How will Chris Columbus show the male-male kisses in RENT?- Page 9

[art2]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 12:47am

Please do not trivialize this issue by publishing gratuitous shots of canoodling penguins. If you want to revel in such displays, go watch March Of The Penguins.

As for the issue of this thread, I can assure you that I'm not going to fade into oblivion. I have a take-no-prisoners attitude in relation to fairness and justice. I will not countenance under any circumstances the sidelining or censorship of gay male affection for the sake of perceived market premium. If this movie messes with the gay male love in the stage production, it's game on.

[ljay889]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 12:53am

Didn't Emcee warn us about this?

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 1:00am

I have a take-no-prisoners attitude in relation to fairness and justice.

If by take no prisoners you mean incoherent, nonsensical and borderline psychotic, then I would be inclined to agree. Your attitude, as has been pointed out ad nauseum on here and elsewhere, is doing fairness and justice more harm than good.

And I need to repeat that NOBODY who posts here has yet seen the finished movie (well, unless we have some Sony execs posting here, which I doubt) and therefore, this thread is utterly fricking redundant. You're getting your sports bra in a twist because of a trailer that the director didn't even cut, so let it go until November, please.

[insomniak]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 1:06am

*files nails*

If you think people are dumb, ignore them. You're only worsening things and driving your blood pressure up over what some moron online thinks.

Posted: 8/23/05 at 1:39am

It's not the right time yet art2. You've been very vocal and I applaud you for that. Let's wait until the movie comes out.

"do you think that columbus could make a movie that has crude language, drug abuse, and aids, and NOT include male on male kissing? is this a joke?"-Jess925

Well we don't know. But gay male kissing is a lot less acceptable than the most grotesque violence you can imagine when it comes to putting it on the screen. We will just have to see.



Updated On: 8/23/05 at 01:39 AM

[art2]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 2:42am

Chita33,

You are like an oasis in a desert. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and insight.

The trailer got me thinking that the RENT movie is going to be yet another example of Hollywood's obliteration of gay male love. Waiting until the movie comes out is a reactive measure. I'm far more interested in prevention.

Be aware of the bottomless bag of tricks that Hollywood will use to keep gay male love out of the mainstream. Never underestimate Hollywood's willingness to tamper with historical fact in the name of homophobia.

[teth]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 4:03am

What I would like to know is what the heck are you going to do if there's no gay male-male kissing. Sexually harrass Chris Columbus by french-kissing him until he does?

Posted: 8/23/05 at 6:00am

I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. Maybe he'll write letters to a gay publication and start a campaign to make people aware of the double standards which exist in hollywood. Or maybe nothing. Maybe just bitching and complaining is his small way of saying he's tired of being a second class citizen. I'll take his rantings about a supposed act of homophobia that he's not sure has occured anytime over your silly remarks which really are insulting to gay men.

And read your post. Until he does what?

Updated On: 8/23/05 at 06:00 AM

[teth]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 6:33am

Till he puts scenes back in/fixes it.

My remark was only to ridicule the extreme reaction to the teaser trailer. I apologize then, if it offends.

Being gay myself, and as many said above, I think there's practically nothing really to do until the film comes out (and there would be no use protesting against homophobia, until we know that is the case...and not just basing all this fear and paranoia over a teaser trailer.)

[Justice]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 7:18am

Just what in the hell are you preventing, art?

People not going to see a movie that has been anticipated since it first opened on B'way?

Art, you're a minority in this. Three or four people think like you, (God help them) but there are more folks who find your rants outragous. Seriously, you are not accomplishing anything.

And judging from your posts, i will say that you have not seen the show. Because if you had, you would have been complaining that Roger and Mimi have more affection time than Angel and Collins.

Posted: 8/23/05 at 7:26am

But you, as a gay person, knows that we are not the oversexed fiends that people accuse of being. And so I"m confused as to why you would choose to attack another gay man with the kind of rhetoric that ignorant straight people often use against us? Why? You are making a point of attacking his so called "ridiculous statements" by saying that he will "Sexually harrass Chris Columbus by french-kissing him." Do you see how powerful words can be and what bad judgement you've displayed in choosing yours?


Updated On: 8/23/05 at 07:26 AM

[Kringas]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 9:00am

you would have been complaining that Roger and Mimi have more affection time than Angel and Collins.

Well, I probably wouldn't refer to it as "affection time," but I would agree that in the stage version Collins and Angel are the most chaste of the main couples. While Mimi and Roger and Maureen and Joanne actually have some spark, the Collins and Angel romance always played a little drippy and dull to me.

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 9:43am

drippy and dull because they're the only couple on the stage (or in the movie) who love each other no matter what and don't fight all the time?

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 9:53am

"If this movie messes with the gay male love in the stage production, it's game on."

I'm sure all of Hollywood now lives in fear. Considering the nature of the show, the success of the Broadway production, and the success of gay films and shows such as Queer as Folk and Angels in America, I doubt that a couple of quick kisses between Angel and Tom (the only male-male kisses in the show) will be removed. In fact, I only remember there being one kiss just before I'll Cover You in the first act. Was there another one in Without You?

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 9:54am

Art2 - I just want to clear up why I have a problem with your argument - simply because it is premature. You are tying to use the court of public opinion to advance a possibility. In legal terms, your argument is not ripe. This argument, if brought to a court, would be thrown out. So, some of us, and I am only speaking for myself here, tend to minimize the actual content of any argument because there is nothing to evalaute. No evidence as to this particular issue. I am not disputing the underlying premise of what you say because I can't - so, when you start getting so impasssioned about something that may or may not happen on film, it tends to marginalize the underlying issue.

Come November, if the Collins and Angel relationship is marginalized and made platonic, then you should stand up and point out the hypocrisy. But, the film has not come out. It is just kind of like the boy crying wolf. We know right now there is no wolf, because there is no final film. So when and if it does arrive, we will be less inclined to listen or beleive.

And, in a slight threadjack, there was some good news in California today, I do not know how long it will last:

Court Affirms Gay Couples' Parental Status
California's justices rule that both members in same-sex relationships have full rights and responsibilities in child-custody issues.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-custody23aug23,0,3644739.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=morenews

I hope that make some sense.
Updated On: 8/23/05 at 09:54 AM

[Kringas]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 11:02am

drippy and dull because they're the only couple on the stage (or in the movie) who love each other no matter what and don't fight all the time?

Well, not exactly, but perhaps yes, to some degree. There's no heat there. It may just be the fact that Collins and Angel are woefully underwritten characters. I just don't see much depth to them.

[Justice]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 4:06pm

Iwant...
If the movie comes out without a kiss, art will still be bitching about it on the message boards instead of taking it to the people behind all this. He is but one small voice in a thread - not strong or loud enough to be heard by the masses of publication or anyone else in the industry...let alone, the world. And even if he did stand up and protest, no one will care, still...
His approach is all wrong, and he has no grounds on which to speak.

[Shawk]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 4:38pm

Exactly. How the hell is repeatedly bitching about something (that may or may not happen in a movie that isn't out yet) on various messageboards going to "prevent" anything?

[Kringas]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 4:41pm

It's unfortunate that Art2 poses his questions the way he does and gets all riled up (and in turn, then riles up everyone who read the thread), because I think that some of the questions raised are worth discussing.

[Fosse76]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 4:52pm

It's only a trailer. The trailer for "Chicago" didn't even indicate that it was a musical. I don't think they would specifically target the trailer at a straight audience, considering they pretty much know who the real target audience is.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 4:58pm

Certainly there are many legitimate points related to the issue of the treatment of homosexuals in the country, discussing those issues in an open and constructive way is vital. The issues being brought up by Art are hypothetical and specious though.
Add to that that many times the discussion has been raised, but Art generally returns to brow beat his unknowable points.

We can't discuss the depiction of homosexual love in the movie RENT, because there is no such product yet. Discussing it in hypothetical in an attempt to change the way the movie is made is ridiculous, no one will change the film based on the objections of some freaks on a Broadway themed message board whose total membership is likely less than 200 people.

[Kringas]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 5:14pm

We can't discuss the depiction of homosexual love in the movie RENT, because there is no such product yet. Discussing it in hypothetical in an attempt to change the way the movie is made is ridiculous, no one will change the film based on the objections of some freaks on a Broadway themed message board whose total membership is likely less than 200 people.

True enough, though these threads have caused me to look back at Rent (the stage version) and wonder if perhaps Larson did give homosexuals the shaft. I'm not questioning his intentions, but when you look at it as a whole, there are things that are unsettling.

Sarah Schulman (who maintains that Larson ripped off her book "People in Trouble") states that "the actual message is that in the gay male couple, the guy dies. The lesbian couple--all they ever do is bicker. The only people who have true love are the straight people. [Also], the gay people with AIDS die, and the straight people with AIDS live. So you end up with a story of the AIDS crisis in which the central, most heroic figures are straight. Believe me, I have lived through the AIDS crisis and I know that that is the opposite of the truth."

If a problem with the gay characters permeates the film, it may stem from the source. Again, I don't think Larson had any malicious intent, but it's also a widely noted fact that he originally had Maureen returning to Mark at the end. Granted, that was dropped, but it does sort of indicate that Larson didn't really have much of handle on writing gay characters, and I think that comes through in the finished product.

Don't get me wrong. I still enjoy Rent and look forward to the movie, but I do think that it presents a lot of mixed messages.
Schulman Interview

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 5:25pm

Interestingly, I wrote something similar about how the gay characters die and how that indicates a anti-homosexual bias as a sort-of joke farther back in this thread.

This is something I think we could discuss, not Larson's intentions as there is no one who can know what they were, but the product as it comes accross on stage.

I still believe that Collins and Angel have the most "loving" relationship, theres is the essence of what love could be like. To say that the lesbian couple does nothing but bicker and imply that the straight couple is presented in a different light does not foolow from the material. Roger and Mimi spend more time in a less than positive state in their relationship than any other couple.

Also, Mimi lives (and it is the single point in the show I dislike the most) but April who is presumably a straight girl has already died as an indirect result of her aids. Mimi will die, Roger will die, the fact that the straight characters are given the same disease and ultimate fate negates the notion, to me, that straight people are treated differently.

As a general notion though it may be the case that Larson didn't have a handle on the issues facing homosexuals, but that the piece does do an excellent job of introducing positive gay characters and integrating them without stereotype in a larger piece.

[Kringas]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 5:34pm

All your points are well taken, smartpenguin78, though I don't agree with you on all of them.

the piece does do an excellent job of introducing positive gay characters and integrating them without stereotype in a larger piece.

I'm not sure that Angel isn't a stereotype. Or perhaps she's an archetype (the name alone. Oy). She's the sassy Latin Boy in a dress (see To Wong Foo). She's unlike any drag queen I've ever met in my life. She's so ... preposterously good and holy that I still to this day can't fathom how she contracted HIV to begin with. Perhaps she was administering a needle-exchange program and accidentally got pricked?

I think that Angel and Collins are the least interesting characters in the show. There's nothing below their surface, except that by the end, Collins is advocating outright thievery (again with the mixed messages!).

And I can see the joke about anti-homosexual bias, but still, I think Schulman does raise some points that have to be considered. Yes, April (a character we never see) dies. But it's a suicide. The suicide may have been provoked by her diagnosis of HIV/AIDS, but AIDS is not what killed her. Of four positive main characters, only a gay one dies.

And finally, I don't know that we're led to believe Roger and Mimi will die. The show's biggest misstep, in my opinion, is bringing Angel back on at the end of the finale, before the show is actually over. I've never quite figured out what we're supposed to make of that.

EDITED and Mini-Spoiler: Granted, Angel does drive a dog off a terrace, but she does it via drumming, and once we discover the dog was Benny's, we feel she is justified. Even her cruelty to animals becomes sanctimonious.

Updated On: 8/23/05 at 05:34 PM

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 8/23/05 at 5:45pm

I was actually thinking about Angel as a possible stereotype as I wrote that. I'm not sure about her, but I think the point is she and Collins are both too complicated to be stereotypes. That you find them the most boring is a valid opinion, but not one I share. I find them the most loving and therefore their relationship the most effective.

Angel as a good holy stereotype would also be an opposite, taking a stereotype and reversing it, making into something positive. Its a classic postmodern form of empowerment.
Collins is the one who does not fit the stereotyoes at all to me, he is not someone you would say oh look at the gay guy about.

I don't see the theivery as a mixed message, I think it fits well with the anti-captialist message of the rest of the show.

In my head at least Mimi has little to no time left, the end is immenent. It has always almost seemed to me that the entire ending from when Mimi returns through the finale (including Angel's return) is dreamish or a more a metaphoric hope, that Mimi dies.
of course this is not expressed in a tangible way, but I read lots into everything, and that is just as important to me.