Why did Rent flop?

It wasn't terrible, but its main problem was – perhaps unusually – their decision to use the original Broadway cast. Obviously they're all great thespians, but they're also supposed to be playing East Village hipsters in their 20s, and by the time the movie came out, they were all pushing 40 (and unlike the stage, you can only hide so much with makeup).

In general it simply didn't translate well to the screen. For reasons I still don't get, they built a huge "old school East Village" set that weirdly relocated the likes of CBGB onto Avenue A. ("West Side Story" and "In the Heights" thankfully avoided this silliness.) If "Wicked" inspires a bunch of new musical movies, however, I could see something like "Rent" getting a revised film version. (As long as they don't ruin it like they did with "Cats.")

I never liked it - I hate when so much of a piece is stolen from something else, in this case La Boheme. Same as Ms. Saigon - fuck that modern Madame Butterfly.

I lived in the East Village when this was supposed to have taken place, so it just seemed false and overly PC. How is it 4 of the 8 characters have HIV or AIDS?

A lot of people love it, so I'm in the minority.

I hope so.

I liked it. Oddly enough, the two actors who weren't in the original cast were my favorites (Rosario Dawson and Tracie Thoms). There's a beautiful scene late in the film where members of an AIDS support group slowly fade away and ends with Angels death which is heartbreaking.

It's only got one good number in it, that's why.

r4 I was thinking there was no way Rosario was in the original cast unless she made it on Broadway as a teen.

Because it's for FAGS!

R6 - Si, I was in original cast - got me thee role in TV cho.

dammit

[quote] Icould see something like "Rent" getting a revised film version. (As long as they don't ruin it like they did with "Cats.")

A version of Rent with CGI cats is something I could really get behind.

The cast was too old by the time it came out and none of them were really movie stars either. And I agree that shooting in San Francisco made no fucking sense.

Don't forget the LIVE TV version where one of the leads injured himself in dress rehearsal and there was no understudy. They ended up broadcasting most of the filmed invited dress before he got hurt with some LIVE moments and it sucked.

Rent is one of the worst

R2- it’s not stolen. It’s a modern retelling. Should stories only be told one way?

The problem with the movie was that singing in a modern story looked silly. In the case of Wicked, we’re already used to singing in Oz so it works.

r2 you just have to disregard posters like that. They have some type of weird idiosyncrasy. We're talking a body of work published in the late 1800s. It's just ridiculous.

last comment meant for r14 about r2.

Jesse L Martin was effective

He was the best part of an unfortunate film.

[quote] How is it 4 of the 8 characters have HIV or AIDS?

Well, maybe since it takes place in the East Village in the late '80s, early '90s.

It certainly was not unusual, r20.

I found it maudlin and glib, alternately. But many people like this sort of thing. It's popular entertainment. Théâtre de boulevard with songs.

It really showed how much the theatrical production relied on hype, as when exposed to an audience that isn't already convinced it's a masterpiece the weaknesses of the story and the unpleasantness of most of the characters is fully exposed.

R22 Popular entertainment??? It didn’t even break even on a 40 mil budget. The play was highly successful though.

Rosario bearded for New Jersey Senator Cory Booker during his last re-election.

There was also a filmed version of the Broadway production. IIRC, the original cast members did a little cameo at the end.

It’s biggest problem is that Rent was very much “of its time” so that by the time the film version came out in 2008 the storyline from the early 1990s was very dated.

I think the main problem was they tried to create a musical with no stars. Chicago and Moulin Rouge brought the musical back in the aughts but they both had at least one big star.

Did it flop? I really enjoyed it, saw it several times and still listen to the soundtrack ...... IDK - I think people are too picky -

Everyone has AIDS!

What r27 said. The East Village is one big NYU campus now. Rent is a relic.

I love the movie. I watch it again and again. I also have the "extended" CD which I listen to a lot. If you don't like it, don't watch it. And btw you're wrong.

the only part I didn't like was Angel's drawn out death, which they then incorporated into the revival...in an early version i saw in the theater was all the writhing, loving, and bitching under the sheets ending with the sheet being pulled away from Angel and company posed as La Pieta which came as an overwhelming shock to the audience when Tom Collins delivers the line, "It's over."

We all fucking died in our seats.

[quote]I never liked it - I hate when so much of a piece is stolen from something else, in this case La Boheme. Same as Ms. Saigon - fuck that modern Madame Butterfly.

Do you also hate WEST SIDE STORY for "stealing" from ROMEO & JULIET?

R27 nailed it. It’s a time capsule.

[quote]A version of Rent with CGI cats is something I could really get behind.

That might work: Half the characters have Feline AIDS and they can sing, "Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes since someone put food in my bowl."

RENT is unauthentic, as it claims to take place in 1996 when the only sliver of time this story makes sense was in 1983-84 maybe.

The characters are wholly self-absorbed and unlikable, They are all dilettantes, and the songs are caterwauled dreck.

Having actors in their 40s playing these college aged characters was looney, and the NYC of RENT barely existed. At least I didn't recognize it and I moved here in 1981.

The timeline is a bit confusing. Columbus set it in 88-89, but Thelma and Louise is referenced, a 1991 film. So onstage it clearly took place in the mid-90s.

I didn't like the songs and I don't really have a ton of empathy for bohemian types who slum it while being deluded about their shitty art and the impact of their personal aesthetic or whatever.

R39 Why so much hate in your heart?

I feel sad for R39 not responding to Rent’s message of love.

R24 I was referring to the play, the basis of the movie. Many people like that sort of thing, just like they lap up Andrew Lloyd Webber. And indeed Rent was a crazy success.

[quote]The timeline is a bit confusing. Columbus set it in 88-89, but Thelma and Louise is referenced, a 1991 film. So onstage it clearly took place in the mid-90s.

Yes, RENT was contemporary when it premiered on Broadway in April 1996.

The early '90s saw a ton of people dropping like flies due to HIV/AIDS, which became alarming and is the central plot of the show.

The "AIDS cocktail" was approved by the FDA in December 1995 and became widely available around the time the show was being mounted.

Thus, RENT takes place sometime between 1991 (because "Thelma & Louise" is referenced) and 1996 (when the show debuted).

[quote]So onstage it clearly took place in the mid-90s.

Plus, it's got a song that goes, "We're living in America/At the end of the millennium". So clearly not 1983.

Another reason, along with the aging of the cast, that the film may have had less impact than the show is that it WAS a pre-millennial show, and it did capture that Zeitgeist pretty well. But that was long over when the film came out.

[quote]Thus, RENT takes place sometime between 1991 (because "Thelma & Louise" is referenced) and 1996

The East Village of "squats" and being the home of such "bohemians" had LONG since passed by 1996. It came across as false to people living in or near NYC.

Everyone living in NYC works and hustles to survive, and none of the characters (except the villain, Benny) seems to have or even want a job! Ridiculous.

True, by the mid-late 90s the EV was already getting pretty gentrified. Definitely by the late 90s it was a big NYU campus.

It should have been directed by Spike Lee not the director of Mrs. Doubtfire.

I tried to watch Rent. I binge watched The Line of Beauty thanks to a DL recommendation . So powerful, so sad; can’t stop thinking about it.

Too gay for you, too hetero for me

David Rakoff came back from the dead to post at R39

R26, and that filmed version from Bway (it was the final cast, maybe even the final show) is excellent. Far far better than the movie

I was not a fan of the show just listening to the CD but I love the movie. Yes, people are way too old and part of it. Tried to be a 80s music video but I love it.

[quote] True, by the mid-late 90s the EV was already getting pretty gentrified.

Exactly. It was only two years after Rent opened that Sex & the City debuted.

The show is sung thru, Chris Columbus who claimed to be such a fan killed it and turned the lyrics into dialogue and it sucked.

As I suspected this musical is very divisive - with the people who love it and those who see it as very flawed with characters that were difficult to be sympathetic to or relatable.

I agree with the above posts that the characters were self-absorbed who didn't want to work and thought their art was so important. And no - having half of your characters with HIV or AIDS was NOT a possible scenario. Half of New Yorkers did not have HIV/AIDS back then - even in the gay community or arts community.

People see this as a Gen X musical and I guess it was - but for those fellow New Yorkers who lived during that time, it just doesn't connect.

I'm sure flyovers love it.

By the time it became a movie, the shock value of the original was gone. It was just quaint by then

A brilliant and thorough takedown of RENT (both the movie and the stage show, to varying degrees):

R57 - that was good - but holy shit, she needs to edit. She likes to hear herself talk and she just goes from one thing to another.

But she's right.

This is just one of those things that I don't get the love for. Oh well. Seemed like it was designed more for a suburban grunge teenage audience in the 90s.

Rent premiered in 1996. There was nothing shocking about it at all.

If Ben Platt had been paying attention, he could have learned an important lesson from this.

r2, when I worked in Neiman Marcus Union Square between 88' and 93', we had 3 people die of AIDS in our department (Cosmetics/Fragrance) alone, I don't know how many were positive. We had a lot of people die from AIDS in our store during that time.

R32, that extended two disc set (which I used to own) might be one for thread on out of print CDs — I don’t think that version is streaming on Spotify.

The timeline annoyances also show up in all versions of Mamma Mia (because I like both I willfully suspend my disbelief).

Saw the original cast seven times. It was thrilling each time.

R61 - That's a nice anecdote. Still, having half of a musical's characters with HIV or AIDS was overkill and not common. Originally, All of the characters had HIV or AIDS except Mark.

I hated it and thought it was a silly unoriginal imagination of 'bohemian' life in the East Village. I'll never understand people who would die for this stuff.

R57: thanks for that link. She is articulate and intelligent

[quote] We had a lot of people die from AIDS in our store during that time.

Couldn't they have made it to a hospital?

[quote]Jesse L Martin was effective

He was effective, but he also accepted a nearly decade-long role a few years later as the father of two mid-twentysomethings. (Meaning "The Flash.")

Despite being effective & even Black men aging less visibly than white men, he was still too old for the role by then.

OP? Why did this thread flop??