Above: A scene from the movie Channel One advertised to middle school students. This is Angel. He has just taken off his wig. Angel is a drag queen, cross-dresser, transvestite (take your pick) and has a prominent role in Rent. Channel One News believes that this is appropriate content for middle school kids. Obligation doesn’t.
In the movie, Angel likes to dress as Santa. This is a scene from a regional production of Rent. Leave it to Channel One News to bring the joy back to Christmas.
From an earlier interview with Chris Columbus the director of the movie Rent:
Adding Gay Marriage to Rent: Director Chris Columbus revealed one major plot point he is adding to the movie version of Rent. “It speaks about having tolerance for all kinds of people and it talks about the fact that two gay people can be in love and deserve to be married. It’s one thing we deal with in the movie that wasn’t in the play, the concept of gay marriage, so we have a little bit about that. I could be shooting myself in the foot in terms of box office, I don’t care. I really believe strongly in this material.”
Dialogue vs. Story in Rent: “There are dialogue sequences in the movie,” Columbus said. “We had to do that. We couldn’t do it as a straightforward opera. So there were some songs that have been left out. I won’t mention them now, but there are some things we have to leave out. It’s a different process than doing the Harry Potter books where it’s like a greatest hits. For Rent, it’s more about what works as a film.”
Keeping Rent Real: Family friendly Chris Columbus assures Rent fans that he understands the material. “Yeah, we’re going to have grit. So you don’t have to worry about grit. The funny thing is people only know me from my work, but I lived in a loft with mice, which inspired Gremlins as well. So I used to throw the key down to the woman who later became my wife to come up and see me, so I lived that existence. I knew those guys, I lived in that kind of world, so I’m just going to bring that to the movie.”
The Theme of Rent: “I took my daughter to see it when I was trying to make up my mind. She said, ‘This movie could speak to everyone about not fitting in. You’re in high school and you feel like you’re on the outside of the group a little bit and you’re not really this Abercrombie and Fitch kind of person. It speaks to all of my friends.’ That’s why it’s important, particularly… the way the country is leaning these days in terms of gay marriages and not having tolerance for people that are different.”
R Rated Rent: The Rent movie will be rated R, “unless the Academy changes,” said Columbus. “The great thing about Joe[Roth, president of Revolution Studios] is we were at another studio for a bit and they were concerned about the fact that it was going to be an R rated musical, and we just felt that when Joe got involved, he said, ‘Make it the way it was intended to be made.’”
From Jim Metrock:
Judy Harris, Channel One’s president, had to sign-off on such a controversial decision to not only advertise Rent on the show, but to allow an actress from the movie to be a “news anchor” for the entire show so she could use that trusted position to sell the movie to impressionable young people. Harris had to have known the subject matter of Rent. She had to have known that this movie was an R-rated movie that became a PG13 only after a lot of lobbying.
Judy Harris knew that the very person who would be the “guest anchor” plays an “exotic dancer” who uses S&M props in her act and who is heroin user. This character is not a “bad” person in the movie; she is a sympathetic character. Harris knew this movie would send the wrong message about drugs and sex to young people, but she knew the movie studio was offering her a lot of money if she would deliver the captive student audience.
Ms. Harris knew better (let’s hope), but she agreed to advertise this adult movie to not only high school students, but also 8th graders, 7th graders, 6th graders and some 5th graders. By allowing the news anchors to pitch the movie, Harris assured all students would get a big dose of Rent. What a shameless, gutless thing for Harris and all of Channel One to do. This company has absolutely no sensitivity when it comes to schoolchildren.
From another web-based review of Rent:
Rent is loosely based on the Puccini opera La Boheme. Rodolfo the lovelorn poet becomes roger the punk rocker; Marcello the painter is Mark Cohen the videographer; Mimi the tuberculosis victim is transformed into Mimi the HIV-positive, heroin-shooting s&m dancer; and Musetta the callous flirt resembles Maureen the sexually ambivalent performance artist who leaves Mark for Joanne, a yuppie lawyer and sound engineer. Then there’s Puccini’s philosophical Colline, who becomes Tom Collins, a college professor who falls in love with Angel, a transvestite street drummer.
Rent also contains several plot references to the original opera. Where Puccini’s Mimi drops a key to attract Rodolfo, Mimi intentionally loses a heroin bag, and in both productions the main characters are threatened with eviction and burn their written work to stay warm. But enjoyment of the production requires no knowledge of opera. In fact, the music and message are directed primarily at frustrated twentysomethings, an age group not generally thought of as avid theater-goers. Throughout, Larson refers to such youth-culture fixtures as Imax, e-mail, the village voice and latex sex. And the music for rent is played by a five-piece band that alternately soothes, swings, and rocks.
Thanks to Ken
McNatt
