I grew up in theatre. My family was enormously involved in every aspect of it; Dad was a director, Mom was a costumer, they both acted, Mom danced. I did dance recitals from the time I could walk (excepting the year of the Terrible Ankle Sprain at age five), as did my sister. We were extras in plays that needed children until we were old enough to get cast in real parts, and my first line in a show I’d been cast in was, “Thou liest, thou shag-eared villain!”, from Macbeth, when I was nine. I’ve been a fireman with two days’ notice before the show opened. I’ve done lights and sound and helped build sets. That was the world I grew up in. I know good theatre from bad, and the difference between a good production and a good show.
“Rent” is not a good show.
The one production I saw of it was with my friends Spidey and Lei Ann in Boston, and it was a *brilliant* production of a not particularly good show. Don’t get me wrong: “Rent” is powerful and pushes hot buttons, it’s moving, there are characters to love and hate, there is some truly wonderful music, and if the productions are generally as good as the one I saw, it would be easy to mistake it for a great musical, but it isn’t. (The *reason* it isn’t is because the composer died, extremely dramatically, of a brain aneurysm a matter of hours before the show premiered, and the result was that things that might have otherwise been altered during its pre-opening run were suddenly sacrosanct, much to the show’s detriment.)
When I heard they were making a movie of it I went, “Augh.” When I heard that much of the original cast was going to be *in* the movie, I went “Augh” more, because the show is about a bunch of 20 year olds, and while many of them were in their early twenties when the show opened, they’re not anymore, and I doubt very much that they’ve changed the ages of the characters to reflect the ages of the actors. (I’m not sure it’d be appropriate anyway, because in this era there’s a certain angsty pathos that comes with being in your early twenties, even if you don’t add in AIDS on top of that.)
All of this commentary is prompted by the fact that I saw a trailer for the movie “Rent” last night and I had the sudden astonishing thought that it might actually be better than the stage show.
From my perspective, this is kind of like saying, I don’t know, that liver and onions have suddenly replaced hot fudge sundaes as everybody’s favorite dessert. Films made of musicals aren’t always travesties, but they very frequently are, and at best they’re *different*, not *better* than the stage show.
But it’s because they’re different that the film of “Rent” might just turn out to be better than the stage show. It may be that the things that ought to have been taken out of the stage show will end up out of the movie.. There’s no intermission, so the slow moments may end up getting dropped. You can cut things together differently in a film than is possible on stage, so that might help, too. The idea that the movie might do right what the stage show got wrong is completely fascinating to me. I’m really looking forward to seeing it now, to see if they *did* get it right where the show got it wrong.
And I had no idea Jesse L. Martin (who is playing Tom Collins, and who is .not. too old for the part) could sing, and I’d forgotten Taye Diggs was the original Benny and am, despite what I just said, glad he’s reprising the role. I think Rosario Dawson is well-cast as Mimi, and I’ll see what I think of the rest of the actors reprising their roles when the movie comes out. Vocally they’ll be fine. It’s just that while Taye Diggs doesn’t look twenty-one, he also doesn’t look a hard thirty-three*, which the actors playing Mark, Roger and Angel rather do.
*Taye Diggs, on his hardest, ugliest, oldest, most hideous day, would, mind you, still pretty much put Adonis to shame, so this is perhaps not a fair comparison.
current music: Seasons of Love, Rent
I saw Rent in New York, after hearing various people (especially Cera) rave about it, and I was extraordinarily underwhelmed. It was…spectacle. But not very good, I felt, for exactly the reasons you describe. The fact that the first act covers less than 24 hours, and the second act covers the entire next year, makes it very badly paced, in my opinion.
But that’s exactly the sort of thing you can fix in a film. I admit that, with no enthusiasm for the show at all, I’m interested to see how the movie comes out.
Now that I’ve watched the trailer (online, at Apple), a few other thoughts:
(a) I’m so sorry that Briscoe and Green never did the musical episode of Law & Order. Jesse Martin does indeed have a fine voice.
(b) I fear that what the play will really lose in its transition to the screen is what all plays lose: the sense of immediacy. The idea that all of this is happening right now, right here, as you watch it. Movies make things look…preserved. Captured, rather than immediate.
In, say, “Glengarry Glen Ross”, that’s OK. The play holds up when seen as “this is what happened” rather than “this is what’s happening”. But with Rent, the immediacy is part of what makes the play work. (Well, makes a production work.) These are very real and very intensely desperate people frantically running around on stage to accomplish things–get the rent, put on the show, fall in love. It’s about people with rough edges around their lives, and the trailer makes it look…a little smoother.
(c) Maybe they’ll put “Seasons of Love” at the start of the movie, or the end, rather than in the middle, where I fear it underscores the “oh look now we’re changing pacing” problem. (My wife observes that it’s a great second act opener. But of course, movies don’t have acts in the same way.) At the beginning, or end, it might help frame the whole movie.
Actually, based on the preview–with them standing in spotlights on a stage singing–what I feel like I’d love to see is: all the characters stand on stage, singing, to open the movie. Then, one by one, they step out of the spotlights, leave the theater, and enter their roles, ending with Marc, who then runs home from the theatre and the story starts.
Anyway. It should be interesting.
That would be a fantastic opener for the movie. I wonder what they’ll do.
Yeah, re: immediacy. That’s much of why I want to see “Moulin Rouge” as a stage show. I think it would have an impact as a stage show that it can’t have as a movie.
We’ll see!