I'm 22, and I knew the story long before I first read the play (in 8th grade English G/T), mostly from TV shows _Diff'rent Strokes_, _The FLintstones_, _The Jetsons_, I even saw Clive A. Smith's _Romy-O and Julie-8_. Of course, I didn't think as much of it then as I do now, but I still think Shakespeare wrote many plays that were better. Scott On Tue, 31 Mar 1998, Susan Vaill wrote: > (Save Romeo & Juliet before someone let's them live!) > > On the R & J note, I think even a selective comparison of Franco > Zefferelli's film with Bas Luhrmann's (?) recent 'modernized' version > would be very useful for kids. When I was in 6th grade, a group of us put > on a condensed version of the play, so the story was always familar to > me--I couldn't imagine not knowing it. > > However, around the time the recent Romeo & Juliet came out, I met an 11 > year-old girl who she was really excited about going to see the movie. > She had seen the trailer and asked me about the part where Romeo is > climbing up a wall to Juliet in the window--she thought Juliet had been > kidnapped and he was coming to rescue her. I was shocked--she said she > had never read the play--then her 14 year old brother chimed in that he > had never read it either. I said, well, you must know the plot, its been > retold in movies time and time again--the boy and girl from thw opposite > side of the tracks, from rival groups--star-crossed lovers?... They > looked at me blankly. Not even West Side Story? They'd never heard of it. > > Essentially, it occurred to me what a tragedy (no pun intended) it would > be for these kids' first and perhaps only familiarity with Romeo & Juliet > to come from the music video version. I myself enjoyed it a great deal > for its *differences*, but I can't imagine not having something to > compare that to--especially Claire Danes vs. Olivia Hussy (I think that's > the name of Zefferelli's Juliet). > > I even remember a Wonder Years episode about Zefferelli's R & J being the > fad movie for all of those kids to go see. > > Just some thoughts, > > > > Susan Vaill > > MFA Film Production Program > University of Southern California > School of Cinema-Television > > (213) 650-6199 > > ---- > Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite > http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite > ---- To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]