Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 120

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Popular Culture Review

are violent, self-destructive male antiheroes. Musically the film incorporates darker
thematic elements denoting the influence of lyricist Stephen Sondheim,5the infusion
o f Latin jazz rhythms into Leonard Bernstein’s classical score in a popular re
articulation o f opera as dark musical, and the dynamic experimentation of Jerome
Robbins’ dance as choreographed musical site of physical/coded violence.
Several concurrent filmmaking trends industrially informed West Side Story's
screen adaptation. This big-budget Mirisch film was an independent production—
with a $4,029,600 budget and an estimated $7.5 million final cost, in line with
escalating production costs in the post-antitrust, divorcement-of-exhibition era
following the collapse o f the studio system (Mirisch). Partially shot on location in
New York, it was indicative of “runaway” production and the surge toward location
filming and Broadway adaptations by Hollywood in the “age of television” (Balio).
Facing declining revenues, the film industry “made ‘em big or made ‘em
provocative” to compete with television.6This prestige adaptation trend, influenced
by television and the New York stage, combined theatrical realist style with topical
racy subject matter to capitalize on more lenient Production Code censor