CREEMEDIA
Back in the days when casting directors automatically hired Italians and Greeks to play the roles of Latins, Hollywood brought us a stylized filmic version of what had been a stylized Broadway play—West Side Story. Choreographed as precisely as a revue by the June Taylor Dancers, in this movie two rival New York teenage street gangs called the Jets (the white guys) and the Sharks (the pseudoPuerto Ricans) inflicted instantly regretted mayhem upon one another.
CREEMEDIA
DEPARTMENTS
TEENAGE WASTELAND
THE OUTSIDERS (Warner Bros.)
BAD BOYS (Universal)
by
Toby Goldstein
Back in the days when casting directors automatically hired Italians and Greeks to play the roles of Latins, Hollywood brought us a stylized filmic version of what had been a stylized Broadway play—West Side Story. Choreographed as precisely as a revue by the June Taylor Dancers, in this movie two rival New York teenage street gangs called the Jets (the white guys) and the Sharks (the pseudoPuerto Ricans) inflicted instantly regretted mayhem upon one another. Their illicit love affairs and death agonies took place to the sounds of a traditional score by none less than classicist Leonard Bernstein.