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Podcast: Verbal Diorama
Episode: West Side Story (1961) & West Side Story (2021)
Description: West Side Story's origins as a Tony award-winning stage musical based on Romeo and Juliet meant it was ripe for a film adaptation. Stage director and choreographer Jerome Robbins was set to co-direct with Oscar-winning director Robert Wise; it would be written for the screen by Ernest Lehman, retaining the beautiful score, songs and lyrics by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.Wise would direct the dramatic scenes, and Robbins the musical sequences, in a lavish, expensive adaptation, shot on 70mm film. Robbins was a notorious perfectionist, often making the dancers vomit due to exhaustion and...