The Plot
Two households both alike in dignity - our scene is laid in Verona Beach, an American type of city. We get informed about the situation by a news-magazine speaker, talking to us out of a TV box in 80's style.
The action begins: A few guys dressed in colourful and crazy looking clothes (Capulets and Montagues) are fighting against each other on the street. The same night Romeo, Benvolio, and Mercutio get stoned and go to the rival family's party where Romeo and Juliet meet and immediately fall in love with each other. Meanwhile Mercutio parties and gives a performance as a transvestite. Romeo and Juliet marry secretly, but their love isn't meant to stand the test of fate. After Tybalt has killed Mercutio in a fight Romeo revenges his friend by killing Tybalt. He gets banished to Mantua and meets Juliet one last time in her bedroom before he has to go where they fulfil their marriage.
Juliet's father wants her to marry Paris, a well-known business man whose counterfeit can be seen on every front page of a magazine. Since she doesn't want to she is suicidal and asks the priest who has married her to Romeo for help. His plan is to give her a drug which will put her to sleep for the next 24 hours and make her appear dead.
Meanwhile he wants to send for Romeo who will then take her with him to the desert of Mantua. The priest's letter is delayed and doesn't get to Romeo, but his friend Balthasar brings the news of Juliet's "death". Romeo is desperate and gets himself some poison, goes to the church in which Juliet is laid down surrounded by hundreds of candles. Romeo takes the poison, Juliet awakes and they look into each others eyes when Juliet suddenly realizes that Romeo will die. They are shocked, Romeo dies and Juliet kills herself, too.
