Romeo and Juliet on screen the story have also been filmed, most notably "West Side Story", Prokofiev's ballet "Romeo and Juliet" and "Romanoff and Juliet". Several theatrical films, such as "Shakespeare in Love" and "Romeo Must Die", consciously use elements of Shakespeare's plot. Producer Irving Thalberg pushed MGM for five years to make a "Romeo and Juliet", in the face of the studio's opposition: which stemmed from Louis B. Mayer's belief that the masses considered the Bard over their heads, and from the austerity forced on the studios by the depression. It was only when Jack L. Warner announced his intention to film Max Reinhardt's
Romeo and Juliet on screen of the protagonists, and ending with their tragic deaths. The conceit of dramatising Shakespeare writing Romeo and Juliet has been used several times. The oddball 1944 B-movie "Time Flies" features the comedy duo Susie and Bill Barton, who, time travelling, encounter a Shakespeare struggling for words for his balcony scene, which Susie (Evelyn Dall) supplies from memory, while Bill interrupts with quips. John Madden's 1998 "Shakespeare in Love" depicts Shakespeare's process in composing "Romeo and Juliet" against the backdrop of his own doomed love affair. Writers Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard exploited another commonplace of Shakespeare-related films, which scholar Tony