Rent ranked #5 in America's Box Office — Page 3

The best way to gauge a movie like this is by the current competition. You can't compare it realistically to films that were released 20,30, and even 40 (or more) years ago. Even adding in the rate of inflation, it doesn't add up. This is a numbers game played by Hollywood so they can say it beat all records, etc., as often as possible.

I paid $9.25 (a bargain matinee price at an "A List" movie theatre in L.A.) for "Rent."

As I recall (yes, it's been a LONG while) I paid 75 cents for The Sound of Music. I was a kid, and it was the first re-release of it nationally. My mom paid $1.25 for her ticket.

If you don't want to do the math (and who does?) that's almost 9 times the amount of the "Rent" ticket I recently bought. (or any other movie I choose to see now). If I'd gone at night, the ticket would have cost me $12.50.

The rate of inflation wouldn't add up to 900% comparatively to the 1970s.

The numbers that Hollywood trackers WON'T show you are how many people attended (aka, number of tickets bought... actual bodies in the audience).

That would grind the entire industry to a halt.

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Sure, maybe it could have been better, but I still think it's presumptious to say you know someone's pretending to like it.

There's a difference between thinking that about someone who simply says they liked it for what it was, and thinking that about someone who just wants to give the "right" opinion, and lies about liking it. The latter may have some validity, but it's moot.

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The thing is, no one agrees on what they are. The scenes that some people don't like are the ones that others adore. It's quite interesting to read other peoples views on the same scene/character.

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After much thought, I've made sense of this... Alexi Darling must have died offscreen, come back as a ghost and been hoovering somewhere in the sky during "What You Own." *ducks* There's got to be some room for humor in this thread.

Well, Chicago never hit #1 and still won the oscar for best movie. I am just saying that ratings in the box office mean nothing. As long as it stays in the top 10, it should do just fine. And if not, oh well. At least the movie got made and I loved it, so that is all that matters to me.

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Thanks for reconsidering your language about others pretending to like it.

I think most of us would say that it isn't perfect. I have always gone on record for almost ten years now acknowledging that Rent is flawed. But I have also gone on record saying that I would much rather bear witness to -- or be involved in -- something that was flawed and had huge aspirations and heart and life and energy and talent than something that was perfect and had much less of those things.

There are moments in the film that probably could have been executed better, for sure, but as objective as I can be, I am very satisfied that we all put our heads together and came up with the best solutions we were capable of when presented with the challenge of translating the show to film. Inevitably there will be plenty of differences of opinion on the choices we made. But for whatever it's worth, the choices were made in good faith and with good intentions. The cliff just didn't turn out the way that it could have -- I don't think it's a problem in and of itself to see Roger in Santa Fe; it's just odd that he suddenly appears on a cliffside. And maybe if he wasn't driving a convertible and wearing sunglasses it wouldn't have been so jarring. I don't know. It is clearly a moment in the film that is taking people aback. But I do understand the impulse to show Roger in Santa Fe -- it's the one moment in the film in which we see light and sky and a world outside of the confines of New York City -- and in the abstract I could see how all of that change of scenery could help lead Roger to his epiphany. However, as I said, the execution of those ideas left something to be desired. The context was off, somehow.

To talk a little about the mixed critical response: maybe I'm just so allergic to cynicism that I'll never understand what drives people to embrace being cynical so fully, but I have been so astonished by some of the vitriol in some of the critcs' pans. Some of them write so angrily and dismissively that it's as if we were presenting a story that was detrimental to people's mental health, or something. Again, I would never be so bold as to call our film a totally brilliant classic of the ages, but I would have thought we would have gotten some credit for having our politics and heart in the right place. In some corners, we did, but in others, you would have thought we were killing babies or something.

I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating:

In what other major studio release this year do you see:

Interracial couples?

Gay couples?

Lesbian couples?

People living with HIV and AIDS?

IV drug users?

And all of them dealt with strightforwardly. Unlike in Crash, wherein the racial differences were underlined and highlighted (in my opinion, pedantically and to the detriment of the more interesting textures at play in the film), the differences in Rent are not commented upon at all. I consider that to be a cause for at least minor celebration. And yet some writers take us to task for it.

And then those same film writers often rant about and wonder why there's such a blandness and sameness in the worlds presented in studio films. Why there isn't more diversity in characters, subject matter, etc. In my mind, these critics are being a little hypocritical regarding our film, at least in this sense.

Again, if they have artistic complaints, that's a whole other ball of wax. But not to acknowledge what's out of the ordinary about the world we're presenting? It seems a bit irresponsible to me.

Anyway, as always, for what it's worth...

*clap*

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Amen, Anthony. Preach on, preach-ah!! The only thing that really bothers me about a few of the critics responses are about the whole "It's so outdated." Yes, NYC isn't grimey and filled with all that it was back then, but there is still AIDS, homelessness, drugies, people trying not to "sell out," disease, death, etc. that is all over this world. So, how exactly is it too outdated to matter anymore?

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::resists urge after Em's "clap" to say that this is a photo oppertunity...kinda::

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I don't understand why we, the fans who should be embracing this movie, are so intent on picking out its flaws. Yes, they're there. Yes, if we wanted to, any one of us could probably find a way to be disappointed with it.

This isn't about opinion, it isn't about taste. It's about perspective.

We can't change the way this movie was made. We can only choose whether to embrace it and love it as it is--as we do with the stage show, or to pick out every shot we don't like, every shortcoming we can put our fingers on and lament the fact that it wasn't made just as we imagined it.

In nitpicking, we're missing the point of this story altogether--forget the flaws, love the message.

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I always enjoy reading your posts Anthony.

Though,

I love The Cliff. But, I don't think it matters. It's been said on here before, it's not the best moment, but considering what's going to happen after, it doesn't matter. (In my mind, that is.).

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Brava NotThatGirl. Precisely what I've been trying to say, but have been unable to articulate!

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