Day 36

I watched Romeo & Juliet this evening. And I mean the one with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Not West Side Story. That was a few nights ago. Saturday night.

I decided to watch it for my adaptation, but it's getting hard. If for example, someone is a servant to the Montegue family, I slightly changed their name and made them a friend of my Romeo counterpart. Another for example, Paris is supposed to be a suitor for Juliet that her parents want for her, but she wants Romeo. So she asks Friar Lawrence for that potion which will make her look dead. In my adaptation, I was having Juliet (Julia) get ready for coming out as a debutante and Paris (Philip) is supposed to be her escort, but she wants to get out of it. Philip is a college student, Ryan and Julia are high school students, and Philip is also a former student of Mr. Lawrence, an English teacher, help Juliet get out of the debutante ball.

I'm going to have to make it a loose adaptation with Ryan and Julia meeting at a Halloween party hosted by her parents, lapse a few months to the spring right before the Prom (equivalent of the wedding), and then have them break up at the end (instead of killing each other)

Romeo - Ryan
Juliet - Julia
Mercutio - Robert
Tybalt - Peter, Julia's brother

Since I don't want any of the characters to die, I'm going to have Peter get into a fight with Robert who then gets kicked out of school. Then Ryan beats up Peter causing him hospitalization, and then having to break up with Julia after their parents catch each other.

There's a lot more detail to it and I'll explain in later posts.

Currently listening: the West Side Story soundtrack (even West Side Story is the same as Romeo & Juliet)