Word: romeos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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CONCEIVED BY: Baz Luhrmann, director of the 1996 film Romeo + Juliet and the 1992 film Strictly Ballroom...
...idea was to spice the old format with smart comers--Claire Danes (Romeo + Juliet), Omar Epps (Higher Learning) and Giovanni Ribisi (the medic in Saving Private Ryan)--and a screw-you modernity. Instead, director and co-writer Scott Silver (Johns) gives us a surly anti-toon; it's the Three Sociopathic Stooges with lots of Method mewling. By the time Ribisi has his big shouting scene with Epps ("Dude, your cover's been blown. Your cover's been blown. You cover has been blown!"), you realize these kids just aren't having any fun playing cops. But hang around...
...Norman and Stoppard yearned to make a movie about homosexuality, here would have been an opportunity to show that the man capable of creating the "greatest love story of all time" would have pursued not Juliet, but fair Romeo. But this plot would not have rewarded the screenwriters with adoring audiences, and certainly not with 13 Oscar nominations...
...more Americans can relate to Shakespeare's pursuit of Viola de Lesseps rather than perhaps the pursuit of Christopher Marlow, Shakespeare's authentic friend and literary rival. Norman and Stoppard wrote the movie with the intention that audience members would either trudge out of the theater longing for some Romeo to climb through their bedroom window at night, or with patrons holding on a bit tighter to the Romeo they had already won over. Had the plot focused on a homosexual relationship, the audience would not have felt the same emotional identification with the lovers split asunder...
...living wage will not result in significant labor cutbacks, despite arguments to the contrary. Romeo cleans the dining hall by himself; Joe alone watches the Science Center. They cannot be downsized. Most employees at Harvard work in the service sector where the labor market demand is fairly inelastic, and so a living wage does not risk their jobs...