"Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona (where we lay our scene)
From ancient grudge break new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their lives"

So begins Shakespeare's beloved play "Romeo & Juliet," which is celebrating its 400th anniversary this year. These famous lines and the vivid language of this cautionary tale drive director Baz Luhrmann's cinematic interpretation, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO & JULIET. Welcome to Verona Beach, a sexy, violent other-world, neither future nor past, ruled by two rival families, the Montagues and the Capulets. Wealthy, selfish, ruthless and powerful, the parents share an enmity that has become the birthright of their offspring.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO & JULIET stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet. DiCaprio made his film debut in "This Boy's Life," and his performance in his next film, "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?," merited an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other features include "The Basketball Diaries," "The Quick and the Dead," and Agnieska Holland's "Total Eclipse," in which he played the poet Rimbaud. He also can be seen in the screen adaptation of the play "Marvin's Room," opposite Meryl Streep.

Danes won a Golden Globe Award and earned an Emmy nomination for her work on the highly-regarded television drama, "My So-Called Life." She went on to garner praise for her portrayal of the frail, winsome sister, Beth, in Gillian Armstrong's feature film "Little Women." She next starred in Jocelyn Moorhouse's "How To Make An American Quilt," appeared in Jodie Foster's ensemble comedy, "Home For The Holidays," and has a key role in "To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday."

Also starring in WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO & JULIET are Brian Dennehy as Romeo's father, Ted Montague; John Leguizamo, as Tybalt, Juliet's cousin and Romeo's sworn enemy; Academy Award-nominee Pete Postlethwaite as Father Laurence; and Paul Sorvino and Diane Venora as the sovereigns of the Capulet empire.

The actors playing the Montague kinsmen, friends and attendants are Jesse Bradford as Balthasar, Jamie Kennedy as Sampson, Dash Mihok as Benvolio, Harold Perrineau as Mercutio and Zak Orth as Gregory. The Capulet counterparts are played by Vincent Laresca as Abra and Carlos Martin Manzo as Petruchio. The Montague matriarch is played by Christina Pickles, and Miriam Margolyes is the Capulet's Nurse. M. Emmet Walsh is featured as the Apothecary, and Vondie Curtis-Hall portrays Captain Prince.

Director Luhrmann adapted the play for the screen with Craig Pearce, with whom he also scripted the hit film "Strictly Ballroom." The producer is Gabriella Martinelli, who produced "M. Butterfly" and co-produced "Naked Lunch," both directed by David Cronenberg; Baz Luhrmann also produces. The co-producer is Martin Brown, who previously worked with Luhrmann on "Strictly Ballroom." Cinematographer is Donald M. McAlpine, A.S.C., whose 45 films include "Nine Months," "Clear and Present Danger," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "My Brilliant Career" and "Breaker Morant."

The film also reunites Luhrmann with such additional "Strictly Ballroom" alumni as production designer Catherine Martin and editor Jill Bilcock. Kym Barrett is the costume designer. The music is by Nellee Hooper, with an additional score by Craig Armstrong and Marius De Vries.

Luhrmann and his creative team earned widespread acclaim with the release of "Strictly Ballroom," a romantic fable set in the colorful, capricious world of ballroom dancing. The independent feature, which marked Luhrmann's debut as a motion picture director, became a stunning critical and box-office success. It ushered in a new wave of Australian filmmaking, from "Muriel's Wedding" to "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." It also placed the young filmmaker in an enviable position, suddenly vaulting him up Hollywood's "A" list. Deluged with scripts from every major studio, Luhrmann, whose artistic background is dominated by successes in both theater and opera, turned to Shakespeare. (Prior to filming WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO & JULIET, Luhrmann mounted the Australian Opera's highly-lauded production of Benjamin Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." This production toured to the prestigious Edinburgh Festival and won the Festival's "Critic's Prize.")

"I've always wanted to do Romeo and Juliet,'" Luhrmann explains. "The themes it explores, the tragedy that is born of a prohibited love in a world of learned hate, is one of those primary myths that appeals to all people. Romeo and Juliet,' like all of Shakespeare's plays, touched everyone, from the street sweeper to the Queen of England. He was a rambunctious, sexy, violent, entertaining storyteller. We're trying to make this movie rambunctious, sexy, violent and entertaining the way Shakespeare might have if he was a filmmaker."

Shakespeare intentionally wrote his plays to appeal to a broad audience. Elizabethan theater-goers, Luhrmann notes, represented all levels of society. Anthony Burgess wrote that the architecture of the playhouse resulted from this multifaceted audience: "The physical structure ... was derived out of the Elizabethan inn, the innyard proving ... to be the most convenient location ... Here, then, was space for the casual groundlings, standing-room only, and, balcony accommodation for the better sort, the ladies and gentlemen staying at the inn." (Shakespeare)

Moreover, Shakespeare's works had to hold the attention of guests in various states of drunkenness, for "play performances encouraged the sale of wine and ale ... the sale of liquid refreshments was a lucrative adjunct to the art." (Burgess, Shakespeare)

Although "Romeo and Juliet" has come to exemplify the ultimate romantic tragedy, there are, in fact, several comedic accents in the play that arose due to the disparate nature of Elizabethan audiences. Luhrmann's movie reflects this mingling of comedy and tragedy.

"We have not shied away from clashing low comedy with high tragedy, which is the style of the play, for it is the low comedy that allows you to embrace the emotions of the piece," Luhrmann observes.

What Luhrmann definitely wanted to avoid was a rarefied, stilted, elitist, stagy version of the classic play. To do so, and to underscore and reveal the power of the language and the plot, Luhrmann cast young American actors as Romeo, Juliet and the opposing Capulet/Montague gangs, inviting them to speak the famous lines in their own American accent. This was a deliberate choice on Luhrmann's part, in keeping with the Elizabethan articulation of the words.

"When Shakespeare wrote these plays, they were written for an accent that was much more, to paraphrase Anthony Burgess, like an American sound," Luhrmann explains. "Our general perception of the way that Shakespeare should sound when it is acted is with what is termed in England RP,' or received pronunciation,' which is a sound with lots of round vowels that essentially developed in the last century. So, when you do Shakespeare with an American accent, it makes it very strong, makes the language very alive. It may or may not make the language sound less pretty, but I wanted to address this piece as a very boisterous, very real and passionate piece of storytelling, the way in which I believe Shakespeare wrote it."

In fact, Burgess noted that "... the American language, especially the north-eastern variety, comes closer to the way Shakespeare spoke than does the thespian of Olivier, Gielgud and Guinness. Combine a Boston with a Dublin accent and you have a dialect very apt for the man from Stratford."

Luhrmann cast two of America's most gifted and promising young actors -- Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes -- as the star-crossed lovers. DiCaprio came to the project first. While toying with the idea of the film, Luhrmann ran across DiCaprio's photo in a magazine.

"He was at a social event and (the caption read) ... and of course, there's that actor.' I didn't realize that he had just been nominated for an Academy Award for (his work in) Gilbert Grape.' I wondered what they meant by that actor.' I thought, either he's really, really good or he's done something infamous. When I later came to know him, I found that he was capable of both," Luhrmann observes wryly. "I thought that Leonardo was an extraordinary young actor, and I thought he'd make a great Romeo. It's important to reveal these eternal characters anew for every generation, and Leo is particularly suited for this. He does seem to symbolize his generation. I just thought he'd be a perfect Romeo; it was as simple as that."

Luhrmann invited DiCaprio to participate in several workshops and readings of the script that Luhrmann orchestrated to hone the movie and audition actors. The invitation came with no strings attached: "The deal I made with Leo was, Look, don't agree to do it, but don't decline it yet, either. Come to Australia, work with me for a week at this little rehearsal space I've got in a theater on the harbor, and see how you like it,'" Luhrmann remembers. DiCaprio did exactly that, and he became very intrigued by the project.

DiCaprio returned to Australia so that Luhrmann and cinematographer Donald M. McAlpine could videotape a workshop of the film. Ultimately, it was this footage that persuaded the studio to green-light the movie. Moreover, DiCaprio's performance unquestionably convinced Luhrmann that he had, indeed, found Romeo.

"When he arrived the first time, I really didn't know how he'd handle the language," Luhrmann recalls. "After the initial read-through, we went through the text very thoroughly and deliberately and when we went back to it, the words just came out of his mouth as if it was the most natural language possible. To me, the language in Leonardo's mouth is a wonderful thing to hear because the words have resonance. He speaks them as if they really are his words, and that's something you don't always get in a Shakespearean performance."

While DiCaprio quickly learned to embrace and personalize Shakespeare's language, he admits that it wasn't easy. "At first, I thought I would have to put on an English accent and try a sort of Affected Shakespeare Thing," notes the actor. "But, Baz explained that he wanted to make it very understandable and clear, and after working with him awhile, I began to feel more comfortable with it. There is a lot of beauty in each word and when I began to dissect sentences, I'd find meanings referring to something way back in the script, or words with double and triple meanings. So I really had to know what I was talking about to do the words justice; but at the same time, I had to make it conversational. That was a challenge and different from anything I'd ever done -- and I liked it."

Finding Juliet proved to be a more painstaking endeavor. Luhrmann embarked on an "enormous, enormous worldwide search" before he "discovered" Claire Danes.

"Not being an American, I wasn't aware of her show (the critically-lauded series My So-Called Life')," Luhrmann explains. "When I met Claire, I was really struck by her. Juliet is written as a very smart, active character. She decides to get married; she resolves to take the sleeping potion; she really drives the piece. The extraordinary thing about Claire is that she is a 16-year-old girl with the poise and maturity of a 30-year-old."

Danes adds that "any chance to do Shakespeare is wonderful. The more you read, the more you fall in love with him because his words are so amazingly beautiful and truthful, and he has such a grasp on human nature." However, the role of Juliet was especially appealing.

"Juliet is a remarkable part because she is so determined and mature, but at the same time, she has an innocence to her, a youth and a freshness," the young actress reflects. "She is very thoughtful, smart and passionate. She is an incredibly modern character. She makes her own decisions and takes fate into her own hands which, for a woman, was unheard of in Shakespeare's time."

Danes notes that Juliet also experiences a broad spectrum of emotions, which she found to be immensely intriguing, if exhausting at times: "That was the biggest challenge, to reach the extremes in the gamut of emotions Juliet feels. Baz and I used to joke about it; we'd talk about the scene we were going to shoot of Juliet in the coffee shop with her best-friend, when she'd complain about math class being such a bore or something like that. Of course, Juliet's life is never normal' like that. She's falling in love or defying her parents or taking a sleeping potion or dying. Everything about her is real; it's just heightened and very dramatic. The trick is never to hide. It was hard, sometimes, but it was a real treat to play her arc."

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO & JULIET marks Danes' first attempt at Shakespeare. Although the language intimidated her initially, she soon found his words to be wonderful aids. "The words can be very helpful because they are so descriptive and so absolutely on the button of the emotion you're supposed to be playing," Danes explains. "Although the feelings are very intense, his words are so powerful that he makes the job of the actor fairly easy if you allow yourself to relax and understand them fully. There are no missing pieces in the writing. In fact, when I read scripts for other movies now, I'm ridiculously disappointed. It's impossible to measure up to Shakespeare."

Both DiCaprio and Danes claim that their work together also helped them discover their place in Shakespeare's text. "Leo is brilliant. It's been thrilling to work with him. He's one of the most interesting people I've ever met and he is a very open, honest and true actor," Danes remarks. "He is also extremely funny. Sometimes I'd be doubled over in pain from laughing so hard and that's important, sometimes, especially when the scenes are intense. It was a real treat working with him."

DiCaprio first saw Danes' work on "My So-Called Life," and even then, she made a deep impression on him. "I realized there was something really great in her, just from watching an episode of that TV show," DiCaprio recalls. "I knew from the start that she had a command of the screen. When we were auditioning Juliets, she was the only one who came right up and said the lines directly to me. It was a little shocking, but it impressed me because most of them looked off into the sky. She was right there, in front of my face, saying every line with power."

The two rehearsed with Luhrmann extensively prior to filming, which helped them define, investigate and understand the characters and the language. "One of our main themes was clarity," Danes states. "During rehearsal, when Baz and Leo and I were working out what we were going to do, we did an exercise where we were absolutely literal. For every word we said, we'd find a way to make it clear with our hands. It was a little corny and we felt ridiculous doing it, but it really emphasized the idea that you can never be too obvious, precise and clear with the language."

To further enhance and de-mystify Shakespeare's language, Luhrmann set the film in what he calls "a created world," a collage of modern and classic images, drawn from religion, theater, folklore, technology and pop culture.

"The idea behind the created world' was that it's a made-up world comprised of twentieth century icons," says Luhrmann, "and these images are there to clarify what's being said, because once you understand it, the power and the beauty of the language works its magic on you. The idea was to find icons that everybody comprehends, that are overtly clear. The hope was that by associating the characters and places with those images, the language would be freed from its cage of obscurity."

It was Luhrmann's notion of setting WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO & JULIET in a created world that initially drew Leonardo DiCaprio to the project.

"I wouldn't have done it if the movie had been a period piece," says DiCaprio. "At first, I thought, why do Romeo and Juliet' again? It has been done so many times, and so many people loved the Zeffirelli film. But what Baz has done is reinvent it, and in the process, he's discovered new ways of treating the play and the characters. The created world really helped me, as an actor. It heightened everything, which made it more dangerous, more interesting and more liberating. It gave me more freedom to try different things with the character and the scene, because we were not held down by traditional rules."

In fact, Luhrmann and his writing partner, Craig Pearce, formulated their own rules for their created world, based on the mores of Elizabethan England. While neither wanted to set the film against an Elizabethan backdrop, they agreed that the social, religious and political aspects of Shakespeare's time certainly influenced the play and, therefore, should impact the created world.

"When we started to describe the created world, we considered Shakespeare's views on Verona," Pearce explains. "In the research, we found that he was not historically or geographically accurate in his depiction of Verona. To Shakespeare, and to Elizabethan audiences, Verona was a hot, sexy, violent Catholic country. (During that era, Catholics were considered dangerous and exotic to Protestant England.) So we needed to find a place that exists in an equivalent way to our audiences."

The filmmakers initially turned to Miami Beach.

"We thought, Scarface,' Miami Vice'; Miami seemed to be a world in which the very wealthy and glamorous live alongside the very poor, a society influenced by Latin culture and punctuated with violence," Pearce says. "It seemed like a good place to start. So, we decided to use Miami Beach as a template for our created world."

Luhrmann adds that Miami also served as a "link between (Shakespeare's) Verona and a modern, western city."

At this point, the filmmakers struck a bargain with Twentieth Century Fox: If the studio would fund a three-month research and development stint in Miami, they would provide a screenplay adaptation and a visual explanation of the style in which they hoped to shoot the movie. The studio agreed, and the Australian team descended upon Miami.

"Before we got to Miami, we had been concentrating on the play, determining what every line meant, as if we were producing it for the stage," comments Luhrmann. "We continued to do that in Miami, but we thought, If Romeo and Juliet, Capulet and Montague, lived in Miami, who would they be?' We wanted to base it in truth, not on real people. It didn't necessarily have to be naturalistic, but we wanted it to ring true. Essentially, we wanted to create heightened circumstances where the characters do real things."

The filmmakers methodically explored the city, hunting for the information that would describe their created world. They interviewed prominent businessmen and politicians and each rode with a policeman on patrol. They also visited schools and spoke to teenagers around the ages of Romeo and Juliet, ascertaining their concerns and interests, their attitudes towards sex, drugs and their parents. Slowly, a profile of the created world began to emerge and, as it did, they realized they could not set the film in Miami.

"In the beginning we tried to put all the rules that governed the created world into the script," Pearce recalls. "But we realized that the more baggage that we as writers brought to the screenplay, the more convoluted it got. We needed to let Shakespeare's words make the world live. We also realized that the created world could not be set in Miami because we needed to have the Shakespearean conventions built in and they don't exist in Miami."

Luhrmann, Pearce and the creative team discovered that, in a strange way, such conventions still exist in Mexico.

"There are textual facts in Romeo and Juliet,' having to do with Elizabethan society, that exist in Mexico," Luhrmann explains. "For instance, during Shakespeare's time religion was very involved in politics; there was a very small percentage of great wealth and a large population of poor; it was violent; and people were openly armed. We've interpreted all of these Elizabethan things in the context of the modern, created world. In fact, much of this occurs in modern-day Mexico, in varying degrees. You could actually set the piece in Mexico City itself and just play it. It has a mysticism about it and, for me it's exotic. It has a music and magic to it. It's not Verona Beach, but it certainly had a lot of the elements to it."

Pearce says that he and Luhrmann resolved to "stick absolutely to the Shakespearean text," to keep as many of the Elizabethan customs as possible, "... such as a highly evolved code of etiquette and honor, even in the use of violence" in the context of a created world, based on twentieth century icons. They discovered that one of this century's most potent icons, the movies, best illustrated this notion.

"Basically, the created world is a universe that is recognizably modern but has a little distance," Pearce says. "It's like a fairy tale world, a world of stories which really parallels the movies. The reality' we see in the movies is always a bit magnified, even when it is supposedly realistic."

"In fact, what we've done was set the film in the world of the movies," Luhrmann adds. "Now, what that means is that none of it particularly adds up, chronologically. Some of it looks like it's from the Seventies, and some of it looks like it's from the Forties. Stylistically, it changes very dramatically, echoing very recognizable film genres. We've taken very identifiable film looks, so part of it looks like Rebel Without a Cause,' part of it looks like a Busby Berkeley musical, part of it looks like a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry' picture. The eclectic mixture of all these film styles collectively make up Verona Beach. These drastic changes of style refer to cinematic worlds or looks or ideas that audiences are familiar with on some level; using them to construct this created world' will hopefully produce an environment that can accommodate a stylized language and make it easier for the audience to receive this heightened language."

Luhrmann also turned to the movies to help identify Shakespeare's characters for contemporary audiences. For example, in the play, Juliet's mother, the venerated Lady Capulet, is a woman so self-absorbed that she cannot even fathom the emotional gulf between herself and her daughter. Her actions, and to some extent her inaction, contribute to Juliet's death. In Luhrmann's movie, Lady Capulet becomes Gloria Capulet, who Luhrmann describes as " ... a little bit like the quintessential Tennessee Williams southern belle, like Blanche DuBois." Juliet's father, the commanding and volatile Fulgencio Capulet, is blind to his daughter's distress. He tries to speed up the marriage between Juliet and her suitor, Paris, a match that Capulet views as politically, socially and economically expedient. It is a calculated decision that will lead to disaster. Luhrmann envisions Capulet as "... the classic Godfather patriarch." As for Romeo, "... in a way, he was the original rebel without a cause, the first James Dean. His is a non-politicized rebellion. He is a Byronesque rebel in love with the idea of love itself."