Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[Gemini Cricket]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Hey Brad, Netflix finally sent me "Rent." The Broadway version, not the movie.

Hmmm, mixed feelings. I liked it better than the film, that's for sure. It's basically just vignettes to music, and I think that works much better as a stage device. There's really not much 'plot.'

I think you are critiquing "Rent" if it premiered today. When it came out (so to speak) in 1996, it tackled a lot of issues that had only been scratched by a some mainstream films (ie. And the Band Played On, Philadelphia) and plays ("Angels in America" comes to mind) at the time. "Rent" highlighted the following: talking about living with AIDS and being unashamed of being infected with it, out of the closet gay relationships, transgender identity etc. The play also featured a love song between two men and a sort of love song between two women. These things were rare back then. But Larson found a way to incorporate it into one musical and still have it be wildly popular.

I don't see anything wrong with the way the relationship between Angel and Collins was portrayed. It's one example of one gay relationship. Not all gay relationships are "a certain way". Angel was seen without his drag in one scene to show people what someone with AIDS looks like when they are deathly ill.

As for this specific version, besides Gwen Stewart (an original cast member who portrays the "Who the f*ck do you think you are" Bag Lady) and Rodney Hicks (another original cast member who plays Benny in this version but was ensemble in the original version) only Wil Chase gets close to depicting his/her character as well as an original cast member. Everyone else is lacking some aspect or spark that someone had in the original cast. This is why the original cast recording and, yes, the movie are precious to me. Mark's character is not gay despite being played originally by out actor Anthony Rapp. Adam Kantor's Mark played gay to me too but mostly because I think Kantor is gay or fey and this being his first mainstage appearance it showed.

I think "Rent" is a thin AIDS-related story as much as "La Boheme" is a thin Tuberculosis-related story. And remember AIDS back then was more of a death sentence than it is now and still the play was had an extremely hopeful view of the disease (that was also rare back then).