RENT (the musical)

Only the interiors were shot in S.F. (actually, old military warehouses converted to soundstages on Treasure Island, located in the middle of the east bay between S.F. and Oakland). I think most of the exterior shots were actually done in NYC.

Besides, how much of New York still looks like it did in 1994, once you get away from the landmarks?

A lot. But some neighborhoods have changed more than others, and the Lower East Side has seen more change than most.

M.

Good to know, from an actual New Yorker. Is there new legislation about shooting in the city too that makes it more difficult? I'm pretty sure I read something but can't be sure... oh well, the alarm goes off in two and a half hours so I'll leave that for others to resolve

Are you talking about guns or films? In either case, I don't know of any new legislation, but that doesn't mean there isn't any.

M.

The various Law & Order series seem to shoot just fine in NYC...

I very much doubt that any piece of legislation would hinder filming in NYC given what they are trying to do with the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

--
H

To return to an earlier topic in the thread: I don't know about the rest of the cast, but Idina Menzel can still play the right age for the character. I just returned from her current off-B'way show, and the woman looks (and sounds) amazing.

M.

Yes! I'm like so in love with Idina. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to New York until after the run of her off-B'way show so I won't get to see her in it. I've yet to see her live in anything, it's dissapointing.

I also have to say that I've grown to really like the soundtrack to the movie. It's just a matter of getting past the original B'Way cast recording that has become engrained in people's heads over the years.

I still think Mimi is a little weak in some spots and "Over the Moon" doesn't seem as energetic (not sure whether that's Idina or Columbus' fault though), but most everything else is in top form. I do think an opportunity was missed to do a somewhat neat, hilarious, and gritty montage mass sex scene using "Contact" - that's about the only track from the original score that I really miss besides "We're OK" for Joanne.

"Contact" was fun, but essentially flab when looking at a movie adaptation. The only song I miss is "Christmas Bells" because all of the echoes of it throughout the rest of the soundtrack had to be removed. Otherwise, I quite enjoy the movie soundtrack. I wish Anthony Rapp had approached the sounds from a Broadway perspective rather than a pop-music standpoint, and I think Jesse L. Martin goes a bit over the top at times but generally I quite like it. (Debauchery of "Over the Moon" aside) The original approach to Mimi had a lot more spice to it, but I've really connected to how Rosario has approached the role. She's the weak link in terms of vocal talent, but you can hear alot of her dramatic performance in the songs, which I like.
My favorite change by far is "La Vie Boheme". I love how after "...we raise out glass, you bet your ass..." the tempo is dropped to a crawl and slowly gains momentum over the course of the next next minute or so as Mark gains steam.

I'm looking forward to this film mostly because I think the soundtrack album from the stage show sounds just horrible. Oh, the performances are good and I like the arrangements, but the recording itself is... well, godawful. I can't envision the soundtrack for the film being anything less than much better.

At first I thought "Chris Columbus, OH NOOOOO!", but then I remembered that he wrote Gremlins. Still, I think the trailer looks very grit-free, a clean, well-lit version of Rent. That wouldn't be horrible, but after I saw the show in Toronto (when would that have been? 1998? I have my ticket somewhere...) I had visions of a film that looked like Woodstock -- grainy 16mm, available light (or "faked" available light, like Spike Lee's Clockers) and split-screen.

Not that I expected anyone to make a film that I saw in my head seven years ago...

I've never seen "Rent" as a play, so everything was new to me in the film.

I think the non-singing transition scenes were okay, but also lacked in keeping a congruent vibe to the musical numbers at times.

I did enjoy the musical numbers, and some of the songs are just so heartwrenchingly sad and beautiful at the same time. No doubt I got teary-eyed in many spots, but the emotions were earned.

I give it 3 stars, or a grade of B.

Alright, confession time, being the uncultured swine that I am, i'm unfamilliar with this particular production, what is it about?

The trailer looks good because I love musicals anyway, but I just need a little background on it first.

It also looks very Fame-ish to me.

RENT was less like the movie FAME and more like HAIR for twentysomethings in the 90s. It's also a rather coy modernization of Puccini's opera, LA BOHEME.

I'm skeptical about the film, having seen the original Broadway production. It's doubtful that the impact that had can be anywhere nearly even approximated.

The original was an overwhelming experience because the physical presence of these performers on the stage helped create a direct connection with the audience that was utterly unlike any Broadway show you could expect. It was, rather, like an intimate rock concert. Everybody knew all the performers. Everybody knew all the songs. Everybody knew every scene, every word. Everybody was standing on their seats or dancing in the aisles. The only thing missing was lighters held aloft. It was raucous and riotous and a screaming good time!

I can't imagine that this filmed version will give even the scintilla of a hint of what it was like to be in the actual theater ten years ago.

Of course, it wasn't only being in the theater, but it was being somebody of that age, time, and place. If you were in your mid-to-late-20s, in the mid-90s, and most important a true New Yorker[!], then you couldn't help but feel that the original RENT fully expressed a certain zeitgeist with quite profound passion.

Also, if you don't find the line "you can take the girl out of Hicksville, but not Hicksville out of the girl" convulsively hilarious, then what the original RENT meant will be lost on you.

The author of the show, the late Jonathan Larson, set RENT in about the year 1989, and, in a way, the original show, coming out six or seven years later, was already a piece of nostalgia. The "La Vie Boheme" finale of the first act was as much a rallying cry for non-conformism as it was a wistful look back at a time, maybe the only time, when that was possible.

This is also something that could never be conveyed by a version filmed and released in 2005.

I miss the OLD Alphabet City!

I was pretty dissapointing with this adaptation. The direction seemed to be jarring and out of pace with the way I remember the production. My friend who went with me, who had never seen the original, was even more thrown off by the transitions which seemed to be dull pauses in action that were best summed up as "mersh mersh"

The film suprisingly has a dull "thud" of a feel for it; the emotions are stagnant and the characters all too often come off as whiny twits, something that was not present in the stage performance.

I am not a huge fan of the stage show, but I felt it portrayed an effective storyline with some real show-stopping moments and great through line of action.

This film just comes off as though it lays on the floor gasping for air. It never gets above the basic story, and the emotional connection to the actors is gone.

I realize what the film lacks.. the stage audience provides moments for people to look around, talk to each other, and join in the cast, in a way. On screen, the cast comes off so over-the top and unbelievable at times that there is no emotional connection and I thought something that never crossed my mind in the stage show: "Get a damn job!". In the stage show, you rooted for them, it had the Opera feel. In this form, it seems to have lost that.

This film doesn't get across the sub-elements of the story and is too detached. If you were a big fan of the stage show, the numbers are well done, and you can enjoy it on that level. If you've never seen the stage show, this is a really bad introduction to it ;(

Well, I was surprised at the applause from all around me that my particular audience gave to the film at the end. I did not expect that. I guess my audience was much more into the film, I heard laughter and sniffles throughout the film, so I can't say there was an overall emotional disconnect between the film and my audience. But the "prose" transitions between musical numbers wasn't as smooth as it could be. Nonetheless, I was swayed by some of the tragically uplifting moments in the production.

Call me a shameless RENT-head, but I loved the show, and I LOVED THE MOVIE. AWESOME.

The New York Daily News recently printed an article on Rent, and here's a clip of it:

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...p-310616c.html

It's nice to know that they left on their own terms.

I have yet to see this flick but I just came from a household where a whole bevy of teenagers came back from a screening and were making the floor shake above me as they reenacted it to the Broadway cast recording.
Hopefully tomorrow when I'm back in Boston I'll get a chance.

If you saw "Team America" the musical Gary was in was a parody of Rent, if I'm not mistaken.

That's right! Man, that was funny.

I read that Chris Columbus basically assumed that the original Mimi and Joanne would not be part of the production and didn't actually speak to either about it. He said he read in the NYTimes that the original Joanne felt too old, but it's not clear that he ever tried to convince her to be in the movie. Same with the original Mimi, that he knew she was pregnant and just dropped her out of consideration.

I find these explanations suspect. SO many films and movies work around pregnancies, I can't see why Columbus didn't even TRY to make RENT do that too. Would Rubin-Vega have gotten pregnant at that time if she knew she was really up for the role? Isn't casting done long in advance of actual filming?

I think Columbus and the producers of the film dropped Rubin-Vega because she's not attractive enough for Hollywood, and Rosario Dawson is flat-out gorgeous.

That's it!

But Rubin-Vega is the ONLY Mimi, dammit!!!

I thought she didn't look much like a teenager around the time of the original production. It doesn't matter so much on stage because there are no close-ups, but I think that a forty-year-old Mimi would just plain not work on film.

I do like her voice and think she's very unconventionally attractive, but I just can't see her, today, as Mimi.

I saw Daphne Rubin-Vega on stage in the spring of 2004 (a non-musical), and she looked great. But there's no way she could pass for the nineteen-year-old that Mimi is explicitly identified to be. It's a stretch for Rosario Dawson, who's about ten years younger. Besides, she does a fine job in the film.

I found the film to be a good translation, one that respects the material without being so slavishly faithful as to make the movie look dull and stagy (as with, for example, Phantom of the Opera). No, it doesn't replicate the live theatrical experience, because no film ever does or can. But it pulls a few nice cinematic tricks (e.g., the ballroom scene for "Tango Maureen"), and the performances are all heartfelt and affecting.

Lesser of two evils, I suspect. On stage, much of that dialogue is sung, but I don't think an audience would have accepted such a device on film.

M.

For those interested, Dawson was 25 years old when they started filming Rent.






Crawdaddy

I am a huge RENT head. I saw it with the original cast early in its run, have memorized every word of the cast recording, saw it again with the first national touring company, just love the play.

I am not a Chris Columbus fan, but when I think of that fact always try to remind myself he once directed the very entertaining ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, which starred RENT'S Anthony Rapp (when he walked past us in the lobby, while we were waiting to go in to see RENT for the first time, the person I was with turned to me and quoted his "Ya think?" line from that film).

So, I went in, cautiously optimistic.

And, I LOVED the film.

It isn't a perfect adaptation. I had trouble with some of the spoken dialogue that was originally sung. My favorite song "Happy New Year" was cut. Didn't know what the usually great Sarah Silverman was doing in the film. And missed Daphne Rubin Vega.

But, the music is still wonderful. Rosario Dawson does a terrific job, as good as anyone other than DRV could do. Loved the whole "Out Tonight / Another Day" sequence. The entire cast does a great job.

I've already seen the film twice in less than a week, the first time I've seen a film more than once in years. And, I plan on seeing it more times.

So, it is a great film, more fun than any film I've seen this year, if not as much fun as the original play.

I just saw this last night. I had been listening to the soundtrack of the film and really, really like it. However, I found the film just really lacked SOMETHING because it felt very stale to me, and a bit to antiseptic (which I have no qualms about placing straight on Columbus shoulders).

One thing that's not his fault is the fact that I feel the show loses a ton of its forward momentum and drive when its translated into a more traditional musical structure - that is the talk, then sing a song, talk, then sing a song structure. The regular show is very rock opera, with almost everything sung and that basically propels you from one major song to another. I do think the jarring effect (at least to me) of that could have been mitigated had Columbus lengthened the song introductions so that we have some music underlying some of the dialogue before the characters started singing. As it is, someone is talking, they pause, music starts, then they start singing, I didn't feel the stage numbers flowed as naturally as they could have because of that.

Another thing that I kept thinking is that Columbus did the exact opposite of Baz Lurmann in "Moulin Rouge." I remember people complaining endlessly about the editing in that movie, and particularly about the editing totally butchering the choreography, Columbus didn't do that for the most part.

This is great for some sequences like the "dream ballroom" part with all the dancers in "Tango Maureen." Cuts are kept to a minimum so you really get a sense of the dancing. However, in that same song there's one part where Mark and Joanne are singing (before they start dancing together) where there is no cutting whatsoever and it's just them walking around in the frame. Since they're not dancing there's not much action and they're just liesurely moving from one end of the frame to the other. I was thinking, Geez, do some cutting give us some kinetic energy on screen or something, because I thought that shot was just totally boring and wanted him to break it up and emphasize the cadence of the music with the cadence of the editing of the film, but there was none. Same problem in "Cover You" as well.

I'm not sure if this is just laziness in editing, or laziness in wanting to make the filming more complicated - almost like he didn't want to take the time to make filming each number more complicated than it already was. Like, at the end of "Dying in America" (can't remember the actual name of the song) Mark is on the roof and he has a line that goes, "Alexi, Mark, call me a hypocrit, I need to finish my own film - I quit!" Well, the whole end of the song is basically one shot on that roof, and it doesn't make much sense for him to be singing that on the roof when I believe in the show he's yelling at her on the telephone. It just seemed like Columbus didn't expend the energy to plan out some of the smaller moments like that to make sure some of the contextual stuff makes sense - yet somehow he manages to cart Roger off to the Grand Canyon for some sweeping shots that make him look like he's in a Ford F-150 commercial.

Reading that it really sounds like I hate the movie I guess, but I don't, I just feel it could have done with a bit more forward thinking.

I did like the part where the people in the Life Support meeting would fade away during "Without You." That was a very nice and emotionally touching device I thought, and though I was concerned about the protest given the recording of it on the soundtrack it definately works alot better in the film than it does on the soundtrack, I found it hilariou - whereas the stage show's version works really well on its soundtrack (and of course works well on stage with the audience participation it inevitably gets).

According to imdb... Daphne Rubin-Vega is 36 and Rosario Dawson is 26.

Obviously the latter is closer to the right age. But Idina Menzel is 34, and in the musical she should be at least 10 years younger. It just so happens that she aged well and she's awfully attractive too boot.

Most of the cast is now in that 34-36 year old range.

I guess that DRV today, at 36, can't pass for Mimi at 19, the way she could have when she was 26.

But for the sake of HER voice, I would have certainly winked at that!

The biggest question in the film version, why say it was set in 1989? Why not 1995 when the play was released?

Because of that, there are a few anachronisms, the line in "Today 4 U" about THELMA AND LOUISE (1991), the Oklahoma City bombing reference in "Over the Moon". I can see why they cut out "We're Okay" with the "Newt's lesbian sister" line. And "Living in America at the end of the millenium" makes more sense in 1995 than in 1989.

Minor point though.

I didn't quite understand specifically placing it in 1989 either. Is there any reference to a specific year in the stage show? I don't think so, but I could be wrong. I know someone in an earlier post said it was set in 1989, but I never remember thinking it was set in 1989 specifically when I first started listening to the show and following it - maybe Larson mentioned 1989 in his notes or something somewhere, but I certainly can't remember a specific reference in the show.

The references to AIDS/HIV+ victims not living as long as they do now, I think, is why they placed it in 1989. Even when the show opened on Broadway, it was almost a dated scenario, since the protease inhibitors and all those other HIV medications were on the market and, therefore those with HIV were already feeling the benefits of those drugs.

I saw the movie yesterday and, while I liked it overall, there were a few things that just struck out at me as being incongruous.

Sean, I also thought of Mark's screaming on the roof of his quitting not making any sense at all as well. It would've made more sense if he had one of those huge mobile phones they had in the early 90s and saying to Alexi on that or soemthing. I did find Mark and Roger's reunion touching, though.

I think that Colombus did the best he could do for being such a passionless director, and he's probably never been any better than this. From the New Year sequence all the way through to the end, it was a tight film and kept me captivated. I also think that they streamlined the story so much more and for the better, as I thought the show seemed to be all over the place onstage.

And I have to say that, while it was nice to see (most of) the original cast preserve their roles on film, they should've been more adventurous and cast along the lines of Rosario and Tracie (who were both, IMO, phenomenal). They just looked too old, most especially Jesse L Martin- yeesh, pushing 40, much?

Not to sound ageist, but it's one thing when you're in your early-mid-20s and living the boho lifestyle, it does start to look a little odd when you're past that prime and still living that life/making those same decisions.

Rafael.