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Am I the only person who's actually worried about all this added dialogue? I mean, it raises some interesting questions?

What did they take away musically so that the dialogue and the songs aren't redundant?

By de-musicalizing some of the dialogue, aren't are you taking something away from what Rent is? Rent isn't a book musical, it's a rock opera. Aren't we losing some of that rock-opera/New York/rhythmic edge that Rent has always had?

The most difficult moment for any musical to pull off (stage or screen) is the split-second transition from talking to singing. Why add more dialogue and create more of those potentially hazardous transitions than what was already built-in to the score?

Anyway, just a few concerns. The mere fact that so many of the original Broadway cast is being used is far more than I could ever have hoped...but I for one have been VERY surprised by the amount of spoken dialague we've seen in these clips and trailers so far.

Updated On: 11/16/05 at 03:25 PM

Plus, fully sung movie musicals don't seem to work well as movies. Watch any ALW movie musical and you'll find that.

~Steven

I agree with HeyMrMusic on this one. We're talking about a movie musical, not a taping of the stage production. And if you notice in the dialogue we've seen, it seems to be mostly made up of parts of the songs that were pretty much spoken in the stage production anyway. So I really don't think that any of it will end up being redundant.

"The most difficult moment for any musical to pull off (stage or screen) is the split-second transition from talking to singing."
I don't understand why you think this. If you know you're going to see a musical, why is this transition difficult? (I'm assuming you're taling about from an audience perspective.) It's all about inhabiting the world of the production and suspension of disbelief.

I'm actually surprised that there isn't a bit more dialogue in this movie. Somewhere I read an interview with Columbus where he said that there's only about 15-20 minutes of actual dialogue in the film. And it remains to be seen whether or not that's a good thing. For me, dialogue can really either make or break any movie.

so good, so good! can't wait till 12:01am wednesday!!

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Well, then again, you have to think that not every song will work out on film. For example, I think it'd be pretty hard to film "Christmas Bells" or "Contact," which is probably why they didn't include those songs in the movie. And really, there are plot holes in the show and some of the character relationships are a bit unclear, which is why there is a synopsis of the show and a character tree in the Playbill, and also why added dialogue is necessary for film audiences to understand what's going on.

~Steven