Big Hollywood - Memo To ‘Rent’ Characters: Get a Job
My post at Big Hollywood about Rent the musical, and Giuliani.
Memo To ‘Rent’ Characters: Get a Jobby Stage Right
The lights came up at the Nederlander Theatre at intermission. My girlfriend, at the time, turns to me and says, “Well, what do you think?”. We had just seen the first half of RENT, the groundbreaking, 1996 grunge-rock musical based on Pucini’s La Boheme. For a synopsis, read this. I gave her my usual response which she had learned to tolerate by now… “Well, I think it’s brilliant. I mean, there’s barely a set so the crew must be really small. It’s a seven piece band. The cast is about the same size as A Chorus Line so the payroll is nice and tight. Those costumes look like they are dragged in the alley before the show so the wardrobe crew must be only three or four people. Other than the drag queen, there aren’t any wigs to maintain. And this thing they’re doing with same-day, $10 tickets is creating such an amazing “Event” atmosphere at the theatre… it’s a marketing dream! The Nederlanders gave them this theatre for free, since it hasn’t been booked since Lena Horne in 1982… They can run this thing for a decade and they’ll recoup in about three months. I love it!”.
It’s true, I can’t see a show anymore without trying to figure out the capitalization and weekly running costs by mid-way through the 1st act… it’s a gift, and a curse.
So, she rolls her eyes and says, ”I mean, what do you think of the story, the music, the characters…. Are you enjoying the show?”.
And then, I made the same mistake I made with most of the actresses I was foolish enough to date. I made a seemingly innocuous remark which unveiled me as insensitive, mean, unfeeling and…. a conservative!. I said: “Why are these punks spending all their time playing with their camera and guitar. They should get a job and pay the poor guy who owns the building. They owe him rent for the past year for God’s sake!”
Silence.
She stared at me in stunned disbelief. I realized that I was staring back at yet another Broadway Chorus Dancer who I would have to refer to as my “Former girlfriend”. Ah well… it was fun while it lasted.
RENT was also meant as an allegory to the Giuliani era in Times Square. For those old enough to remember, Times Square used to be a pretty awful place. Prostitutes, drug dealers, homeless, aggressive street “performers”, three-card monty, fake watches, the smell of urine…. (It’s so surprising I wasn’t hired for that New York tourism campaign I interviewed for back in 1987) Rudolph Giuliani campaigned on a platform of law and order and economic revival with commerce and development starting in Times Square and spreading out in all directions. “It’s the street tax paid to drunk and drug-ridden panhandlers. It’s the squeegee men shaking down the motorist waiting at a light. It’s the trash storms, the swirling mass of garbage left by peddlers and panhandlers, and open-air drug bazaars on unclean streets.” That was actually controversial in 1993 New York.
After getting elected he did what Republicans often do: He followed through.
Although the New York Times assured us that by stopping the squeegee men from pounding on car windows at stop lights we’d be ushering in a new fascist order, somehow, Giuliani was able to enforce the quality of life agenda. The crime dripped away from America’s #1 urban tourist spot and suddenly, the investments started coming in. Disney came to 42nd St. Nasdaq was on Times Square. New hotels, new restaurants, new night life. No peddlers, no scary guys whispering “crack, smack” to you when you pass them on the street. All of this was BAD to the New York left!
And this was the climate in which RENT was presented. And the character of Benny trying to revitalize a downtown tenement building populated by drug addicts and homeless was the perfect example of “Giulianism” run amok. Benny is stifling the artists who live in the neighborhood by bringing in condos. He’s giving the homeless no place to live by having the police enforce the laws and get them off the sidewalk. He’s embarrassed by the drag queens and the gay men and women publicly displaying their affection for each other when he brings his financiers to the neighborhood restaurant. Benny is evil!
Problem is: Benny is right. Giuliani was right. New York is a better place because of the changes he brought. It’s safer, there are more jobs, it’s cleaner, it’s not as offensive to a family to walk down the street with children and worry about the peep-show houses right next to the theatre where a Broadway show is playing. If this is fascism, count me in! (Of course, the real irony is that Giuliani’s successor, Mayor Bloomberg has instituted some truly fascistic laws regarding smoking and nutritional requirements for restaurants, but since these policies are based on leftist ideas, you don’t see Bloomberg with a Hitler moustache around town.)
So we sat through act two in a deep chill. And I kept trying to figure out what the weekly break-even was. And my girlfriend was probably trying to figure out how to get a note back to Adam Pascal since she was going to be single VERY soon.
Stage Right is on Facebook.
Memo To ‘Rent’ Characters: Get a Jobby Stage Right
The lights came up at the Nederlander Theatre at intermission. My girlfriend, at the time, turns to me and says, “Well, what do you think?”. We had just seen the first half of RENT, the groundbreaking, 1996 grunge-rock musical based on Pucini’s La Boheme. For a synopsis, read this. I gave her my usual response which she had learned to tolerate by now… “Well, I think it’s brilliant. I mean, there’s barely a set so the crew must be really small. It’s a seven piece band. The cast is about the same size as A Chorus Line so the payroll is nice and tight. Those costumes look like they are dragged in the alley before the show so the wardrobe crew must be only three or four people. Other than the drag queen, there aren’t any wigs to maintain. And this thing they’re doing with same-day, $10 tickets is creating such an amazing “Event” atmosphere at the theatre… it’s a marketing dream! The Nederlanders gave them this theatre for free, since it hasn’t been booked since Lena Horne in 1982… They can run this thing for a decade and they’ll recoup in about three months. I love it!”.
It’s true, I can’t see a show anymore without trying to figure out the capitalization and weekly running costs by mid-way through the 1st act… it’s a gift, and a curse.
So, she rolls her eyes and says, ”I mean, what do you think of the story, the music, the characters…. Are you enjoying the show?”.
And then, I made the same mistake I made with most of the actresses I was foolish enough to date. I made a seemingly innocuous remark which unveiled me as insensitive, mean, unfeeling and…. a conservative!. I said: “Why are these punks spending all their time playing with their camera and guitar. They should get a job and pay the poor guy who owns the building. They owe him rent for the past year for God’s sake!”
Silence.
She stared at me in stunned disbelief. I realized that I was staring back at yet another Broadway Chorus Dancer who I would have to refer to as my “Former girlfriend”. Ah well… it was fun while it lasted.
RENT was also meant as an allegory to the Giuliani era in Times Square. For those old enough to remember, Times Square used to be a pretty awful place. Prostitutes, drug dealers, homeless, aggressive street “performers”, three-card monty, fake watches, the smell of urine…. (It’s so surprising I wasn’t hired for that New York tourism campaign I interviewed for back in 1987) Rudolph Giuliani campaigned on a platform of law and order and economic revival with commerce and development starting in Times Square and spreading out in all directions. “It’s the street tax paid to drunk and drug-ridden panhandlers. It’s the squeegee men shaking down the motorist waiting at a light. It’s the trash storms, the swirling mass of garbage left by peddlers and panhandlers, and open-air drug bazaars on unclean streets.” That was actually controversial in 1993 New York.
After getting elected he did what Republicans often do: He followed through.
Although the New York Times assured us that by stopping the squeegee men from pounding on car windows at stop lights we’d be ushering in a new fascist order, somehow, Giuliani was able to enforce the quality of life agenda. The crime dripped away from America’s #1 urban tourist spot and suddenly, the investments started coming in. Disney came to 42nd St. Nasdaq was on Times Square. New hotels, new restaurants, new night life. No peddlers, no scary guys whispering “crack, smack” to you when you pass them on the street. All of this was BAD to the New York left!
And this was the climate in which RENT was presented. And the character of Benny trying to revitalize a downtown tenement building populated by drug addicts and homeless was the perfect example of “Giulianism” run amok. Benny is stifling the artists who live in the neighborhood by bringing in condos. He’s giving the homeless no place to live by having the police enforce the laws and get them off the sidewalk. He’s embarrassed by the drag queens and the gay men and women publicly displaying their affection for each other when he brings his financiers to the neighborhood restaurant. Benny is evil!
Problem is: Benny is right. Giuliani was right. New York is a better place because of the changes he brought. It’s safer, there are more jobs, it’s cleaner, it’s not as offensive to a family to walk down the street with children and worry about the peep-show houses right next to the theatre where a Broadway show is playing. If this is fascism, count me in! (Of course, the real irony is that Giuliani’s successor, Mayor Bloomberg has instituted some truly fascistic laws regarding smoking and nutritional requirements for restaurants, but since these policies are based on leftist ideas, you don’t see Bloomberg with a Hitler moustache around town.)
So we sat through act two in a deep chill. And I kept trying to figure out what the weekly break-even was. And my girlfriend was probably trying to figure out how to get a note back to Adam Pascal since she was going to be single VERY soon.
Stage Right is on Facebook.
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