In Fatal Loins, Robert Sandler plays both the parts of Maria and Tony from Westside Story. Dressed as two different clowns, Sandler re-enacts, shot for shot, the balcony scene and song from Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' 1961 adaptation of the film. This labour of love, as a technically faithful and observant study of the film, is undermined by the presence of clowns fulfilling the roles of the characters. Much like a clown’s function, the scene is mimed, with the original audio present throughout. And as with clowns, their comedy and self-effacing status as figures of fun, thinly veils a sense of human tragedy and pathos. This additional layer of meaning is brought skilfully into the cinematic space and we are left to examine the sentiment of the story from an entirely other perspective.