little bit, but I want to make a movie that I, the movie that I think Shakespeare would have made. I think a lot of people misconceived it and thought, oh, this is Bos Lurman, like, coming in and lermining it up and like fucking it all up and making it crazy. He wasn't Lurman yet.

This was, because Strictly Ballroom was not this style at all. No. I saw Strictly Ballroom as a little kid with my grandma in the theater and I loved it, but it wasn't this sort of hyper-colored, co-ed-up. Pop culture. Yeah, it's more about, it's like more of like a nerdy movie, if anything. And with this, he's just like, and people say MTV, which is, funny because he kind of laughs at that because he's like I never worked at MTV,

like I never like made it like thinking it was an MTV movie, but the way that he speeds things up and the way that the camera goes, sometimes you feel like you're watching cribs. I mean, yeah, it's like you're on a bunch of drugs. Yeah, the way the camera moves, it just goes, but this was the introduction to his style. Like people associate Moulon Rouge, I think, with him more than anything. But Romeo and Juliet was when he showed the world that he had this kind of imagery in him.

Well, and also the layers that he added, because you're bringing up how he created religion inside of the movie in a way that is a pop culture version of religion. That made me a 13-year-old very horny and had no idea. It was religious. But really, it's the idea of piety versus consumerism versus classism. And the way that down to every single thing that the people were wearing were all prod. Gucci, El Laurent. So good.

The fashion was there. I can't wait to talk about the costume design. Oh my God. But it's, I read multiple, like, doctorate essays talking about this movie. Like, like, that kind of shit. Of people have been studying what he did with this movie and comparing it to all the different iterations of Romeo and Juliet that it, it holds up. And in fact, many people do believe that Boslerman did do his intention in modernizing a tale as old as time. Yeah, 100%. And he did a great job with it. And actually, and actually,

like we were talking about before we started recording, he captured what it actually means to be a, like a sullen teenager, overly dramatic in love. And when a lot of the other Romeo and Juliet iterations came around. They tried to make it like soft and sweet and romantic. And in reality, it's a hysterical thing to do. Right. Everything that they were doing were based on wanting to fuck each other essentially. It's just that that it captures the absolute horniness that it is to be a teenager in a bottle. Yeah. And the rage. And the rage. Yeah. Just the absolute hormones. Also recognizing that Shakespeare was making fun of young love. Yeah. And Romeo and Julia. It's not supposed to. be, no, it's not supposed to be like this true romance.

It's the idea that he was in love with Rosalind and that he would die for her and then cut to snap hours later. He's in love with Juliet and he will die for Juliet and she will die for him as well. And it is the idea that young love, although it is beautiful, it's dumb as fuck. Yeah, and also as an adult watching it, that very classic amazing scene where they're seeing each other in the fish tank and this is when they're falling in love, me as an adult going, he is tripping face right now. Like, they are fucking, he's on drugs.

I've been at a party on drugs like that and seen someone, and she's, yeah, and she's dressed like an angel and he sees her in the water. This is nonsense. Like, they've, they decided to get married, they've never even seen each other in street clothes before. Right, right, right. And also, I want to, I also wanted to mention when we were. talking about the religious iconography.

Also, the setting of this is American mafia setting, right? And I think speaks towards the interesting things that happen with mafia and Italian, like, Catholicism intenseness. And yet they're still like, they're like murdering left and right and with, you know, blasts people away, but also. When they're throwing a party, they're throwing a party and they see the enemy. They're like, you're not ruining my party. Let them have fun tonight.

We'll fucking kill them tomorrow. You'll kill them tomorrow. what does it matter that the idea of partying is higher up on their list of being faithful to their religion? So it is tongue in cheek, even down to the fact that they filmed the part of the movie in Veracruz, Mexico, which the city whose full name is La Via Rica de la Veracruz, which is the rich town of the true cross. And so the idea, like, down to where they said it, Lerman was trying to really show that religion is. is bullshit or at least get across the idea. That it's hypocritical and- That is hypocritical.

It's not bullshit, it's hypocritical. I think it's bullshit. Especially when up to a point that you are having neon signs of your crosses. But how cool are those crosses though? Give me a neon cross. What was it about the 90s and the neon cries? You also had like seven.

I feel like there were so many movies that had that neon creepy crossing. And I don't know why it creeps me out so much. It's exactly what Jackie's saying. It's taking this horrific image that's been turned into an ideology thing and then making it like... Like snazzy. Yeah, making it like, what's it called? Cnazies is a good word for it. Making it available to purchase, essentially.

Right, right. Yeah, it's very, very fascinating. And again, I want to just go back to, at the end of the day for me personally, I judge the worth of a Shakespeare production on how well I understood what was being said. at all times. And I think that this film, A, is amazing that it stayed faithful to the original dialogue, especially considering that this was like a massive risk to take for your next big movie, really your first big movie, now that your names on the map with Strictly Ballroom, to stay faithful to it. And then to pull that off really well, I'm going to say, you know, as wild and just poetic and iambic pentameterie Shakespeare's prose is,

now difficult it can be to unpack. I don't think there was a sentence in this film that I didn't fully comprehend within the scope of what was going on. And that is so rare for me. So, so rare. I've seen so many Shakespeare productions. I've studied Shakespeare's plays

and I'm not going to sit here. And I think a lot of people like to sit here who have done that and be like, oh yeah, I totally understand the bard's work and everything at these. You know what I mean? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And honestly, again, I've only seen two productions

where I actually understood what the fuck was being said. and this was one of them. Yeah, I think the direction of it was done so well. And also the portrayals by the actors are so good, especially for some of them being so young. Especially Mercutio. And I'm going to go and say, I will also say, though,

there is a lot of scream acting, and I definitely give it a pass because I do feel like it captures being a teenager, but there is a lot of screen acting. There's a lot of screen acting. I mean, I got to tell you, Harold Parano, like, his performance. Mercutio, yeah.

Incredible. Beyond, again, the sexuality awakening of him in drag as a kid. And, of course, we got to mention darling wasamo. Woo! Yes. But him doing that, the, what's it called? Is it a soliloquy? Whenever he's doing the, about the...

Yes, I believe that is a... Well, it's a monologue. A monologue is to no one. And a monologue is someone... Wow, now we got to... the real one in the three hours. Yeah, you want to attack some theater. All right. Excuse me. You have a

theater degree. This is the only time it comes in handy. That is speaking out to an audience and, you know, and speaking up and out. That's it. Well, his monologue about you know, when he's telling the tale of the fairy queen and he's

taking drugs and he starts screaming into the ocean, I still just love it so much. I'm just like, give me more of it. Please. He does some scream acting, but he also finds the levels really well. Definitely. And I will say the quiet moments in this, too, are very well done.

Either way, all right, we should definitely get into it. We have gushed the gush. Now, let's slush the slush. Let's slush the slush. Because Holden is about to go down theater row right now. Oh, yeah. You want to start with the Bard's original works. Oh, no.

Oh, no. The Bard is here. Before we get into Baz Luhrmann, let's talk about the Bard. though these two characters are now timeless archetypal lovers, of course I'm talking about Rumi and Joliet. Whatever. Their tale was borrowed from a lot of influences, particularly that of Pyramus and Thesby and Obitz Metamorphosis,

and I AD'd a production of that back in college, by the way, just throwing it out there so I may actually have some more theater nerd cried than Jackie. Whoa. I was in a gender-bent performance of the birds by Aristophanes, and I was the lead in it. So... Is this a real Shakespeare offer? Yes, absolutely.

Except that was Aristophanes. But still, oh, wow, cool. Before we talk about Dulce and Gabana, Jackie and I will be competing for biggest Shakespeare nerd, and then we'll get into that stuff. And also... You win Shakespeare nerd. I will give you Shakespeare nerd.

Also, in ancient Greece, the story of Fisiaca... Efeciaca, contained a separation of lovers. He doesn't even know how to say it. And it also... And it also contained a potion that gives one death-like sleep. And all these things are going to come together a little bit later. Dante mentions, by the way, Montecu's and Capulets in his divine comedy. Dante, of course, Italian.

And he stated in the Divine Comedy, one lot already grieving, the other in fear. And has them locked in endless warfare, even though that was based on a, there was no lover thing or anything like that. It was like a political thing in his book. But either way, I think it was pulled from there. I didn't realize that. The actual story Shakespeare based her play on was of Mariotto and Janosa by Masucho Salamitano published back in 1476. And though the names are different, there still exists within a secret marriage, colluding friar,

a fight resulting in the death of a prominent citizen, Mariotto's exile, Janozza's forced marriage, the potion plot, and a crucial message that does not make it in time, which results. in the beheading of Mariotto and Janotza, literally laying on the floor until she dies from grief. I just, I'm going to die. I'm just going to lay on the floor in this floor until I die of grief. A little bit of a bella.

Now, Lerman had said about Shakespeare. The genius of Shakespeare is not his stories. He didn't write Romeo and Juliet. He stole a long poem that was based on an Italian novella. He stole it, but his genius is his understanding of the human condition and his ability with words. And the thing about it is, even then people were writing about how bad this nobody poet ripped off these great works of art and put them in a trashy theater. The undeniable fact about Shakespeare was that he wrote nonstop and he was a hardcore entertainer through his stories.

Nonetheless, one of his greatest assets was an incredibly resonant, clever use of language, but it was just an asset to him. His writing also had incredible spectacle, sword fighting, energy, comedy, and body scenes. So these were the colors in his palette that he used to attack, to absolutely embrace and engage his audience, remembering that they're all selling pigs and goats and 90% of them are completely drunk. I mean, the savagery of his storytelling and the absolute intensity of his devices are something that is scientifically existent in the text. I love that quote. I would like to say I'm very thankful that Shakespeare didn't have Twitter so that we didn't have to learn his hot takes. His political opinions.

You imagine the things he would have to say. I will say just to finish this because I do think this is a very tragic, beautiful part of the history of the Bard's work. The story, Giannoso, Marioato and Genozo. This was adapted by Luigi de Porto as Julieta and Romeo in 1524. This also drew from Pyramus. all this kind of stuff. Either way, this was actually based on a soldier, or the person

who wrote this, Luigi, was actually a soldier who went to a Warren Klan's party during a peace ceremony and fell in love with a woman from the clan, Lucina. He later wrote the tale half paralyzed from a battle wound after his clan led an attack on theirs, the one that Lucina belonged to,

and dedicated his poem to, or his story to Lucina. So it is actually weirdly based in reality. and again, they get the names, we get the name, Mercutio, all this. Then it's adapted a couple different times, and then Shakespeare gets a hold of it. So really dates back hundreds of years before Shakespeare even got to make this thing. And I love that it actually has some, is slightly steeped in some reality.

But it's a tale as all its time. It is. But of course, Lerman brings it back up to date with the Montague's and Capulis being warring mafia empires in contemporary America with guns in place of swords. Man, I forget how amazing Paul Sorvino is in this movie. That scene, the scene of him screaming at Juliet as well as his wife, he, I mean, acted his fucking ass off. Everybody did.

Just his presence is so consuming. I just love his face, especially for this character. Everybody did such a great job in this movie. I know. And I love this concoction here that Lerman pulls together. he's pulling together the gangster family drama dynamic of the godfather,

the bizarro reality of Fellini films, if you've ever seen like Felini's eight and a half, this weird like hyper reality and the dark romance addle drama of a Tennessee Williams southern bell which I think just perfectly pulls this thing together

to make this fascinating whirlwind of just teenage lust. And a bunch of hot little boys. A bunch of little boys. Well, I'm not going to say a sexy little girl because it makes me sound weird because she was 16. Yeah, we got to talk about that for a minute point.

And also it should be noted that Lerman was more faithful to the original text than any of the other big R&J adaptations that have happened over the years. Thank you for shortening it because nobody can handle you saying it anymore. I'll be saying R&J a lot throughout this. Oh, R&J, it sounds like your... It's like a grocery store you go to. It's like a grocery store you go to. I got to go to the R&J. Do you want anything?

Yes, I want a potion. And technically it's R plus J. R plus J too, you're right. Technically, technically, it's R cross J because Boz Lerman intended for it to be a cross. Ah, that makes sense, of course. The cross betwixt them. Romeo Cross Juliet. Speaking of which, that actually sounds like an anime, but either way.

No, it was actually in reference to the idea that they were predestined for each other. And it was Boslerman taking William Shakespeare making fun of the idea of predestination because that is, you know, the idea of these star-crossed lovers is actually means that it was fate that made them have this. Whereas that's bullshit, they were being a little bit over dramatic. Yeah, they're just being stupid kids. Just a tinge. I'm going to make one, a new one for today's era called Romeo hashtag Julia. I love it.

I love it. That actually would work very well. But either way, I want to go back, I should take a step back and talk about Boz Lerman leading up to making this, because it is kind of a wild. This guy is wild, man. This guy's had such an interesting career.

I don't know. Like, it's kind of miraculous. He was born in Sydney, Australia. His mother was a ballroom dance teacher, so that would make a lot of sense for his first film. And also a dress shop owner. And his father ran both a petrol station and a movie theater.

So, of course, you get all that coming together. you're going to make this director that makes his first film about ballroom dancing. In his all-boys day school, he performed in Shakespeare's Henry. Weird. Also, with that opening scene in Romeo and Juliet, is it a petrol station? Oh, yeah. I didn't even think about that. Well, this is part of that, he even says it about Strictly Ballroom is that since Strictly Ballroom is about a young man striving to break the conventions of ballroom dancing. It really was about Boz himself inside of the movie because his dad was also a, he was a Navy man who fought in Vietnam. So he had a very strict upbringing.

And he said ballroom dancing and commando training was what made up his child. Interesting. What an interesting dynamic. And then, of course, he performs in Shakespeare's Henry IV at his All Boys Day School. In high school, he meets a guy named Craig Pierce, who he's going to go on to collaborate with on most of his films, including Romeo and Juliet. I'm going to say, he co-wrote every movie except for Australia, which is kind of the only movie that wasn't successful for Baz Luhrman. Why doesn't he get credited? He does, I believe.

I mean, but like, why is Boz Lerm in the face? He says we most of the time. I would say that he does speak in we and the we is referring to him and his team. But a lot of times he's talking about how the last little pig went wee, we, we, we all the way home. Yep, that's what he's saying. He's always talking about that little pig.

And we're like, Boz, we're talking about Shakespeare right now. Wee, we, we. Okay, the piggy, yes, the piggy. He got the nickname Baz from me. his father because he had a big puff he had big puffy hair like this English basal brush a red fox puppet that appeared in British children's television who had a puffy furry tail I know it's a bit of a stretch but he ended up legally changing his name to Bazmark which is the combination of his birth name and his nickname which of course was his boss and also Natalie he actually does say the we

Lerman frequently refers to is his collaborators his production designer Catherine Martin who also happens to be his partner, screenwriter Craig Pierce, as well as producer, art director Martin Brown, and editor Jill Billcock and choreographer John Chachau, Connell. As most people know, an editor's only,

or a director's only as good as his team, and he forms his team really early, actually, like when he's putting together his theater company early on, which we're about to get to. Just out of college, he's cast in a film called Winter of Our Dreams, opposite Judy Davis. So he really starts out as it actually a really solid actor,

to the point he gets right out of school, he's in a film, and the film gives him enough money. I mean, this is a big enough film that he's able to open up his own theater company called the Bond Theater Company. And that's when he initially begins collaborating with Nelly Hooper and Gabriel Mason. These are people he's going to continue to work with.

Mason was co-composer on Romeo and Juliet soundtrack, and Gabriella co-produced it. And it was around this time that he put out a very controversial TV show called Kids of the Cross, which had him going out and living with actual street kids under character playing a teenage character. And in 1983, he took a two-year acting course to the National Institute of Dramatic Art,

and while there, he put up a play with fellow students called Strictly Ballroom, which drew on his own experiences studying ballroom dancing as a child, as well as the life of professional dancer, Keith Bain, who was a big Australian ballroom dancer that grew up in his hometown. So there's a lot of connection there. So this production, a short comedy drama,

It is a critical success at his school. They take it to a Czechoslovakian youth drama festival, and that's when he brings in Craig Pierce to help flesh it out, make it a bigger production. It ends up back in Australia doing very, very well. And at that point, too, he's bringing in actor Catherine McClements, who he uses a lot. You already mentioned production designer,

I believe Catherine Martin, who he later marries, set dresser, Bill Marin, costume designer. I mean, this is when all Angus Strait, the costume designer, they all end up working very regularly with his films. And again, that's so important. I do think it's interesting that many times Boslerman has asked, how is it working with your wife as well, you know, as well? And how does that work between you two?

And they both have separate rooms. And usually they have, they'll also live side by side if they're working together on something and never staying in the same room if they are. and I think that explains a lot. Interesting. Get that space. You need that space if you're working that hard. I think that's what Tim Burton and Helen and Bonham Carter also did.

They have adjacent houses. Well, not anymore. I think they're divorced. Oh, yeah. They had their own houses. Yeah, next to each other. They really got that space going. Yes.

Music exec, there was a music exec named Ted Albert who saw this play, strictly, Ballroom, and wanted to adapt it to film so badly that he goes off and sets up a film company under his like music record company and he tracks Lerman down to do just that. And on a shoestring budget, the film is made and and there's constant doubt about it. There's no desire from distributors. Tragedy struck on the sidelines. There was the sudden death of Ted Albert. One of the actors on the film also died while they were trying to just get it out. And finally it makes his way to con film festival where it was met with immediate praise and found itself in a bidding war. So, and we see this so much where it's like if you could just

get over that one hurdle, all of a sudden you're the hottest thing in town. Now, Baz could, for his next film, pick any film he wanted, and of course, he ends up landing on Romeo and Juliet. Now, I will say this is where the real hard part starts, because when he was asked, what was the most challenging aspect of making Romeo and Juliet? Bos Lerman said, getting it made. So this was the boy that he said, it was very difficult to convince people, to convince Fox, because Fox was the one that was going to give them money.

Fox approached him, and yeah, he told them, and he said, quote, they got very nervous. Yes. He told them about what he wanted to do. And he even said, it's hard to believe that a studio made this film at a level at which it is financed, made this film, which is essentially experimental in its execution. Yeah. People say Hollywood is in love with Shakespeare. That's not true. Some of the minis are financing Shakespeare, but no major is doing a Shakespeare as far as I can recall.

I thought Kenneth Branoe did a terrific job with much ado about nothing, and I particularly liked his Henry V. But the grosses for these films are 20 million domestic. They're tiny. Why do you think majors don't bother? They're not worth the biscuits. I like the phrase, hey, you're not worth the biscuits. I need to use that in an actual like friend breakup or something. You're not worth the biscuits.

To try and quell the fears, he gets Leonard de Capric. to fly out to Australia for a run-through of an early script, and DeCabrio even flies himself out, helps to finance it. Oh, I was watching an interview with Baz Luhrman saying that he saw Leo in like a paparazzi photo. It was like, I must have the boy. I want someone who looks just like that, but somebody who can act. And then people are like, no, this dude can act.

He's actually really talented. And he's like, boy, yoin. Because he had just done what's eating Gilbert Grape. So he was up for an Oscar nom at a very, young age. And now I've read multiple accounts of this part of it that essentially Leonardo DiCaprio went out there and they decided to put a workshop on because they were going to record snippets of what they were thinking of doing with a bunch of boys. And so they decided to record that to show the studio execs of kind of what they were looking for. So Leonardo DiCaprio flew out, he went out there

with his dad, but also flew out his boys. And he and his boys did this workshop where they were just out there being boys. The amount of the people that worked on this film that were like, man, they had a great time.

It's a precursor to the pussy posse. All the boys in this, and I'm going to keep calling the boys, even though they were all well over the age of 18, seemed to have had quite a time out down there in Mexico. I'm sure.

They were making this film. And that does lead to eventually why everyone's like, oh, but Claire Dez is so frosty. And it's like, no, it's because she was 17 and she was trying to do a good job. Well, all of them were like hammered and doing drugs all night and go out partying all night. I have a couple funny quotes that kind of paint that picture. Here's one from DiCaprio. First, I thought Lurman was on the pretentious side.

But then you start to get to know him and he's exactly what you want a director to be because actors are, you know, completely insecure. They need attention all the time. Leonardo DiCaprio, born in Los Angeles. He was given that name because of his mother was looking at a Leonardo da Vinci painting when he first kicked. At the age of two, he went on stage at a performance festival and started dancing. He got such a positive response from the crowd that he was bitten by the performance bug. He started at a young age doing commercials, and his first big gig was at age 14 in a matchbox car's commercial for Mattel.

He ended up dropping at 14? That can be right. I think so. Yeah. Wasn't he already on at sitcom by the time he was like Growing pains? Yeah.

Oh, was he? Oh, I don't know. Either way, he dropped out of high school. He later earns a GED and he never read a book since that time. And he's auditioned mercilessly. He auditioned mercilessly before almost quitting acting, which his father persuaded him from.

And in the early 90s, he was getting regular one-off TV gigs until he got a starring role in the TV series Adaptation of Parenthood. His first film was the direct-to-video Critters 3, which he describes as, quote, possibly one of the worst films of all time. So I really want to go back and watch that one. Yeah, me too.

And then he ends up really getting his career moving when Robert De Niro handpicks him to play his, I believe, son in the film The Boys' Life. He gets a Golden Globe and an Oscar nom for the film. What's Eating Gilbert Grape after that? And then the basketball diaries, I feel like it was the first time he was put on the map as like a heart throb a little bit.

I think it's called This Boy's Life. This Boy's Life. I remember the basketball diaries? Oh, yeah. Also, Natalie, to answer your question, he was 15 on the growing pain. Oh, wow. I thought he had started much younger than 14. My bad.

Well, speaking of 14, initially a 14-year-old, Natalie Portman, was initially cast across from 21-year-old Leonardo DeCabry. I was already disturbed knowing Claire Daines was 17 or 16. I will say, again, he was trying to stay. true to the text. And I do understand that. And they never really get Romeo's age. He's somewhere between the ages of 15 to 21.

But Leonardo DiCaprio looks very young. And especially in the movie, he looks, maybe I'm just old now. But look at him. No, no, he looks like a baby. He looks like he's 16 years old. He definitely doesn't look like he's 21. But still Lerman felt in the early footage of rehearsals that it looked like he was, quote, molesting her.

So. Well, because he was. especially when they did the scenes in the chemistry testing with Paul Rudd because Paul Rudd was 26 playing Harris. So he was 12 years older than Natalie Portman and it just looked bad. I love that they renamed him to Ted Paris. Yes. That was just very funny.

Yeah, that's very funny. Yeah, and I have to just say I'm very glad and thankful that Natalie Portman made it out of her young teen years because they put her in some inappropriate roles at that age. She definitely was forced to grow up, but definitely. I would love to do an episode on like The Professional and some stuff like that. I mean, the professional is a great movie. But I do love the Claritaine's.

And yeah, I think now again, nowadays, I don't think that this would really like fly doing this age difference for this kind of movie. But we see now that Claire Daines was really, like professional, really mature, and she's fine. And I'm glad. And she got to kiss Leonardo DiCaprio. And that is actually how she got the role.

is that she walked in, so they were doing all of these auditions, and it was Leonardo DiCaprio that he remembered that he had seen her on my so-called life, and he was so sick of girls coming in to audition that could barely look him in the eyes because he's Leonardo DiCaprio, even at a young age, that girls' hearts would just stop. And apparently, Claire Danes came in, and when they were reading the scene, man she kissed him right on the fucking lips. And that's why he was like, I trust that. That is someone that is willing to take risks

and that is not too scared of me to do this process with me. And I think that's really cool. I saw a cool interview with her talking about how she did that because she was like the sixth or seventh girl he had seen that day. You got to make a difference. He had gotten really bored with it. He's like, oh, these all these fucking beautiful women and just want to kiss me all the time.

Blah, blah, blah. And he was bored. And she was like, I basically got in his face to, like, shake him up, to be like, look at me. We're acting. Come play with me in the scene.

And he liked that about her. DeCaprio said, she was the only girl when we did the audition who came straight in. My face did the lines. She said them, she had them,

said them looking at me right in the eye. And some of the other girls did, like, the affected flower thing. You know, they stroked the face, looked up,

tried to do things with their eyes. and it was not nearly as truthful as Claire's performance. I mean, he is right. Well, this is the thing, and this is, I can't remember if we were talking about this on the actual episode or before, but the idea that Juliet is supposed to be the idea of the Virgin Mary, that she is supposed to be pious and good and unaffected by all of the greed and, um, or even the war that is going on, the vanity, the violence.

She is above all of those things, which is part of the reason why she, is dressed so plainly throughout. I mean, even in one scene, she's in a white t-shirt jeans. And so that is what she's supposed to be, but she's supposed to be strong. She's not a wilting flower. She is a strong woman, which is why she makes the choice to be with Romeo in the first place. And I mean, she, and Claire Dane's is just perfect for it. And I think that really, too, as people, they really accompany each other, because he's L.A., she grew up in Manhattan and went to a professional performing art school for junior high, early, early actors

really getting serious by the age of 12. Her first big gig was the sitcom Dudley, but her big break, of course, came to be the age of 15 for a show that we definitely need to cover at some point of pop history. My so called Lime. It's so good. It's so good.

It's so short. But also, I did try, and I do want to let you guys know, the line that she said when she kissed him in the audition was, art thou not Romeo? And to Montague, and I tried to do that to Jeff and immediately, he's like, stop, you must stop. I was pretending to be Juliet. And it didn't work for sexy time.

Why? Because he's like, Romeo is a child. You didn't do sexy adult Romeo in Julia. Yeah, like he didn't die. Claire Dane said, I didn't necessarily study my character, but the odds and ends of the play itself to get past the initial fear of having to play Shakespeare. Juliet's situation is pretty desperate.

She has parents who neglect her, and she doesn't really have any friends. The material is so dramatic and extreme. One minute, I'm getting married. The next, I'm dying. There's no in between, which is wonderful. It's exhausting. And you see that. Hence the screen acting.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Just watching some of the behind the scenes from the movie, I now just want to be like, in the movie. I'm just like, this looks so fun. I want to be in these craziest scenes. I love the sets, man. Oh, so gorgeous. That whole closing shot with them on the, the, at the,

church and that beautiful floral arrangement with the... It's so wonderful. Thanks to Catherine Martin, his wife, who is also the production design. And oh my God, I want that pool and I want the bath, the male-female or all-gender's bathrooms with the fish tank in the middle. Yes, yes, for sure. Yes. But a glory hole in it would be cool. Yeah, because none of this would have happened

if there was a glory hole. If it just sunk in it. Yeah. He just went to game and then went and Bob his day. And he'd be like, oh, I'm so fucked up on ecstasy right now. Sorry about that bra. I'm like, just call me bra. Yeah, so he probably wouldn't have come, but he would have had fun while he did it. Don't call me bra, okay?

Just call me bra. Either way. Let's meet the rest of our cast. There's too many to name. We'll make it as brief as we can that we should, should mention especially you mentioned the parents just acting their entire asses off. Our Montecuse include, Brian Dinnahee, is Ted Montague.

A former military man, Dinnahue, had no formal training and said he would just go to the theater and just watch as many plays as he could while working blue-collar jobs in Manhattan because he's such a badass. He got his first big role as the evil sheriff in Rambo's First Blood, which led to a prolific career. As the father of Tommy from Tommy Boy. Yes, amazing. He was very impressed with Leonardo DiCaprio on the set, and he talked about him. He said he was just a kid, 17 or 18 years old. he was 21, but that's okay, Brian Denny. But he was a huge start.

I tell you, I never saw anybody, especially somebody that age, as relaxed as he was and has been since. Now, of course, with that talent and the way he looked, he had damn good reason to be relaxed. And I think that's a lot of fun. Absolutely.

Also, there's Romeo's mother played by Christina Pickles, who Lexi needed to definitely point out immediately that she played Monica's mother on Friends. Yes, she did. Not only do... Oh, yeah.

And not only do we get... Paul Rudd is Dave Paris, but Juliet's husband to be is also Jamie Kennedy as one of Romeo's cousins in House Montague, which is just such a casting of its time. Paul Rudd, you know, of course, had done clueless by this point, but I never really noticed until this watch how funny he does. He does these little funny comedic things that are very subtle. The dancing scenes. Amazing.

Just the way he looks when they're doing the fireworks and the way he just looks back at her, like, to be like, it's pretty cool. It's so funny. It really is. You know, I wish I could have gone to Juliet and been like, listen, as these two mature, Paul Rudd's going to be the better choice out of the show of them, you know?

God, he looks great. Our Capulet's start with Paul Sorvino is Juliet's father. Sorvino started out on Broadway. It might be most known for his role in the film Goodfellas. And his daughter... Can I please?

I have to read this because this is nothing to do with Romeo and Juliet. But I was reading an interview of Paul Sorvino. and I love Paul Servino, and this makes me love him even more. And this is about Goodfellas. And you know in Goodfellas when he's slicing the garlic with the razor blade in prison? And so in this interview, he said, let's get the important question out of the way first because it comes from my wife.

Was that really you slicing the garlic so fine in Goodfellas? And Paul Sorvino said, that's an interesting question. A lot of people ask me that. But I'm curious why she thinks it couldn't have been me. Tell her, and then he puts his hand on his. on the interviewer's hand. Tell her that I'm also a sculptor and a pianist. I also play

the guitar. My hands are very well educated. And he said that as a 70 year old. And I love Paul Sorvino. That's fun. And I was like, I don't love with Paul Sorvino? The answer is yes.

I think that I am. He's great. I actually thought you were going to read a different quote when he found out that Miros Servino, his daughter, had been essentially like, I forget what, harassed at the very least by Harvey Weinstein. He was literally like, he's lucky he's going to jail because I'll kill him. I'll fucking kill that. I meant to write it down, but I was like,

maybe we don't need to get into it. But it's like an amazing quote because he's literally just like, he's lucky. I'll fucking kill that guy. He's like, whoa. That makes me love him even further. Okay, great. All right.

I'm in love with Paul Sorvito. I'm glad that we finally, finally figured that. It is interesting, though, watching this as an older person that I was way more in love with Paul Soravino and Paul Rudd and really recognized how deeply I'm in love with John Liguizamo. Yes. Oh, man, he is so sexy in this movie. Holy shit. Of course, as Tebalt started out in New York City as a stand-up comic in the mid-80s, and his first big gig was as Luigi in the Cinema All-Star Classic, Super Mario Brothers. horrible and I love it.

It's so great. It's so great because of how terrible it is. Yeah, and weirdly that kind of got him his start in Hollywood and what led to him getting Remy and Juliet, but he did say that Boslerman made us rehearse. He said about a month of intense rehearsals. Auditions were really brutal. It was between me and Benicio del Toro for Tebalt, and luckily he mumbles. So I got it.

And that was incredible. Thank you, Benicio. And Boss is just, he's just. he's galvanizing. He makes you feel like you're so integral to the story and your collaboration is so vital. And that taught me so much. In fact, to the point that Tibalt's swordsmanship

is referred to as being showy in the actual Romeo and Juliet written by William Shakespeare. So John Leguzelmo worked with a choreographer to make Tibalt's fighting style flamenco style. And that's why he does all of the flourishes because he worked with a choreographer for to turn his fighting into dance.

He gets down in his knees and he opens his shirt up and when he's about to like... Oh my God, when he, oh, that opening, like, when he's smoking the cigarette and he puts it out with those fucking boots and he stomps the cigarette, I was like, Mamma Mia! Yes, please.

I have some. Miriam Margolias plays Juliet's nurse, known for her unique voice. She got a lot of video work early on, including all of the supporting female characters in the dub of the Japanese TV show series, monkey. And in the late 70s, she appeared regularly

in Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder. You may know her best as Professor Sprout in the Harry Peta films. But whatever is canceled. To round it out, we should... Yes, it's over. You can't go to the Harry Potterland anymore. It's over.

You can't give her your wand back. You have to give your wand back. And you have to give your wand back. But either way, to round it out... Why did you do this? To round it out, we should definitely mention Pete Possewate as Father Lawrence. Oh yeah, he's great.

So good. He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for in the Name of the Father. It should be noted, Marlon Brando was up for the role but turned it down due to personal family issues. And of course, lastly, the incredible performance by Mercutio by Harold Perineau. He was cast in the original stage adaptation of the 1980 film Fame in 1986 and may best be known for his roles as Link in the Matrix series and on Lost as Michael Dawson. But it makes sense that he would be a musical theater trained because his movement is so incredible.

That choreography, he crushes that scene on the staircase. And I think, Holden, you were kind of touching on this. And I hope you don't mind me saying it because it's nothing against you. Please. Oh my God. What is this? It was a hard thing at the time whenever they did this sort of him in drag, it's such a powerful, sexy, awesome thing.

But in the 90s, that was not a thing that really happened. And so it really deterred, like, boys, I think, from ever being, they didn't, you weren't allowed to think that was okay. Yeah, I mentioned, I mentioned in Natalie, before we were recording just to give this some basis, that I was a little, I remember being a little alienated by the drag performance a little bit, but also it was like my first taste of it and helped normalize it. Yeah, for sure. At the end of the day, but it is funny how, how that was actually.

Just surprising how that was like crazy at the time. Yeah, I mean, the 90s were full bro culture. It was like the worst fucking era. I seen in like everything else in the movie, like all the gangs of boys and the gunplay and the machoness. So that's why Mercutio just adds this incredible queerness to the whole thing. Yeah, it's just so sexy too. Oh my God. Yeah.

He just kills it. Oh, yeah. So good. And before we get into the filming, I do want to talk about some of the adaptations to the script that they did. while working on this. For instance, there are no accents in this, that there's no English accents, there's no Italian accents.

In fact, the idea of the, the mafioso side of things, I feel, is, and the idea that, like, the nurse is shown as a Hispanic woman, and that the John Linguizamo brings in this Hispanic culture as well. And yet none of it is nailed down to anything, and that was done on purpose.

Lerman explains that this is because he considers the American language as better attuned to Shakespearean text. He says when Shakespeare wrote these plays, they were written for an accent that was much more like an American sound. And when you do Shakespeare with an American accent, it makes the language very strong, very alive, because it's only the father that actually speaks in iambic pentameter. Because although you usually think that like, oh, Shakespeare's written in iambic pentameter, it is, but that is actually the way that you pronounce the lines, not in the way that it is written. So it is written and is given to as a little gift

that like we would like you to speak like this because really what it is, it is a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short or unstressed syllable, followed by one long or stressed syllable. And that is what the idea of iambic pentameter is. Yes. And Father Lawrence is the only one

that still uses it in the movie. as well as the fact that Fox was pretty pissed that he wouldn't change the language. Fox wanted the film to feature modern English. And Fox took a while before they began. They wanted it to be in all wraps. Yes, and he wanted to be completely sung, which I also would have watched.

The studio initially wanted the film to keep the story but refrain from sticking to the original text in favor of something more modern and accessible. but as we even talked about at the beginning of talk about making it work. Again, there is not one line in that that you don't understand the intention of it. And that is what makes, that's what draws you in. That is part of the reason why, and I'll get to this with the soundtrack, that Shakespeare wrote his plays to be heard and not to be seen.

That is why they are constantly, that's why there is a narrator. That is why that there is the chorus. It is because it is their job to maintain what you see inside of your mindscape that is happening on the stage. Oh, my mindscape saw a lot of stuff. Oh, my mindscape saw stuff, which is also why, and I didn't realize it until this watching, he uses media, the television, the news coverage, the papers, that he uses that to convey things that are. happening in the story that are not happening in front of the characters, which is brilliant. Yeah. It's also another level.

I love the shots from the helicopter news reporter. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's great. It's so good. And, yeah, it definitely works so well for it. Also, what's funny to be about that is, like, Fox saying don't use Shakespeare's

language. Then he's actually just doing an adaptation of Romeo E. Julietta, the, like, Italian story that, like, it wouldn't even be, it wouldn't even matter. Yeah. Then it doesn't matter. Then it's actually not based on, it's not even a... I mean, that's just Westside story.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's West Side story. But there is something that, boss, if you're listening, and I know you are, that you fucked me on. Because there is one thing that he changed. And I remember, because I didn't read the end of Romeo and Juliet when I was in high school

and I watched the movie, and that the end was changed because they did it for Hollywood. In the play. they die, they die, she wakes up, oh my God, she dies, right? Yeah. Yes. But in the movie, they see each other and they have their last kiss goodbye.

And that was done for Hollywood reasons. And that doesn't happen in the play. And I remember that like it was something about like, did they get a proper goodbye? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, they kissed. I mean, it sucks, but they kissed. It didn't happen in the fucking play. No, but as a tween watching it, you're just like, oh, my God. It makes it sad.

It makes it sadder, honestly. It makes it sadder because they're sharing this kiss knowing what's happening. Knowing what's happening. And she sees the poison. Yeah, and it's like milliseconds. She's like reaching up to him as he's starting to take it. And you're just like, come on, Julia, you can do it, even though you know they die. You're like, maybe they won't die.

Lexu was just like, I fucking, this makes me so mad. She was like, cry. I was very good. Again, Juliet's lucky because at some point she would have been like, but I thought thee loved thou. And yet, this is a pussy posse. Yeah, I was going to say, 10 years on, Romeo and Juliet. How are you saying English pussypossi?

Juliet's got five kids. Robio's, you know, yeah, exactly. She should have stuck with Ted Paris. Honestly, probably would have been a better match. Either way, getting into the filming, most all of the pre-production was done. in Australia. The film was actually shot, as we mentioned earlier, mainly in Mexico. It was a little bit done in Miami. The Capulet

Mansion was the set of of Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park, which is absolutely beautiful. It's on this big peak, around the top of this, like, big mountain. But the ballroom was actually built on a soundstage in another

part of Mexico City. The church is the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Del Valle, in the Del Valle neighborhood of Mexico City as well. This, all right, so you want a time capsule of not just the 90s, but not just this film, but also just the 90s as a whole. Read this E.W. article. It's so good.

It's just like a person on the set of Romeo and Juliet. And I have a couple quotes, and this is one of them. DiCaprio, who seems in a perpetual hyperkinetic frenzy, and Danes, who maintains an apparently unshakable state of serenity, have become unlikely friends. When they finally step into the elevator, his hair and makeup are fussed with so much it tests even Daines'

his patience, and her unoccupied hands start to roam. Uh-oh, she says, looking up with a hint of a smile, I just broke off a piece of the set. The elevator's up button is reattached. Lerman instructs the pair to fly at each other with passion and the stars obey, coming together with such force that they

crack heads and begin to giggle. The next take is better, but there seem to be ten more, and then ten more DeCaprio rolls his eyes and yons. Come on, Dee. Show me a kiss. Lerman encourages his Romeo, who is busy thumb wrestling with his co-star.

They kiss some more. One more, yells the director. Apparently Lerman liked to do a ton of takes. He's one of those directors. Man, I recommend going and finding the video of the behind the scenes of the way they shot the elevator scene because that's, you know, their first big kiss is in this beautifully lit elevator.

It's completely a fake elevator. And the walls all pull up because they They wanted to get that round shot. That Austin 360 shot. Yeah. And the only way they could think to do it was to make the walls, these things that you pull up almost like domino pieces. And they, as the camera goes around, they flip them up and slam them back.

It's really insane. It's hard to describe even, but they're kissing in the middle of this, like, chaotic scene all around them with these, like, these crew men just going like, slam, slam! And they're just, like, make it out in the middle of it. And it's really cool. You should go watch it. Hell, yeah. Yeah.

And so they actually did have a gun handler named Charlie Taylor that created the guns as well. And in the- Those guns are cool as hell, man. Those fucking guns are so cool. And I love how badass, even Claire Danes, even Juliette's gun is like so rad. It's like this white, uh, dough. I forget the exact model of it.

It's like so cool. I just love that they put all the names of the swords on the guns. Yes. And I did want to speak to Harold Peronow who played Mercutio. and I was talking about this earlier about how all it was a bit of a boy's hen clock of a buck

out there on the streets of Mexico when they were asked, did you guys all become friends? He said, yeah, we all became quite close friends. We were in Mexico and we kind of only had each other. None of us really spoke the language. They were a little younger than me,

so they were having a real wild time, but I liked hanging out with them. At the time, we were hanging out with David Blaine as well. And he taught me a bunch of magic tricks that didn't make it into the film. But we used it for the queen mob scene. Oh, that's crazy.

David Blaine showed him that. David Blaine. So you're having a wild crazy time in Mexico. This really was the, this is when the pussy posse was formed. Yes, and that's, but also why I think when he said he's like, I think a lot of that wild energy was captured in the movie. And yes, it was. Because they were just all on blow the whole time.

It works. It works for the movie. Speaking of wild energy, apparently during production the hairstylist, Aldo Signoretti, who will get to later, was kidnapped. But apparently it was, quote, a bargain to get him back, according to the production, that he did break his leg in the process as they were tossing him out of the car in exchange for, apparently it goes back and forth. I read 300 USD, but apparently it was maybe more like 3,000 USD still.

I've read both. I think that it is still up in the air, but either way, Lerman did say that it was a, bit of a steal. And then they, they had to think... Wait, but like, did they just snatch them off the street?

Yeah, I guess they just grabbed them. They took him. And then they called up and they said, we want $3,000 to get the money back. And so Lerman sent down a guy working on it.

His name was Mauricio. So he says, So Maricio, who's about this high, goes down clutching the money outside the hotel and he holds up the money and he chucks them the bag at them. And then they threw the hairdresser out of the car.

And that's how he broke his leg into places. You know what? I get it. You got this big fancy. Hollywood set comes down there. They just wanted some money. They got it. He seems fine.

I guess he broke his leg. That's probably not good. Yeah, it's not fun. Another wild energy was that apparently during that amazing wide shot after Mercutio's death that is incredible looking. That crazy storm was an actual hurricane

and it did destroy all of the sets on the beach and there really was this frenetic energy to the whole thing. And that is why they actually, during the hurricane that hit into Mexico while they were filming, Boslerman sent people out with cameras. He said, get out there, because we don't have the money to get the storm CGI's done properly.

So they needed to use all of, so half of that, the CGI for the storm, was just the actual storm itself. And for all them Shakespeare nerds out there, there were a ton of references to other Shakespeare plays. Of course, I love that the FedEx for there is called Post-Ace. So funny. It's so tongue-in-cheek. There's also the add more fuel to your fire,

which is seen at the gas stations as its tagline. That's Reverence to King Henry VI Part 3. Another example is the Capulet Corporation tagline, which is experience, is by industry achieved, which is from the two gentlemen of Verona. But I do love that it's not just like trying to get like whatever teenagers into Shakespeare, there's a lot of little Easter eggs for that

Shakespeare nerd in the audience. Absolutely. And also again adding the layers like all of the water imagery that was involved that he really took and ran with in this movie. When he was asked, what are the ideas behind using water? Because

you remember, he's always by the beach, the fish tank. They take the balcony scene, they put it into the pool. So Lerman says, in truth with Romeo and Juliet, I've dealt with their world as if their parents are like a busby Berkeley musical on acid, and it's coming at them all the time and it won't shut up. When you get to Paul Servino in a dress, you just think, please, no more.

Next thing, Romeo's underwater. Click, silence. It's not a big symbolic thing, but Romeo and Julia escape into water. They use water for silence and peace that is theirs. This is, there's a place for us moments. That final image when they kiss underwater, it's just silence. It comes from a personal experience of mine. My father used to talk a lot, and we'd be in the pool, and I'd just go underwater and hide from him.

It was always so peaceful. That's where it comes from. It's a theatrical device. Everything is about telling the story. And I have fallen more in love with this movie. The more research I did out, I'm like, man, y'all killed this. I think it backfired watching this because I was so excited

but now afterwards all I want to do is go to a sweaty costume party with a thousand people I don't know and do a bunch of drugs and fall in love through a fish tank Yeah kind of I love my husband though I love my yeah

Yeah we all love our burgers But still you can fall in love When you're on ecstasy from far away Yeah absolutely Also Catherine Martin the set designer we mentioned before. Very similar to Lerman's approach. She wanted to show off a Verona

that she felt was what Shakespeare had in mind. She said it was his vision as an Englishman of this mythical Italianate country where everyone was passionate and hot-blooded. Essentially, the Verona in which

Shakespeare set his play was a created world itself. Like a heightened version of Italy, a heightened version of... created world. Yes. It's something that I kept seeing. It's the way a teenager sees it. It's the way a teenager sees the world. Everything's insane. Like, if your parents raise their voice at you, it's like a monster, like, screaming at you. If any little thing happens, it's massive for you.

It's the kind of thing that I think about all the time. It's the same reason why there's that, you know, your toddler goes through their terrible twos. It's because all of these hormones are changing very quickly in your body and you don't know how to handle it. Yes. So that is why you. There's actually scientific evidence that it is things that like, I just can't handle it, I can't handle it because it's just so much going through your body at once. Yeah.

What's my excuse? Well, you know, we just got a lot of hormonies. I got a lot of feelings. Either way, it's time to get into it, ladies, the costume design, the hair and makeup. There's so much going on here. The costume designer was Kim Barrett, and for any Boslerman film,

The costumes come, of course, front and center, as a way to be both eye-catching and character-defining. And telling the story. That is another thing where every little bit of what he did with this movie is telling the story. I got to say, though, I'm glad that he takes notes, and I think that's what makes him a good director, because I saw an interview where Leonardo O'Caprio was saying that Boslerman first brought him the idea that a lot of the characters would be on rollerblades.

Yes. And Leonardo DiCaprio said, maybe let's try something different. different than that. And I'm so thankful. But he did. Is what is cool. Again, Boslerman, apparently, he's very big on incorporating even the actor's ideas, or at least down to talk about it and discuss, which I feel that a lot of great directors that we research don't always do that. Yeah. Because it is kind of their vision, which I also understand that thought process behind it. But I like that Fas Lerman goes towards these projects that are done by a community. For sure.

And I think, yeah, he knows how to work as a community and make that vision, something that you delegate things that, you know, maybe you don't know as much like costumes and set design to somebody who's really good. And that's what a good director does. Oh, my God. And definitely the costume designer for this, her name is Kim Barrett. and she was a superstar. They did such an amazing job

because how do you create a link between two households while still maintaining their distinct identities? The answer is fashion. So the older members of both houses support a more classic 60s, 60s 70s, fashion, fashion, fascist look. But the younger members diverge on this with the Capulet's dressing and super tailored looks by Dolce and Gabana

and that are refined, but with a lot of accessories including their flashy gun holsters. Also, I will just go ahead and say it is the squirrel nut zippers versus no doubt is what I would say. Squirrel nut zippers, Jesus Christ. And thinking of just the idea that no matter what, usually youths

want to rebel against their family and what is a very easy way to do that, dress differently. And even down to the fact that the parents were all wearing Eve St. Laurent and the different houses had different designers. So, you know, the Capulet click led by John Leguizamo and as Tibolt, they were sleek, sexy, and super tailored looks, and they all wore Dulce and Cabana. And the Capulets favor mostly black garments with streamlined silhouettes, but drip in decorative

embellishment. They've adapted their gun holsters as high fashion accessories and wear their shirts tucked in to show off their bold belt buckles. One of them even has a grill with sin etched into it. Barrett said with the Montague boys, it's sort of a Vietnam feeling when the soldiers wore Hawaiian shirts and shorts and indigenous hats. They invented their own way. They invented their own way of wearing clothes to suit the climate and the surroundings. And yeah, they're supposed to look more late. back, yeah. And because soldiers came back from Vietnam, pissed the fuck off. And an easy way of rebelling against the people that sent them into a war that they should

not have been a part of was wearing cargo shorts and wearing fucking Hawaiian shirts. Yeah. But even these ones were high designer Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts. Yeah, they look fucking fly. And the dope hair colors and all that kind of stuff as well. A little bit more punk rock as well with that kind of stuff. And for the two young lovers, they are intentionally divergent from their own family's looks and in very simple clothes with clean lines for which she used Prada.

It's very specifically for the two of them to let them be distinct, but also simple, also pure in this way. Yeah, Leo Devere has those sort of brash costumes on, even in that first scene. He's got that leisure suit shirt, which I don't love, but it's like a, you know, a classic suit look. He kind of has like a Hawaiian shirt in the exile scene. I think that's like the only time he's dressed. rest it like more similar to them but god that I'm sorry I know this is just me being fucking sexual this entire time but man him in that trail on front of that trailer smoking a cigarette was like the exact moment I became a woman I think oh I get it all right then the lead on hair styling was

done by aldousine you're ready who was kidnapped and we mentioned before has a prolific career and most notably did the original suspiria of course that fantastic horror film oh that's rad yeah yeah he did that He else did that crazy-ass Popeye movie that's completely insane and has a lot of crazy hair stuff. I kind of want to re-watch that and see if it is any good. I want to re-watch it too.

Just for Shelly DeVal, come on. She's so good. And went on to do big movies like Troy and Lerman's Mulan Rouge, which again has so many crazy looks. Makeup was provided by Maricio Silvie, another frequent collaborator on Lerman films. And also the man that had to go deal with the cartel

that stole the hairdresser. I love it so much. So let's talk about this undeniable soundtrack, which I feel like pulls the whole thing together and turns this into an absolute teenager classic. It is nuts. It is so good. And it makes so much sense that this is the year

that, quote, Alt Rock died and the Spice Girls were born. That the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack represented a shift in thinking away from the heroin-addled authenticity of grunge and toward the ecstasy-fueled celebration of artificiality that would encase the remainder of the decade like a goldfish and a pair of clear acrylic platform shoes. That is such an amazing line to describe the sound design of this movie.

I love that. I love that and I agree. But I still love that they kept, there's still like ever clear and butthole surfers and stuff. No, it's the evolution. That's why it's the evolution of it. Yeah, it's the connection of those two and garbage. And it goes on to say, in the film, director Baz Luhrman expresses this change in dazzling quick cuts and garish visuals

alongside angst-ridden mod-logging from the young leads. Sonically, that juxtaposition plays out in a mixture of bands, writing the alt-rock wave back to the shore and glossy pop and disco, all underlaid with a trip-top beat. And so much of this music was made for the movie itself because Boz Lerman really wanted it great. Again, it's a whole world that he's

creating here. He didn't want just music that everyone had heard before. He wanted specific songs for specific scenes, down to the point that even what you usually would do with a composer, he was doing just with the bands by sending them

either sending them lines to write for inspiration off of Shakespeare's work, or would actually send them dailies to to compose their music around. But he was doing this with, like, Radiohead. Yeah, that's the best example. Radiohead, he hit them up to compose the exit music for a Romeo Gillette.

I never put two and two together. That that is why the song is called Exit Music for a film. For a film. Which is actually not on the film soundtrack, but it is instead showed up on their now classic album, OK Computer. Yeah, and their lyrics are like they basically tell the story. Man, and that's like one of the best albums I think of all time. Okay, Computer.

Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Perfect way to end a movie. And it was written for Romeo and Juliet. But of course, York decided it was too good for just the soundtrack, which is why he wrote it for the film, allowed them to use it, and then wouldn't allow them to put it on the soundtrack. And instead, he wrote another song, or instead, both the soundtrack and the film got

talk show host, which was a B-side from the Street Spirit Fade-Out single, whose spare opening guitar line became the entrance music for Decaprio's Romeo. I mean, I love it. I love it. It's great. I just love that too, where Boslard was like, hey, can you write a great song for this movie? He's like, yeah, yeah, sure.

And it's like, nah, actually it's too good. I'm a key bit. I love radio head. I made such a great song. Oh, yeah. No, of course. The soundtrack was composed by Craig Armstrong, who studied at the Royal Academy of Music and sees no difference in credibility between popular and classical

forms, which makes him such a good fit for Romeo and Julia. Because that's what Lerman did with Roman. Romeo and Juliet kind of brought it up to date in this way. And it was very evident when he collaborated with the band Massive Attack on their album Protection, while also being commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company to write music for their productions in the late 90s, including The Tempest. However, Romeo and Juliet was one of the first movie scores for Craig Armstrong, and certainly the biggest one, and the one that put him on the map in Hollywood.

And what, again, what Boslerman did here is not against would William Shakespeare himself. what his intention was with the play. Lerman explains in an interview on the music edition of Romeo and Juliet that Shakespeare used all varieties of music to reach the highly varied audience in the Globe Theater, church music, folk music, and popular music of the time. Lerman echoes this in his aversion of the drama.

So Lerman was asked, how did you approach finding a modern style appropriate for this classic work? And his answer, was, well, I guess the question is appropriate? Everything we did was about being inspired by Shakespeare. So, for example, the

use of pop songs, Shakespeare used pop songs in his productions. He would just stick the popular song of the day into the middle of the show, you know, to advance the story, but also to engage people through song. We followed the idea that Shakespeare was really a pop storyteller,

that he was absolutely not pressured. So appropriate sort of went out the door for us, because if you're guided by what a bunch of academics tell you is appropriate or by some critic whose favorite production was the John Gilgood from 1936, then all you're doing is being guided by an old-fashioned nanny. So the appropriate manner, the appropriate thing to do, was to go into really intense research and as much as possible address the material in a way in which the author addressed it and also in the environment in which Shakespeare wrote. Also shoutouts to

Nellie Hooper, who we mentioned previously, and Marius DeVries, who collaborated on the soundtrack selection. And I believe may have helped out with the composition as well. It was a little unclear to me. But either way, what a classic. I mean, and the cardigans as well, by the way. Big shout out to that song. That was, uh, yeah, that video too had my,

had my early loins. Oh, yeah. It was just in every middle school, high school dance, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Nell Hooper was approached by Boslerman to work on Romeo and Juliet after he worked on Bjork's Venus as a boy. And he also worked closely with someone named Justin Warfield, who was in the band One Inch Punch, who was on the album. And they were really good friends in London. And he said, we were going out to clubs and then back to his for an after party. The songs that ended up on the soundtrack were being beta tested in the living room at 5 a.m. When I saw him, the movie, I was like, this is the sound of that summer in London. So what I love, too, is that he would hear music

while you'd be out and then put them together and be like, okay, we're hammered, let's listen to this. How do you feel about it? What does it make you feel? And isn't that an awesome way to create a soundtrack for a movie? I think it's the exact correct way to do it. And Desrey also wrote the song

Kissing You for the movie as well. And she said, I was terrified when Baz asked me to write the love theme. But people tell me all the time. that they walked up the aisle to it. I mean, you told me that earlier and I never thought about it, but that makes complete sense.

Right? And now we also need to talk about the very, very talented Quindon Tarver, who was the head choir boy in the choir's version that was singing in the movie. I loved when asked about how Boslerman got Prince's permission to use when Doves Cry

is that he said, I just went in to have a cup of tea with him. By the next morning, we had the rights. I don't know what that means or what happened, but I guess Prince enjoyed him. Who knows what, I don't know what happened, but Prince did give the blessing for him to use the song. I think the challenge is getting into the cup of tea. The cup of tea part is the issue.

Get a cup of tea. I bet Lerman's fashion probably helps his kind of bravado. I bet they have a lot in common, actually, in terms of their. Actually, John Liguizamo kind of looks like he's wearing a Prince outfit at the beginning. Oh, yes. And what's so interesting is that they made a big mistake of with the choir boys on set, they didn't record them singing any of the music. So by the time that they came back around because they were going to put the choir songs on the second release of the soundtrack, because the first one was so insane. They even went on tour through Australia with the bands that were on the set.

soundtrack performing the soundtrack. It was a huge crazy hit. But since they didn't record the choir boys, they came back three years later, but the boys had all grown up. They were like, this is what it sounds like. And they couldn't sing the song for the soundtrack. And that sucks.

That does suck. Yeah. But a phenomenal, phenomenal performance by that choir. It's really, really good. But either way, the film released on November 1st Night 96th, and was number one its opening weekend and was panned by critics like Roger Ebert which is exactly as it should be

thus resuscitating the works of Shakespeare for a whole new generation of horny teenagers. Congratulations, Boss. Yeah, good job Ebert making it, yeah, panning it because you're right. It's exactly how it should be. My theater teacher needed to hate it. Like it had to be that way for us to love it.

You know what I mean? Like that is the gut stash, the bloodletting. You guys just don't understand it. Right. You don't get it. Yeah, exactly. All the snootiness just completely out the window. I have a couple of final quotes.

Jackie, do you have any other little bits? Anything else before we wrap this thing up? No, but I guess I have another little final quote. Okay. Well, you can say it whenever. How about I do this Bos one first? And then you can do yours. And then I'll finish up with this hilarious final excerpt from the EW article.

Buzzerman said, Classic text is to me that which survives time and geography. The idea of which and the execution of which transcends and moves through country and time, Shakespeare does. There were other writers that men Shakespeare wrote who were considered great artists. People wrote Shakespeare off at the time as an uneducated popularist. Yet, a hundred years later, they started taking his work seriously. What's terrible is it has become more and more about being in an exclusive club. In fact, it began as the most popular art form you can imagine.

It's just about reclaiming Shakespeare for the popular audience for which it was written. For everybody. His audience was everybody from the street sweeper to the Queen of England. He was an absolutely relentless entertainer. If you look at the plays, there would be a joke, a song, violence, tragedy all in one package. There was no such thing as a consistent style. It was about entertaining, communicating, and revealing a story. People say it's an MTV interpretation, but I didn't take any cues from MTV.

We meticulously researched the Elizabethan stage, and every choice we made came from there. Stand-up comedy next to a music piece. Shakespeare used popular song. We used popular song. It was simply about grabbing the attention of the audience and making it available to everybody. I am shocked that it's the number one film in America this weekend. Everyone is running around saying, how did that happen? Not in the history of cinema.

Has Shakespeare been number one at the box office? Well, he's a hell of a good storyteller. I can't imagine he'd be too disappointed about selling a few tickets. If anything, I would say that MTV took its cues from this movie. Yeah, if anything, I think they incorporate it because I said it looked a lot like Cribs,

but Cribs didn't come out until well after this movie, and a lot of that stylized camera movement really does feel quite similar. And I did want to include this quote about Lave because it does seem like it could be created by someone that was very cynical about the idea of love. But when asked if love is not possible, Lerman replied, I believe in love.

Sounds like a song, but I do. All my works have essentially been about some degree of love. It may be a word, but in truth, it's a profound emotion that is, in your body and your veins, chemical. Do I believe in the extraordinary, passionate, mad things people will do for love? Yes. Is young love a lethal and dangerous drug in a world of learned hate Where you're being told to hate someone because of their name or skin color? Then you're going to have a tragedy.

Do I believe in that primary myth? Absolutely I do. Am I telling it in an offhanded way to disarm people? Yes. But do I ultimately hope that you are moved by that tragedy? Yes. Yes, I meant. I was moved.

in my pants. Yeah. I also would like to I'd like to apologize post script for making this all about my list. But it was really fun

and I'm glad you guys did this and I just was wondering if you guys, either of you had a specific sexual awakening movie. So many. So many of them. It was all horny for me.

All I did was watch horny. I would love if you guys would like think about maybe the one that it was because I think we should. I think we should do episodes on it. Definitely the strip tease in True Lies. That was your awakening?

That was one of them. I mean, True Lies is a totally good movie. That's a great movie and that Strip T's was like, what is happening in my pants? I mean, mine was, I mean, if we're going, we're going purity-wise, little women, hands down, because I was in love with Joe and I was in love with Christian Bale, the 94 version.

And also, but sexy time-wise, the astronaut's wife. Okay. Interesting. So here's my final, final quote. I feel like I'm learning about you. Rewatch the astronauts' wife and you'll find the part that changed my life. All right. Here's my final, final quote to fully wrap this up.

This is from that EW article. While the crew figures out how to get him from the terrace into the pool with a minimum of danger, DeCaprio balances on the precipice. I don't know if I'm ever getting married, he says, I'm probably not going to get married unless I live with somebody for. 10 or 20 years. But these people took a chance and they did it. We don't have the balls that Romeo did.

DiCaprio clings to the rail and begins to moonwalk, a la Michael Jackson. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, crap, Jesus, he mumbles. As his foot slips through the trellis, this sucks. It is a profound quote. Fun to watch interviews of him from this time beard because I will say right after this, when they were doing all the promo for this movie, he was in the middle of making Titanic. And so people, like, there was this one, like, MTV interview, and they're like, you're going to be on a boat?

And he's just like, yeah. It's, like, really hard and, like, how hard could, oh, he's like, I'm not on a yacht. It's a Titanic. It's a difficult movie to make. Oh, yeah. I imagine it was a little tricky whenever you're, like, dying in a boat crash. Oh, don't worry. I'm sure we'll do it at some point.

So much water. I mean, I'll still watch the fuck out of Titanic. All right. Thanks so much everybody for joining us for. Pop history will be back, I'm sure, very soon. Until then, check our Patreon out, patreon. com, forward slash page of a podcast. Check out my Twitch, twitch.tv.

Twitter's ho. Natalie? I have a new show coming out called Someplace Underneath, right in the next week or so. All right. Nice. Find that on the last podcast network, and you can follow me at the Daddy Gene.

Fantastic. Jackie. Be not so long to speak. I long to die. I'm going to call my mom. and tell her that right now. My name is Jackie Zabrowski. You follow me on Instagram at Jack That Worm.

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