BEFORE: This is the movie that I said the other day that I've been "avoiding" for a long time - not so much actively avoiding it, more like never really getting around to it, or being pressured by people I know who really dig it to watch it - only sometimes that can have a negative effect, like if I don't really trust those people's judgement, which can happen if they're really hardcore fans and end up being just a bit TOO enthusiastic about it, forcing me to then question how well I really know them, and how well they really know ME, because if they really knew me, they probably should know that nagging me to watch their favorite movie is not helpful, in fact it ends up making me put it off even longer, and why don't they know this about me, that I don't like being pressured to watch a film. OK, that ends up sounding a lot like I've been actively avoiding this film, so let's just call it that, because it's simpler.
I've also learned that while I can have a set schedule for how to fill a month by linking actors, or how to get to the next big holiday thematically, that sometimes I have to pay attention when it feels like the universe is trying to tell me something - and with TWO actors from this film also appearing in "Just a Kiss", that's the feeling I get here, that maybe I have to loosen my ban on "Rent" and take this linking opportunity to drop it in here. What are the odds that Starz Encore (motto: "The movies you love, or at least the ones you missed the first time around...") would start running this film AND that I would notice it in the listings (I always scan two days ahead, for reasons such as this...) AND that I'd be right in the middle of a Taye Diggs chain, so this could be dropped in without changing anything, except extending my romance/relationship chain by one more day? It almost seems like divine providence when you look at it like that. Not that I believe some god is telling me to watch this movie, but when you combine coincidence with proper planning and paying attention, it almost feels like it was somehow meant to be.
I feel like I'm a good scheduler now, but even a good scheduler has to have a flexible plan to take advantage of situations that arise - that's a skill that saved me three times last year when it turned out that my chain had an error in it, or when I discovered just before October that there were TWO new films on premium cable that could make a better, stronger horror chain than the one I had planned. SO now I need to look at what's left in my March schedule, find something to drop here and there so I can still line things up with the calendar. But I think I know what I have to drop. It's impossible to think all the way to the end of the year, so there's no way to know whether I'll eventually find myself one film over or one film short, so I just have to try to make the best decisions I can make for the month ahead, that's all.
THE PLOT: The film version of the award-winning musical about Bohemians in NYC's East Village struggling with life, love and AIDS, and the impacts they have on America.
AFTER: Maybe it's sort of weird that "Just a Kiss" reminded me so much about the type of film made in the 1980's (due largely to the low production values, and cheesy visual effects) and then here I am, following that up with a film that's set square in that decade, based on a play first produced in 1996, but one that was clearly looking back at NYC during the AIDS epidemic. Also, if I'm inclined to believe that maybe the universe is trying to tell me something, at this exact moment the world is being struck by Covid-19, aka the Corona virus, which is a potentially deadly form of flu, not an STD, but quite honestly nobody knows for sure how bad the current pandemic is going to get before there's a vaccine. As I often misquote, "history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes".
I think another reason that I never got around to watching this before was that it was SO ingrained into popular culture that viewing it seemed almost unnecessary - I'd seen so many parodies of this, especially in the puppet-mation movie "Team America: World Police" (where the main musical number in the play-within-the-film is called "Everybody's Got AIDS! AIDS! AIDS!") that viewing the film, if I haven't yet, becomes sort of an afterthought. This is also known as the "MAD Magazine effect", namely if I haven't seen a film by the time MAD gets around to doing a parody, what's the point? It's probably why I took so long to finally see "The Hunger Games", and didn't see "The Godfather" until I was an adult - but as a kid, I read and re-read the MAD version.
But finally, after all is said and done, you kind of have to see the film itself, right? I'll probably go through a similar delay with the recent film "Cats", which nearly everyone made fun of late last year and into awards season. Could I possibly enjoy that now that reviewers and comedians have torn it to shreds? I guess we'll find out when I finally get around to it in, oh, about 2034. (Considering it took me 15 years to watch the "Rent" movie.). Jesus, I don't even know much about "La Boheme", the opera this is based on, except I know enough trivial facts about it if it comes up on Jeopardy! - Puccini, right? And there's a character named Mimi. What more do I need to know? (I promise, I'll read the synopsis of it on Wiki, right after I finish writing this...)
Now that I've watched "Rent", I know what category it belongs in, which is "Hmm, not really my thing. Although, I now see why some other people really dig it." Yes, that's a category. For me there's a little too much of "Look how EDGY we're being right now!" and a bunch of "Look, we've got a gay male couple, a gay female couple, and a male-female couple, something for everyone!" Meanwhile the cynical part of me noticed that, and saw right through someone's little plans. Did the gays and the straights really hang out together in late-80's NYC? I'm not so sure, coming out was all so new back then, and from my experience anyway, the two groups didn't mingle this much. I remember when I was singing in the NYU Chorus, and the other guys in the group were talking about the newspaper picture they were all in, which was taken at an ACT-UP rally - and that's when I realized I was probably the only straight person in my section. OK, good to know. Something similar happened in my marriage a few years later.
I think part of the reason we have hipsters all over NY now is that "Rent" made that lifestyle look so attractive - the opening musical number is all about how people can't pay the rent, not the rent from last year, not the rent from this year, and I'm guessing things aren't looking good for next year, either. What? Nobody's paying rent? How? Why? Everybody's got to pay rent, right? If you don't, you get evicted - I don't remember people in the 1980's not paying rent en masse, that wouldn't have been allowed in Reagan's America or Ed Koch's New York. Isn't anyone going to get around to maybe getting a JOB? Nah, let's just sit in the dark apartment where the heat doesn't work, I'm sure the problem will fix itself, you've just got to give it some more time...
Finally, somebody does get some money, Angel the drag queen gets paid for playing the drum, which somehow kills an annoying barking dog? I'd like to see the math on that one, please. OK, but now someone's got some money, so they're paying the rent, right? After all, the film is called "Rent". Nah, they're going to go out to a restaurant and waste that money on wine and beer. Sure, why not? At least that's a plan I can get behind.
We soon learn that Mark and Roger, the two male leads (both straight I think, but at least one is HIV+) are living rent-free, and their ex-roommate has a father who bought up all the buildings on the block, so I guess that explains why they don't pay rent, only now he wants to collect some rent. Which they don't have, because again, apparently nobody works in this part of town. I know, I know, songwriter and independent filmmaker, but those aren't really paying gigs. (Jeez, at least Mimi's a dancer/stripper and a former dominatrix, she can probably buy and sell all the others...or she could, if she didn't spend so much money on heroin).
Anyway, the landlord offers them a deal, they can stay in their apartment and continue to be rent-free, as long as they stop the planned protest of the Cyber studio center. That sounds more than fair - only that's not what ends up happening, because that would be too logical. The protest is being put on by Maureen, Mark's ex-girlfriend, and for some reason, Mark ends up helping her, then filming the protest, rather than stopping it. Did he miss the part where he could still avoid paying RENT, if he just would stop the protest?
I get it, if anybody does something that makes financial sense, or isn't totally edgy, then they've somehow "sold out". But plenty of people also work for a living, and then they have, shocker, a little money to pay rent and live in places where there are things like heat, and electricity. Feel free to join society when you've had your fill of raging against the machine, ya lazy squatters.
Oh, yeah, the other ex-roomate is Tom Collins, a philosophy professor and anarchist, who keeps dropping by the old flat, he falls in love with that drag queen and well, things are good for a while, anyway. But it's not really a film about happy endings, is it? Even when Maureen, Mark's ex, accepts the offer from her girlfriend to get married, Maureen flirts with a female server at their engagement party. Well, I guess that was a glimpse into the future there, it's weird that the people who fought so hard to get gay marriage didn't seem to see the possibility of gay affairs and gay divorce on the horizon. And then even the token straight couple, Roger and Mimi, have a falling-out and go their separate ways.
What the film gets right about New Yorkers, in my opinion, is how they dream about moving away and opening up a restaurant (or whatever) in a place like Santa Fe (or wherever) - only the vast majority of New Yorkers never get around to doing that. Or if they do, they move back real soon, because the city got into their system, and they end up missing it. Sometimes you just need to live in a place where you know that you can get a corned beef sandwich at 3 am, even if you almost never do that.
The negatives - I didn't get the "performance art" protest thing at all, it was just so stupid. Performance art already gets a bad rap for being silly and pointless, did we have to continue that stereotype? Why not show Maureen doing a performance piece that actually meant something? It's like slam poetry, most of it sucks, but when it's seen in a film, written by professionals, why does it have to still suck?
Well, at least I've familiarized myself with the basics of this story now, so cross off another long-outstanding narrative. And since last month I won the lottery and we went to see "Hamilton" live on Broadway, that's two so far this year. What's next? Good god, it's probably "Cats", isn't it?
Also starring Anthony Rapp (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Adam Pascal, Rosario Dawson (last seen in "The Rundown"), Jesse L. Martin, Wilson Jermaine Heredia (last seen in "Flawless"), Idina Menzel (also carrying over from "Just a Kiss"), Tracie Thoms (last seen in "Death Proof"), Aaron Lohr, Chris Chalk (last seen in "12 Years a Slave"), Mackenzie Firgens, Shaun Earl, Rod Arrants, Mike Garibaldi (last seen in "The Pursuit of Happyness"), Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Sarah Silverman (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Daryl Edwards (last seen in "The Judge"), Anna Deavere Smith (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Kevin Blackton, Bettina Devin, Wayne Wilcoc, Bianca Sams, Heather Barberie, Liisa Cohen (last seen in "Fruitvale Station") with the voices of Joel Swetow, Randy Graff.
RATING: 5 out of 10 burning screenplays
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