IN DEFENSE OF RENT – SAN FRANCISCO NOT REALLY TRYING TO BE THE NEW NEW YORK

I’m assuming this is at least somewhat attributable to the link from Gawker (thanks Jess!) because when else does anyone really pay attention to my rantings, but …

I returned home Friday night to an email from someone at Revolution Studios, the company behind Chris Columbus’ upcoming adaptation of Rent. I had what one might call a negative reaction to the recent news that Columbus planned to shoot the film in San Francisco – my home town, but not the correct locale for this movie. Of course, this wasn’t the first time I became slightly shocked at news about the long-in-the-works movie version.

With the exception of my dismay that the NYC film industry is not getting the business of this very NY production, I will say that if what this person from Revolution wrote me is true, then any fears of the film not being very New York in appearance and feel have been somewhat alleviated:

The film will remain true to the original story of Rent and will be set in New York’s East Village. All exterior shots for the film are to be filmed in New York City. The Treasure Island location in San Francisco is where the soundstages and interior sets are to be located.

The city of San Francisco gave Chris Columbus the Treasure Island stages for free, and this enormous financial help from the city of San Francisco was the difference in being able to get the picture made. Chris Columbus is fully aware of the importance of the East Village location in the story, and will be filming all of the exterior shots for the film on location in New York City.

All I have to say is, Wow! San Francisco gave the production company soundstage space for FREE?!? Well of course that’s a financial situation that I can’t imagine any production, especially one that I’m sure still won’t be exactly low-budget. I’m not sure I completely buy that free soundstage space is the reason the film is being made, and if that is the case, might I suggest Revolution shut down production immediately? If the money behind a film doesn’t think the movie is worth making or can be made for a certain budget that includes something as basic as, I don’t know, SOUNDSTAGES … well, you have a troubled film on your hands.

Of course, while may location fears may be lessened, I still believe that Revolution does, in fact, have a troubled film on its hands which probably is not worth the production financing because of the man who will be directing this film. I really don’t need to go into all this again – I said what I had to say in my original post calling Columbus at the helm of Rent “The Fifth Sign of the Apocalypse”. I would be shocked if either Columbus or Revolution studios really gave a crap about what some lone film blogger in New York thinks, but hey, I got an email, so I had to bring this up again.

And I’ll promise right now that if Rent somehow manages to be a good film, I will be the first person to say that I was wrong. But it’s not like we’re dealing with a David Fincher here; a visionary director whose first movie (Alien³) was so destroyed by the studio it really didn’t adequately show what he might be capable of in later work. We’re talking about a filmmaker who makes at best average, and often bad, movies that may still sometimes be commercially successful because they’re easy and crowd pleasers. Still, his skills at adaptation have already been shown to be poor at best and negligent at worst. What he did to the Harry Potter movies, particularly the second one which basically cut out the parts of the story that were the main reason for the 2nd book’s entire existence, was a travesty, and all one has to do is watch Alfonso Cuarón’s much more interesting approach with the most recent film – especially in comparing it to representing the book – to verify how poor a job Columbus did.

And Rent will be exponentially harder to adapt than Harry Potter, not because of subject matter but since it’s a musical. Again, while I’m sure everyone is shooting for Chicago (and really, it would be better to aim much, much higher, regardless of that film’s Best Picture Oscar), I fear that Columbus is going to give us Newsies.

One last note: Mr. Revolution Studios obviously took my criticisms somewhat seriously because he apparently contacted Rent author Jonathan Larson’s sister to verify the time period of the story which I guess I called the “early ’90s.” The email I received said, “Also, according to Jonathan Larson’s sister, Julie, the time period for the film is the mid 1980s, not the early 1990s.”

Consider me rebuked, shown up, whatever. Of course it was mid-80s and I was mistaken. I guess I wasn’t actually thinking about the story as much as the timing of when the show opened and when Larson was writing it. But the show is obviously very much a reaction to Reagan’s America, if you read anything about the creation of the show, it seems the idea first originated around 1989, and by even the early-90s, the East Village was starting to change.

So I misspoke, or miswrote, or mistyped. I apologize to all of you I led astray. None of this, though, negates my opinion that Columbus and Rent is a complete mismatch of director and material. Mr. Columbus, if you happen to run across this post, I absolutely challenge you to prove me wrong because certainly nothing I say is going to get you kicked off the film. And if by some miracle Rent turns into an exciting and interesting adaptation, managing to do something different with a very difficult, virtually sung-through show; if you make a movie that is even watchable considering that much of the success of the stage version is simply due to the audience being able to experience the passion and energy of the live, then I will come back to my little corner of the World Wide Web and say in really big letters, “I was wrong. Give that man an Oscar. He did it. This New York Rent is worth the price.”

I’m just not holding my breath.