September 18, 2007

The craziest girl on the block

Here's the most pleasantly warped version of West Side Story's "Tonight" that you'll see all day:


The 1985 short, directed by Terry Miller, was nominated for a Student Academy Award, and for a while, was an appropriate prelude to midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Chicago's Music Box Theater. (Miller, who's made lots of comedy shorts with the likes of Andy Richter and David Koechner without ever quite hitting the big time himself, never got any royalties from those showings—the Bernstein family, as he relates in this 2000 profile, denied him the rights to use the song.) As a bonus, if you look closely, you can spot some long-gone minor Chicago landmarks—the Nortown Theater, George Diamond's Steak House, and the North Side Magikist sign.

1 comment:

Rebecca said...

There are some lovely shots in that short. I'm surprised I'd not seen it before.