A Loverly Weekend

This was a pretty cool weekend, so I want to kind of fill people in.

On Friday, I slept late and then called my home office and told them I got Trilegent as a major client. 16 classes in the first 6 months of 2006! Whoo hoo!

What else did I do on Friday? I met up with Sarah and Joshie at Barnes & Noble, and Joshie agreed to let me take him to dinner and RENT. This is where the rest of my theatre friends are going to disagree with me, but the movie SUCKED!!!!!!!!! The thing is: the original musical succeeds because it was timely and the score (the sound) was a lot sharper than anything heard on Broadway in a long time. However, the lyrics were still incredibly unsubtle and the plot and characters were overblown and hackneyed. The stage version of RENT was basically a heavy-handed AIDS melodrama with 1-dimensional people calling for living “bohemian.” The cheesy ending did more damage than good. The reason we listened is because the music was fresh. Also, the complete lack of subtlety or complexity fit the mid-90s ACT-UP zeitgeist towards AIDS.

The movie could’ve made things more complicated. The script could’ve made things more layered. It could’ve made the evil people more sympathetic. It could’ve shown the real price of supposed boho living. It could’ve done so many things, and instead it made bad choice after bad choice. Here are a few that pop to mind:

- Instead of voicing over a lot of the singing with more “real life” shots, all of the actors were instructed to sing everything very melodramatically at each other with pat Broadway gestures. Then Columbus – the dumbass director – put all of these cheesy, overwrought moments of actors screaming their songs to each other into the film.
- When we see the “Tango Maureen,” with the fantasy sequence, we get our hopes built up that the film will act like a film instead of a filming of the stage version, but no other song gets this nice approach.
- On lines like “you’re looking at my ass” instead of a subtle, close and sensitive shot with wit and charm in the delivery, Mimi is down on all fours sticking her derriere up in the air like a fucking cat in heat and screaming the line at full volume. This “bold gesture” may work on stage, but it DOES NOT work when the fucking camera lens is basically poking at the actress’s sphincter!
- In “Today for You, Tomorrow for Me” there was not a single shot of the akita or the street performance or the doggie suicide or anything, just Angel’s performance to the guys in the apartment singing about it but not showing it. IT’S CALLED FILM!!!!
- The “Santa Fe” moment worked, because for once the subtext was buried in the song, not shouted out in the lyrics and filmmaking. Given the dumbass director’s approach, I’m surprised they didn’t rewrite the song to be something like:
That homeless lady got you down
I’m here to turn that smile around
You’re a better person, you wild Bohemian!
I wrote this verse, so listen to me, man!
- Roger’s “Bon Jovi” moment in New Mexico – where was someone to push him off the fucking mountain for this cheesy, hair-band moment??!?! And why did he go if by the end of the song he’s back in NYC with a new guitar?!?!?!
- Mimi’s death scene – all it was missing was the lolling tongue and the Xs over the fucking eyes!

Joshie hated it too! So… I laughed several times during the film at how bad it was. Joshie said he rolled his eyes so much, he saw more of the inside of his skull than the film. I was scared he’d like it, but we spent a good hour over at Borders railing on it. And then I called Toddie, who’s seen it four times, and made sure he wasn’t going to regale me in the future with why he thought that piece of shit was right next to CITIZEN KANE in quality.

Saturday, I went to the gym, which I am enjoying. Then I went home and did some laundry. Then David and I went to his sister’s 40th birthday party. And then Cathy, Joshie and John Bateman joined us for Jimmy Crescitelli’s 50th. (David has a good description here: http://davidroz.blogspot.com/2005/12/oh-yeah-that-other-thing.html) It was a blast.

On Sunday, I went to AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS in Mount Dora, where I got to see Joel Warren shirtless…. Sigh…. It was a good production, really! Then David and I took Mattie out for ice cream – David also describes it in his blog. I love Mattie!

Then, I picked up Sarah, and she and I went to the Rosie O’Grady Highland Bagpipe Band concert. 11 bagpipers; it was amazing! They all came marching in – oh, did I mention that the concert was FREE!!!! They did Scottish songs, Irish songs, some dancing, and very bad jokes and skits about bagpipe players. They did a perfectly horrible version of “My Heart Will Go On” from TITANIC (mostly, ballads just don’t work with 11 bagpipers blaring them out…) They did a stunning, stirring, beautiful version of “Highland Chapel” with an organist! I actually got sort of teary-eyed, because their narrator did a lovely job introducing the history the song is based on. They had a ten-year-old drummer with the drum section, and he kicked ass! They had kilts but, sadly, no tam-o-shanters. They had the girl playing the tenor drum and spinning the pom-pom drumsticks in the air. It was so much fun!

We stopped at the College Park Starbucks where a barista named Ney gave us free coffee and hot chocolate. He’s CUTE! He’s studying to be a fireman! He has a crush on Sarah and we interrupted just as Jeff Lindberg was making his move. Rob Guest was there also. Jeff was heartbroken and Ney and Sarah were both adorable…

Great weekend altogether!