"No day but today..."

[sarahmichelef]

The upcoming release of the movie version of RENT has gotten me thinking about the show as a cultural artifact...

RENT is so much a product of the mid-1990s. In some ways I've known this for a long time, but the hype leading up to the movie has really driven that fact home. I was watching some entertainment show the other day... because they'd promised scenes from the movie & "the secret of RENT" or something like that.

Guess what the secret was.

Yup, you're right. It was the utterly SHOCKING fact that Jonathan Larson died of a brain hemhorrage on the eve of the show's Broadway premiere. M and I just looked at each other, dumbfounded. How could anyone not know that? But then we thought about it... and we realized that probably there are a lot of people who are going to be seeing the movie who actually don't know that. Which totally blows my mind.

I'm a minor RENT afficionado. monkeydance acquired a copy of the soundtrack for me on a trip home in the fall of 1996. laurakc, Meri, and I quickly memorized the entire thing. In the summer of 1997, I went to see the touring production in Minneapolis and after the show, we ended up at Target so that everyone who didn't already own the soundtrack could buy it. I saw the London production in the summer of 1998 with greydora and our parents; at the time, Adam Pascal (Roger), Anthony Rapp (Mark), and Jesse L. Martin (Collins) were starring in that production. (The first time I saw JLM on Law and Order my first thought was "Hey, it's Collins!") It was mind-blowing. The opportunity to once again see them do some of my favorite roles ever written is one of the big reasons that I'm looking forward to the movie so much. Well, that and Taye Diggs. (YUM.)

Anyway. I foresee a large proportion of the movie-going audience being teeny-boppers who've HEARD of the show but don't really know what it is. And those people won't know that the sad irony of the whole thing is that the creator died of AIDS just when he should have been celebrating his show's success.

But that's not the only reason that the show is very much of the time and place when it was written. The New York of RENT is so clearly a pre-Giuliani (to say nothing of pre-9-11) NYC. A lot full of homeless people? Um, no. Window washers (honest living!) on the streets? Um, no. And CyberArts? Such a dot-com-boom idea. (The ironic contrast between my love of the show and my own academic pursuits is not lost on me, by the way.) I'm obviously not in touch enough with the bohemian artist crowd to know if the Internet is met with the same antipathy today that is portrayed in the show.

I've identified a lot of other elements as I've listened to it, but of course I've now forgotten what they were.

Anyway, those are the thoughts that are running through my mind as I bop around the house singing every word along with my iTunes. I'm still very much looking forward to the movie - can't wait to see so much of the original cast back together. From what I've seen of the previews and various talk-show bits, I think Rosario Dawson did a good job with the role of Mimi. I do wonder, however, if some of the originals are going to seem too old for the roles now...

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[irihs.livejournal.com]

And now I realize I'm just going to be a complete and total emotional wreck for the second half of next week. Rent on Wednesday, which will almost certainly leave me emotionally drained. I believe we also get to hear the results of gymnastics worlds prelims for the women on Wednesday morning. Then I basically spend the next few days doing nothing by having my wishes come true and/or my heart broken by the results of worlds. egads. I should get some tissues at the grocery store tomorrow...