Page 7 - Pop History: Rent

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

We’re rentheads this week as we dive into the making of Rent.Want even more Page 7? Support us on Patreon! Patreon.com/page7podcastKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

525,600 minutes. Oh. 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes. How do you measure? Measure a year. Two days of inspiration playing hookie, making something out of nothing. The need to impress to communicate.

Going against the grain. Going insane. going mad We have a hard time Pay rent They're poor We are so cold We don't have heat

Oh yeah We are stuck on the street We don't have any And we can't You're making fun of rent And we can't pay for any maids We also have AIDS

Every single day I walk down the street I hear people say Baby so sweet Ever since puberty Everybody stares at me Boys, girls, I can help you baby So be kind

Don't lose your mind Just remember That I'm your baby Well that was a great episode of rent I will sing the entire thing Welcome to Rent Yes I am your resident True Forever Rent Head

And yes everybody hated me because of it. But you know what? Hashtag, no day but today. Welcome to Rent. I am finally an adult and you have to listen to me talking about it. You're also weirdly in the circle right now. Oh my god, you like? Wait, I can I just say rent head is a very boring term for rent fans. It should have been something cooler. Rent, uh, low rents like rentals. Renticles. Runtz. Run. I'm a writ, run. Yeah. I'm a writ run. I'm like, smoke this blunt. What if you, it should have been called like tenants. Dude, it's what have been good.

But then we're owned by the sister. Yeah, and that's the system. Yeah, guess what? We are. Actually, the Bohemians, too, would have been a good one. Oh, the Bohemians. I'm so excited to talk about Rent guys. So you're the Rent Head.

Let's get into the gush because I feel like, I feel, this gave me a lot of feelings doing this episode, right? Because I came up in theater. I was a person who really, though, kind of came to dislike musicals early on or resent them in a certain way. I was like, I want to go see straight plays. Like, because musicals were the only thing. that would come into town professionally, I feel like.

And you say stray plays, you mean without music? Just without singing or anything. I just wanted to see scene work and like storytelling in a theatrical play without the musical element, right? I feel like in a lot of ways. But that said, my dad always would get the original cast recording of whatever musical we were about to go to and play it a lot. Oh yeah. Same. Same in our house.

And it always drove me crazy. We literally be listening to it on the way to see the musical. And I was like, maybe, can we get a break? Can we just get a break for me because we're about to see it? No, you can not. But still, with rent, I feel like that came out. I actually was rocking it on my CD player. Like, I took the double disc upstairs.

There were certain songs I really enjoyed living in America. I don't even know if that's the name of the song, but I really love that. Take me or leave me. I love. Dying in America. It's so good. And it was just like, oh, wow, for the first time I feel like I'm hearing. Yes, I just need you to know that every time you say the name of a song, I will say.

Yes, that's fine. That's why. It's just like, by the way, Lexi watching it with her, same thing. She was like, I'm going to sing along to the whole thing. I was like, that's fine. I should, this should be my experience. I should be watching it with someone who knows that it's like singing through the whole movie. Yes, Henry sang it all.

Yes. Awesome. So, so yeah, I, but it was actually for one of the first times I was like listening to something outside of a musical because I just liked the songs I thought they were good. And then it has this whole turn because then you get around all these musical. theater people who are like obsessed with rent. And I think two things happen. I think that, yes, musical theater people, especially at an earlier age, are annoying.

And so anything they love, kind of you bounce off of it a little bit. But at the same time, I think I was also supposed to think it wasn't cool. I was supposed, I realized really quickly like, oh, to be like a cool, you know, whatever with it, I need to like think this is lame. And now in hindsight, I just want to say to everybody, I think we can all enjoy rent again. I think it's time. Get rid of the guilty pleasures. is no such thing, it's just pleasure.

I mean, I didn't, for a kid who really was around musicals all the time, I just, Rent never occurred. My mom even loves Rent, but I never knew the songs or anything. So I'm learning a lot this week. So you saw it. You saw that, first of all, just want to throw it out there. There is a 2008 production, the final performance of the show before it shut down on Broadway. The original cast comes out at the very end, and they all sing seasons of love together.

except for Adina. I didn't see it in there, Dina. Too big for it, huh? She had a lot to do. But regardless, it's a great production. It's all on YouTube. And it's a really good quality version of it. Definitely watch that instead of watching Rent, the movie.

And we just have a consensus here. If you like Rent, watch the YouTube version of it instead. I mean, maybe watch the movie if you're morbidly curious. But I think at the end of the day, it's all about that live performance. Yeah, because I think we're, we were just talking about this before we started recording. It does, it has that cats, uh, feeling to it where it's this high budget over the top movie trying to show poor people, but like using just like millions of dollars to show it.

And it doesn't really work. Yeah. They're like in this apartment that they're like, oh, it's so gross in here. And it's just like beautifully lit and perfect inside and just like, I don't believe you at all. And yeah. And instead of the original version, which is in a literally a renovated. theater that they kept that way so that they could keep this raw feeling of what it was like to live in New York back when living in New York was actually kind of cool. Yeah. And also, I mean,

that's the first thing that came to my head watching it for the first time other than this is the most Gen X shit I've ever seen. Yes. Um, was like, the places they're living in Alphabet City are still shitty, but now you have to be a millionaire to live there. At least I guess at that point you could live there for $200 a month. Tint Street and Avenue A, right? I mean, that was totally a scary place at one point in time and now could not be further from a scary but expensive yeah yeah scary and filled with frat people like i feel like that is yeah scary for like lame reasons and that you just like pukin in the streets yeah a lot of puk in the street you have to watch out for roofies a lot more yeah yeah right it's probably actually technically more dangerous it was just it looks nicer uh but all that said

you know i think now a it's become a period piece a nostalgia piece and now i think all that shitty tarnish of like, oh, musical theater kids that were like so in your face about it or whatever. That's all washed away for me. Maybe that was just my personal experience. And now I'm just seeing it for what it is. I'm taking it for what it is.

And I'm, and especially now that I learn the story because I actually didn't know that our creator of this musical passed away, literally the night of the final... No, it's crazy. Right? Of the final preview.

I didn't know that. And that pisses me off to when people go like, oh, it's only popular because of, of this mystique around the thing. I was like, dude, I didn't even know about that. And I thought it was a great musical. And honestly, was only annoyed at its popularity to me, if you want to really get down to it.

Because just people loved it so much, they wanted to sing it all the time in my face. And I was like, I can't deal with this anymore. And now that all that's washed away, I just... Now it's Hamilton. Hamilton's the one. Yeah, now that has become Hamilton. But now that I can just see it as this musical,

this musical happened in a context, knowing the story of the creator. I mean, not only was I enjoying it, but I was like openly weeping throughout the research process and the viewing of the musical itself. And it actually made me sad in a lot of the articles that I was reading about it that people have written since and especially right after the movie and everything about Rent was a product of its time and that it doesn't hold up. When in reality, Jonathan Larson had set out to write the hair of our generation. He wanted it to be stuck in time. It stuck in, he wanted to show what Bohemians were like in New York at this time period when everyone he knew was dying of AIDS.

And he wanted to have that in a capsule that he does have. And he never got to see it happen. And in the same way where I never felt that same kind of connection, I love Tick, Tick, Boom, don't get me wrong, which is another one of his huge musicals that he wrote because he studied with Sondheim. And I like it. but this really is, it seems, what he wanted to make. Yeah.

And it does add a layer of sadness that he never got to see it become this. Of course. I mean, and one of the other things, too, is you can actually also almost look at it as slightly unfinished in all these ways. Yes. Because one of the most mindblowers for me, my favorite song in the musical is definitely take me or leave me, right? The, especially back then, still probably is now,

even though some other ones are creeping up there for me, now that I've revisited the musical. Will I lose my teeth? So Lexi looked over, I'm like weeping. She's like, why? Knowing that a man literally stood up in the place that he volunteered at, which we'll call out when we get into the real nitty gritty. And I'll sing the whole song.

Okay. A man actually, knowing a real man battling with this stood up and said that. Will I lose my dignity? Like that line. Now I can't watch it. Now I can't watch it the same. I'm like literally, I'm getting teary just talking about it. But like she actually, and I was just like, and then we paused it.

And I was like, so the real. He said, I'm crying, right? Like, I literally, I had that fucking voice or whatever. And, like, I'm just, and then Lexi's crying. So I'm just like, he actually, there was a man that really said that. There was a man. No man was there. In an HIV support group, there was a man that said, will I lose my dignity?

And was asking, as an open-ended question. I'm not afraid of dying, but will I lose my dignity? Yeah. And so he wrote, and, and Jonathan Larson is a lot of things, and we will get into that. He seems like he, man, he knew how great. he was. A theater nerds for all theater nerds. And part of me, and I remember when I first started learning about Jonathan Larson,

definitely rolled my eyes in fact like, oh, he's a Westchester kid that got to go to private school and all this. But you know what? There is a point in time when you can choose your life and where you're going. And he chose to not had to be completely, he cut himself off from his parents. I was like, I love you. Give me nothing. I want to go figure my shit out.

And so, and I in my brain always thought that he died and that he got like this. And I thought he was like 23, but he was 36 years old. So he had lived a good amount of time, poor as fuck, writing hundreds of songs. Hundreds of songs. Every week of trying to turn out to create something that was his. Yeah, this whole thing really, too, I said it when I got my piano and this just can be. Singer-songwriter, Holden McNeely. I've been playing every day.

And this was the most biggest inspiration for my decree that I made a while back, which is the ultimate goals for me to write a musical and seeing how hard he worked and how prolific he was and that he was like, I'm going to do, I'm going to make this thing, you know, this very specific thing. You know what I mean? And, and setting out. And then fucking accomplishing it, like making his generation's hair, which he completely did. One of my favorite things was reading that he said that.

And then also reading later, I think it was just even in the Wikipedia article. There was a passage that just said, you know, Seasons of Love got regular radio play. That was something that hadn't been seen since Age of Aquarius. and has rarely seen. To see that it literally did, like, it was referenced in comparison to hair is like such a reward, like, that's so amazing. I got tinkles you saying it, I love rents.

So, Jackie, I feel like I almost- Tengles, ladies and jogging-man. I almost cut you off with my, like, talking about how I, like, oh, was over it and now I, like, love it and I'm gooey about it. But I want to hear a little bit more because you were talking to me in the car about your Rint obsession and it goes deep.

It really does. I mean, I, like, even looking at all of the articles and everything, I had, like, cut out every picture that you can that I printed off of my family's computer that would be too dark and so I'd take it to the library and try and fax it again to lighten it up so I could see everyone so that I could cut it out and glue it to my my books like all of my like notebooks and stuff like that I was obsessed I was the people that y'all hated I I sang it all the time I definitely used yeah but you know what guys no day but today and I definitely said it

in complete seriousness when I was 14 years old. And this show for me was so much because I did roll with the queer, druggy crowd that we did feel like nobody understood us. And then there wasn't this musical that we all loved, but also it was the first time I loved something that I thought I should be ashamed of, but was very open about it. And I was like, I don't care. I love this.

And this is a group of queer artists that are making this show, and I love it too. And it was that of, it was for the first time, you know, we grew up in Queens, but at this point in time, I found it in Palm Harbor,

Florida, where, you know, nobody really wanted to listen to this kind of thing. Or even the idea of the line of sisters, we're close when they both kiss, when Joanne and Maureen kiss and Louis-O-M,

where we, that was the time period, that all of this was never before seen on a Broadway, stage to this extent and that they brought actually like the world of bohemia to a stage to someone that lived in Palm Harbor, Florida. Yeah. I never knew that side of New York. And I also had that experience. Oh, sorry. I was going. I think that was Rocky Horror for me. Yeah. And like I yeah, I just missed the whole rent thing. But that's really cool that you found that in in Palm Harbor. Not that

Palm Harbor's not great. Well, I don't know about Palm Harbor, but I mean, you, you, you, you, Y'all went to Charlotte for my wedding. Y'all saw how cookie cutter Charlotte is. It is so pretty. So pretty, so clean. Everything is just just right. Everything's right in its right place. It's a little stressful.

And so this musical has this like, agreed. This musical had this alien element to me of not just New York, which was incredibly intimidating to me as a kid. But yet there was a mystique that obviously ended up drawing me there later in life. And then on top of that queer culture, because as much as we were liberal, we went to Unitarian Church. I was thinking back, I was like, who was out at my high school?

No one was fucking out at my high school. No one was like queer like this, especially not queer like angel. And it was kind of a culture shock for me. And I think I definitely was, yeah, I was kind of thrown for a loop by the contents of rent. And it actually helped open my eyes to like, oh, life is so different outside of Charlotte. And there are so many things going on that I don't. understand and I can either be scared of them or I can like embrace them. I feel like later and a few years later even I end up watching like headwig and getting really into that and really

embracing queer culture. Which I want to do that because I feel like it's like we did Rocky horror. We're doing rent. We need to do a headway. It is the ones of like for us of being people that were more on the outside of like oh a musical spoke to me in a different way. Yeah. And I was actually really shocked by after I got over the Gen Zeness of everything I mean I'm sorry Gen Xness of everything

I was actually amazed and really surprised that they showed like gay relationships in like a non caricature way and that was so great and that's what they're

right and that and Tom Collins live in my house every time I hear the opening of that song with Jesse Elmore

I'm I was tearing up thinking about it while you guys were talking. It was the kind of thing that I feel like there were so many queer characters that were used as caricatures at the time period and they were all striving to show

no, but what about the reality of it and how do we bring a reality to a musical which is in itself is bombastic but you have those moments and we'll talk about that song where Jesse L. Martin was like, I can't sing that song and they came together and was like, but you can and you have to because feel the love you have for Angel.

And like he looked apparently like in the rehearsals, would stare into Angel's eyes and sing the song to him. And that's when they like found it. They found their love. They found each other. And I just, it's great. I also do.

In case anybody who's wondering if I was going to go ham on this, I will say I have classically criticized the song, will you light my candle and my mini-street? and podcasts. But I will say upon a rewatch of it... Nothing. Your hair in the boo- Right.

But I will say, I found it to be less grading that I used to find it. I wouldn't call it the best song of the musical. But I think... Actually, it's almost more like an opera right there. There's no talking. I was just about to say... Because that's why it's based on Lavo Lava Lack.

I will say, though, from now a perspective of exactly Natalie, of storytelling, it does a great job. And establishing a relationship and in totally bringing you into the world of these two characters, it does a fantastic job of that, even though maybe I find it to be slight

like that just... With the voice mails. Like, I just always found that to be grading back of the day. But now I understand. I kind of like this. I get it. And now I guess we have to get...

Let's get into the meat of this. We have so much to cover. So I have right here to begin just... First, there was Lapo M and Billy Aronson. So let's talk about La Boeem, an opera in four acts that was composed by Jacomo Buccian. Between 1893 and 1895, and it is set in Paris around 1830. It shows off the bohemian lifestyle of the time and centers around a poor seamstress and her artist friends. And it's actually a lot of one-to-ones here.

So, yes, these characters do find their way into Rent. Mimi was a seamstress with tuberculosis in La Boem. In Rent, she is an erotic dancer with HIV. the girlfriend of Roger, who is our Rodolfo from La Boeem, seen as a poet in that work, but is a songwriter musician with HIV in Rint. Marcello, the painter in LaBoam, is Mark in Rent, a filmmaker. Musetta, a singer, is Maureen, the performance artist. Chalnard, the musician, is Angel, the drag queen, percussionist in Rent. Colleen, the philosopher, is Tom Collins, a part-time philosophy professor at NYU, who also has

AIDS. Alcindoro, the state counselor, is Joanne, the lesbian lawyer, and Maureen's girlfriend, and lastly Binwa, is the landlord in La Boeem, and is Benny, the landlord in rent. So there's actually a lot of clever adaptation going on that I never saw. I feel like if it's not from La Boeem, it's from his life in New York. And that's what I like, too, is that it was very important for them is to update La Boeem and not just do the one-to-one. because while La Boeem romanticizes death, which apparently was very trendy in 1896 when it premiered,

Rent celebrates life with all of its might as evidenced by all of the references to life in the show. There's Life Gafke, there's the Angels group life support. While Boem is tragic, Rent is joyous. While Boem's bohemian world is romantic and poetic, the world of Rent is tough, gritty, angry, and real. While Boem has Museta's waltz, Rent has the cynical Tango Maureen.

While Boem observes the bohemians from a distance, Rent is written by a bohemian, someone who had trouble paying the rent, whose friends were dying of AIDS, and it fully inhabits that world. This paragraph made so much sense to me because I had, you know, I have seen La Boem before,

and it is a tragic opera. And Rent, although you cry, there is a sense of, I mean, there's no day but today. It is, you keep going. YOLO, today. YOLO, YOLO. And now we have YOLO.

That would be the modern A. It's going to be called gentrification and the school will be called YOLO. Yes, absolutely. Jackie, did you see Loboam in the context of knowing it was rent-ish? Oh, yes. No, oh, mama. I was a rent-hance. Can you go, because that is definitely a blind spot in my research or whatever leading up to this.

Can you give us a feel for Loboam or what? Sad, long. It's an opera. It's long. It's sad and long. And it wasn't in English. So I had knew obviously of the story because, honestly, I found it through rent. And I went to see it and it was cool.

But I had no idea what was going on. And it was definitely beautiful to watch. I love it. It's also, even though you saw it, it's kind of a blind spot for you as well. No, but it was. Have you ever seen an opera holding? I'm so intimidated because of exactly what Jackie's describing. I've only seen a couple and it is,

you are basically looking at beautiful pictures trying to discern what's happening. Right. But now the Met, now they have subtitles, right? Yeah, they do subtitles in front of your seat at the Met and I went before that. I actually would like that. Yes.

That would actually be held. But then you're not watching it. Right. I feel like you can feel the emotions from an opera. Like, I think that's cool, but also can we not look at screens for five fucking minutes. This is very true. Because, I mean, I've really enjoyed ballet, and I feel like it's also not, you know, nothing's being explained to you. Right.

Oh, but everything's being explained to you. With the daddies. All right. Then there's also Billy Aronson, an American playwright who had wanted to create a musical based on the classic opera, quote, in which the luscious splendor of Puccini's world could be replaced with the coarseness and noise of modern New York. So he goes to a spot that I saw, I knew about and saw, I believe in, you know, even when I was in New York, he goes to play. So Playwrights Horizons. It is a theater in New York. It focuses on new works.

And there he asks for composer recommendations. That is how he ends up getting connected to Jonathan Larson. And that's because he said he came to New York in 1983. He says, I was living in Hell's Kitchen, which was a very rough neighborhood. I would take walks every so often up to Lincoln Center to get cheap standing room at the opera. And I remember walking home one night after seeing La Boe M and noticing the contrast between the luscious world of the opera and the world itself. La Boem is about young artists They're poor, they're destitute

Yet despite that they're still in love And being young, poor And a hopeless romantic myself I related to that So I wanted to do something That took the world of Boem and made it my world And that's what I honestly I did not know about Billy Aronson

I only knew about Jonathan Larson But it is Billy Aronson's Original idea But he himself was a composer But not a... No, he was a writer not a composer He was a writer but not a composer. He needed somebody to write music for. I will say we'll get to the agreement

they come to in just a little bit. And he, in hindsight, has even said, he loves what it became. And he's also kind of happy. He didn't, he wasn't there to screw it up. So he was like, actually, I'm just glad he took it to rail with it. Let's get into that though. Jonathan Larson, born to Jewish parents in White Plains, New York in 1960. He played the trumpet and tuba, sang in his school's choir and took formal piano lessons as a boy. And coupled with his education and classical composers in musical theater, especially the works of Steven Sondheim, as he's already been mentioned.

What's actually cool is that he was an actual protege of Sondheim. That's really, I did not know that, by the way. So he was not only a fan of Sondheim, he wrote him multiple letters when he was at Adelphi, and Sondheim enjoyed what he was working on because Sondheim said he encouraged that, quote, young people are still writing for theater when they could be writing pop and rock tunes.

It doesn't matter if their shows are good or bad. They're keeping the idiom a lot. So Sonheim actually ended up working with Jonathan Larson on multiple of his shows. That's why he ended up producing Tick, Tick, Boom later on. Hell yeah. And also, Jonathan Larson loved that old time of rock and roll. His list of the music out in John, the Beatles, the Doors, the Who, and Billy Joel as well, all influencing his composition. In high school, he gets into acting, plays the lead in several productions at his school.

He ends up going to a Delphi University majors in acting while also getting into music composition, which led to composing. his first musical store called Libro de Buen Amor, which he did for his mentor. Good of a center. Right? Which did for his mentor. Wow. And head of the theater department, Jacques Belleville.

Oh. Uh-huh. He then worked in some. That's just, that's how they talk, right? Oh, maybe. They do that in the end. When they say something real saucy at the end, they go. There are AIDS in this whole day.

Oh, and I'm sorry. I forgot for me. a millisecond. Sorry, I had joy in my heart for a millisecond. He then worked in a summer stock theater program, and that earned him his equity card. Of course, the first thing every actor tries to get, especially theater actor, out of school. After that, he moves into a loft with no heat on the fifth floor of a building at the

corner of Greenwich Village and Spring Street in Lower Manhattan, which is like... How's he gonna pay? How's he gonna pay? How's he gonna pay? Whoa. That's the only part I know. That was the only song. Oh.

So for the next nine years, Larson Waits Tables at the Moon Dance Diner on weekends while composing during the week. He was definitely, he knew he was good at what he did. And he refused to get a job doing anything else. He was like, I definitely could have written jingles.

I could have worked making music and doing other things. But I wanted to write musicals, which is why, honestly, this diner that he worked at for a long time did kind of remind me of the place that I worked at for eight years in my twenties of like well this place I know it

and they can I can go do auditions I can be like hey I got to leave for three weeks to go do a project I could come back to the job this is what his job was here that he could come in and out so it is cool to know

that he would go work his job at the diner and then just he had a girlfriend at the time Victoria who said he would write for eight hours almost every single day. Yeah, they always talked about how he would, you know, they'd go to a party, he'd leave an hour later, he was always just going back home and being... I didn't even realize he had a girlfriend.

Yeah, yeah, he seemed so asexual to me where he was just like... Right, right. All he cared about was the music, which is why she ended up stopping being his girlfriend, but, like, maintain their relationship and was just kind of always his best friend. She also was actually a song.

His girlfriend was a song. So, yeah, he never really broke from that. But yes, his friend and ex-roommate said, this is Jonathan Burkhart, by the way. He's going to come up with a lot of quotes throughout this. Our apartment is what you see in rent. We literally had one extension cord that snaked all the way through the apartment. There was no heat except from the oven and the shower was in the kitchen.

And the floors were all fucked up. The toilet was in its own room and the floorboards were so, rotten that certain boards you stepped on like pieces of wood would come out. It was a mess. But you know what I remember? I think I paid $125 a month rent my first six months. They're in the middle of fucking Manhattan. This is 1984. I think the rent went up to like 150 and then 200. And I think it was 200 for a long time. It was cheap. Fucking cheap. Even back then. Mind you, it was a shit hole. I spent a lot more money on shitholes in Long Island. Yeah. I will say that. Yeah, they'd have that similar description. Oh, very.

similar. Oh my God, so many German cockerishes. And my, my band's first album we recorded in a place that reminds me of this in the middle of bedstey, just horrible, all the drug addicts outside. It was fucking crazy. I mean, so it speaks to my heart now too. I guess that's the other thing about this musical is like, man, I kind of lived a little bit of this stuff. You know, not in a, not in a gin-x way, but in a more like millennial. We all did. The things that we did were disgusting. How we, like, wanted to, and honestly, the shows in the places that we, it's like, how many shows we would do, like, we did a show in the back of a

U-Haw truck, we'd doing shows where you'd go in, you look around, like, this is the place, all right, well, and I guess we'll go in. I already, I remember your stories about just like, with a bunch of ladies just sleeping on the floors and whatever, and all just kind of... That one that I had that was right off

of the JMZ was like, it was a loft meant for one or two people, and it just we had six or seven people living there at a time, and it was just one. It was just wall, like dry walled off corners. So I was lucky because I had a little window cut out of the door. Oh, you had a window. A lot of the second floor were in literal like coffins.

Oh my God. Where they slept. That's so crazy, man. Yeah, yeah. So we've all kind of had a taste of it. It's still there. You can find it. It's just in Brooklyn now.

Well, now I think, actually, I think where I was 10 years ago is not affordable now either. Super expensive. Although I think after the quarantine, I think things are kind of going. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Actually, that might be a good time to go. So Aronson and Larson meet up at Larson's apartment in the West Village, and Aronson said, he was kind of messy.

His hair was all over the place, but he was very passionate, and we were both nervous, I would say. Artists, you know, want a certain, you're used to having total control and collaboration was kind of scary for both of us, I think, but we went ahead with it. Aronson also said, right off the bat, he said, this could be our generation's hair, and I had not been thinking along those lines at all. I was thinking of a story with a few characters like Boem is. He said, no, this is hair for our generation. I've been waiting for a chance to bring the MTV generation,

which he then was calling us to the theater. Nobody goes to the theater who likes MTV or who likes rock music, and we have to change that, and this will do it. It's sort of amazing looking back how clear-sighted he was about it. And, yeah. I like it, too, that apparently when he had come to him, when Billy Aronson came to Jonathan Larson, he said he wanted to do a modern day, La Boe M, set it on the Upper West Side

and make it about yuppies and funny. And I said, that doesn't interest me. But if you want to set it in Tompkins Square Park and do it seriously, I like that idea a lot. He said he had never spent any time in the village, but he wrote a libretto. He wanted to write the book and lyrics, and I was set to write a few of the songs to the music and see what everyone's response was. And I like that it really was. I love that quote. If you want to do it shittily, like you're saying you want to do it, but I don't want to do it.

But if you want to do it in this really good way, that I want to do it. It makes sense because when Billy Aronson was asked, how was it working with Larson, his response was very, very difficult. We basically loved or hated everything each other did. To become a playwright or composer, you want to control the universe. And we were both used to doing things exactly our way. Which is why I think

they split amicably and But at least it was amicable. I'm so happy that it was that it was just serious. Like our visions aren't aligning. So why don't you go do your thing? But we'll talk about that later. It makes me like this story even more. Because it's very difficult in a collaborative project. And that happens all the time in movies and film and stuff too. So the

best thing sometimes is that you still like each other after. Yeah, 100%. I can still be your friend. Great. 100%. So actually that part's coming up right here. They then need to make a tape, which involved them coming up with $600. And this is around the time, once money gets involved, Aronson starts being like, oh, how much money am I going to sink into this thing? He doesn't want to lose too much on the project. And this is what puts things on hold for a couple of years. Still, Larson cannot let this concept go. And he wants to continue alone. And eventually, he does ask Aronson to do so. And that, that's a lot. And that. is when they make an agreement that Aronson would share in the proceeds and be given credit for

quote, original concept and additional lyrics because they did come up with a few of the songs that made it into the show together. Aronson said he would send me tapes and scripts over the years. It just got better and better. I mean, I was amazed. He was clearly inspired. And that's so cool too that he was still sending him his work. And be like, what do you think?

Yeah. It's so cool. And especially during this time period, Jonathan Larson definitely seems to intimate that his songs were great. But it was the libretto that Aronson had written that helped put Rent on hold for so long. Larson said, I found different types of contemporary music for each character. So the hero, Roger and Rent, sings in a Kurt Cobain-esque style. And the street transvestite sings like De La Sol, that is his words.

And there's a Tom Waits-esque character. The American musical has always been taking contemporary music and using it to tell a story. So I'm trying to do that. We made a demo tape and everyone loved the comment. loved the music, but when they read the accompanying libretto, they weren't too strong on it. So he just kept putting it on hold. I loved the concept, but I didn't have a burning reason to go back to it, and then I did. So all of this is in the late 80s, early 90s. So it was, two years later, he says, a number of my friends, men and women, were finding out that they were

HIV positive. I was devastated and needed to do something. In 1991, I decided to ask Billy if you would let me continue by myself and he was very cool about it. Victoria, I read this article. Victoria, his girlfriend at the time, said they had, they had five good friends at the time period. And can you imagine that four of them died within months? Wow. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make a joke.

That's why I kept going in a serious tone. It was very sad and dark. It was very sad that at this time it's like, can you imagine in your close group of friends, like just thinking all of us that work together that. Like, what is that? 75%, 80% of your friends are dead? I mean, I guess I didn't have a section in my notes about, like, the AIDS epidemic in New York,

but just to say it was awful and so widespread and crazy. And yeah, it's terrible. And that it was at the time period, like the media made it seem as like, oh, don't worry about it. It's just the queer. Right, right. And the way queer culture was treated as this othering thing. Yes.

And again, just quickly mention that that was so powerful for me as a kid in Charlotte, North Carolina, who really just was not around much queer culture at all. And even if I was around it, it was very cleaned up for Charlotte. Right. And to get to experience this through this a little bit and get a sense of it was very powerful and important, I think, for people like me at the time. Yeah, kids across the country who maybe didn't see it in their face all the time. Yeah, and was scared. And literally was afraid of it because of the way other people made you feel about, you know, queer culture,

because they were so horrible about it. The adults around you are giving you terrible things in your brain. Yeah. And then seeing like a mature, loving relationship between queer people in a show is so great. And seeing toxic relationships between queer people that are the same as straight. They're like normal relationships. Yeah. Just like normalizing it.

Burkhart said for years, he, Jonathan Larson, was truly flat broke. He didn't have a fucking penny. Couldn't rub two pennies together because all he did was conduct his life so that he could barely pay the rent and just write music. So he was not aggressive towards working to make money. He was aggressive in his composition and storytelling. And that's what leads him to write hundreds of songs. Yeah, it was just like, that's all he did.

He barely went out. Burkhart said, or he wouldn't go out at all. He'd say, don't go out. Let's just sit and listen to music. And really what that was was me listening to him, play the piano. He lived at his keyboards and all he did was composed and write music. who's prolific. So get ready for the future hanging out with me, ladies.

They apparently the original music director Tim Weil. Well? We'll? I think while. While? But who knows? Said about the success of Wrenz music, which makes sense. It really begins and ends with Jonathan's writing as a great composer and a great lyricist. He knew as much about

Billy Joel's piano playing as he knew about Sonheim's lyric writing. He was really just extraordinary. And Sonheim went on to say, a good deal of pop music has interesting lyrics. But they're not theater lyrics. A songwriter who works in the theater, he emphasized, must have a sense of what is theatrical, of how to use the music to tell a story as opposed to writing a song. Jonathan understood that instinctively. So it's not only as he turning out all of this music,

but he's also very hard on himself about what is good and what is not. And by writing a song, by the way, he means having sex with his girlfriend. Yes, Veronica the song. But also, also I love his excitement is for his work. He would call people at all hours the night and play them a song he'd just written. And if they didn't pick up, he'd played on their message machine. And there's something about that I find adorable. Which makes sense because of the voicemails in rent. Yes. Like that he would, that I'm so happy that he incorporated that into now I understand why he incorporated the voicemails. Because honestly, as a teen, I usually skipped the voice. So much more. So much of that work for me and it didn't work before. Just the moms calling to call home just means something totally different to me

now that it never did. As an older person, really does change it. It's funny. It works now in a way. And it used, yes, I used to kind of find it to be a little jarring and annoying a little bit. Now it's time to find a home for his new show. And at this time, the New York Theater Workshop was getting a new home at 79 East 4th Street in the East Village. And the artistic director, James C. Nicola, was in search of a show that spoke to that part of the city.

Jonathan Larson just happens to ride his bike past this theater as they're undergoing renovation. which made it look like a perfect place for his rent. It's just such a New York story as well. Nicola says, well, it was fortuitous. A New York story that never happened to me, I wish it did. Really wish it did. Well, it was fortuitous. He popped his head in and saw his old friend George Zenos,

who was our production manager at the time, who was overseeing the renovation, and said, this is going to be a great space, and this would be a great spot for my new musical. What do I do? George told him to just drop it off at our offices on 42nd Street for me to look at it, which he did. So it was a script and a cassette tape of Jonathan playing his electric piano and singing the score, and that was the first encounter.

It was pretty clear from that first listen to the tape that this is exactly what we were looking for. A project about the East Village, about the young folks that were living there at the time, and so much more. And it was written by this incredibly talented young composer, lyricist, and book writer. And then he just screamed the word aids. That was the only thing. This is basically the same story as Muppets Take Manhattan. Yes. Kind of.

And Larson said he did base his life story on that film. Did they live in lockers too at the beginning? No, he did, he did, and he did sing as a baby. What's their names like Ed, Fred, all of those, all dead ofades. Yes, all of them. All the frogs. And the frogs. And the rats.

And the rats. No. They got the bats. Well, the bats. It was kind of obvious. They're just sharing blood all the boys. Yeah, it is shocking it up. Next game of reading.

This is back in 1993. It was deemed too long. messy at this point, which led to a two-week workshop in 1994 and then another reading. And at the second reading, this reading starred Anthony Rapp and Daphne Rubin Vega. It was directed by Michael Grief, who's going to be our director for the show, and was attended by producers Jeffrey Seller and Kevin McCollum. This is the big turning point. I do also love that everyone that has been cast in this, that all of the interviews,

they're all like, yeah, I was like pitched to me as like a rock opera. It's like based on another opera and like, nah, I'm good. because again, these are people that were making $300 a week to do, what, eight performances every week? And why would you say yes to that? That's why, and we'll get to the cast in a second. I have a breakdown of this initial cast, but it's like kind of unbelievable who they got and where some of those people ended up going with their careers. But they were nobody at the time. It's unbelievable that when you see something like so Kismet happen, you know, and you're just like, wow, this is unbelievable.

And speaking of Kismet, Kevin McCollum said, and after the first act, Jeffrey took me back and said, this is Jonathan, and I did one of those cliche things that's been written about. I said, I love this. I love this. I got my checkbook. What do you want to do? And he's leaning against the wall. He goes, do you want to see the second act? And I said, is this good as the first?

I mean, I don't know what's going on, but this has great energy, and we should really try to do something. And he said, yeah, I'd love to try to do a production here. And I said, fantastic. And I sat down, and Jeffrey's like, you're a nut. And then somebody's getting married. That's what mistake, Ben Hat.

After several more readings and workshops, a production was put up in 1996 at the New York Theater Workshop. And while this is all going on, by the way, this is when Jonathan Larson is also working part-time at a nonprofit called Friends Indeed, which was a response to the AIDS crisis and inspired him a lot in terms of the musical,

especially the song, Life Support. And yeah, we also have that moment when the guy seems up, well, I lose my dignity and I'm a New Yorker Fares my life And I have a quote later on But when the, you know I mean apparently like he really put a lot of loving nods

To his work at this place in his show I mean not just And also life support is the song where it is in it The no other road No other way No day but today I'm singing towards Natalie Is that good or bad?

It's great. No day, but today. It's all of the life support song is them introducing that part because everything. If you listen to the two CD, original Broadway cast recording, they include all of the music. Yes, if you get a hold of one. Yeah, for sure. It's kind of a magical thing, all this coming together, and this cast is such a big part of that. And that's what Bernie Tulsi, the casting director, said, I didn't know.

would be the hardest thing ever to cast. Yeah, you have some really good. So what's that person's name again? Because that person deserves all of the awards. Bernie Telssey says, you go to meetings and you hear, we don't want a traditional musical theater voice. We want a rock voice.

But it wasn't like today where half the musicals are some sort of rock or pop musical. I was about to say, because again, in the context of this, like, we're talking about this as if it's crazy. Today's perspective, it's not crazy. But back then, no one was doing like rock, rock and roll kind of stuff.

That was kind of dead since the 70s. Like Jesus Christ Superstar and stuff like that. Tommy, but that kind of went away. Yeah, I disappeared. I'm bringing MTV. That's why it's a musical for the MTV generation. Yeah, and cats took it over. Cocaine cats.

Cocaine cats. For a decade and now we can get back to some real shit with Rint. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sorry, but did I cut you off? Did you have more from? No, that was just, he said for an actor, there was no business reason to do it. It was a $300 a week of paycheck.

Where was I going to find these people? It was like being a detective. Like, okay, I don't. I don't know who Idina Mansell is. She sings at bar mitzvahism, but I'll try her. So all of these, it was a rag-tag group of people that came together. And as we'll talk about through the rehearsal process, created this show with Jonathan. Yeah.

And we're so involved. And those songs are hard. Like, you can't just have somebody who likes to sing do those parts. Oh, my God. You have to be able to do a lot with your voice. And are you not like, like me where you're like almost like white knuckling the seat watching Angel's big dance routine where you're. Oh, yeah.

jumping on the table and I'm in those heels. Of course. Like, God, that would be so nerve-wracking to pull up. I was excited. I was like, yeah, I want to do that. Give me that. I'll do that part. To me, watching that, I'm like,

she's going to fall. You know what I mean? Like, it was my lucky day to day on Avenue A. When a lady in a limousine drove my way, she said, darling, the idea, having slept in a year, I need your help to make my neighbor's yappy dog disappear. Natalie and I just slowly back out. I will say,

He takes the entire musical. So yes, this is the core group, and I'll briefly go over each one. First, we have Anthony Rapp, who came out of Illinois. He was very involved in community theater, even as a child, and made it onto Broadway at the age of 10 in a musical, and made his film debut six years later in the film Adventures in Babysitting, directed by the future Rent film director, Chris Columbus, and this is so weird, because this week I'm also doing a Wizard on Goonies. You are?

Yes. Stolen from you. I'm jealous. Stolen from you. And Chris and Chris Columbus directed that is, in fact, he may be my favorite, one of my favorite writers, directors of all time. I'm sorry, Chris Columbus wrote the script to do. Yeah, Richard Donner directed it. But he is written.

Oh, I guess somebody should have been a fucking good doing that episode. We're talking about rent, not goonies right now. Because Anthony Rapp said, my agent described it as a rock opera based on Lobo M. And the phrase rock opera didn't exactly fill me with confidence. At the time, musical theater was a lot of pageantry. And the idea of a rock opera felt to me like bigwigs and loud, obnoxious things. So I didn't know what the tone would be. But I like what he says about this.

He says, I've always felt that Mark was the closest sort of stand-in for Jonathan. Jonathan himself was a cis-hete, HIV-negative man, who was watching what was happening around him and responding to it and trying to find a way to channel the grief and anger and hopelessness that he was feeling into something positive. And Mark is very much doing that because, as you know, Mark is the cohesion of making the film,

quote unquote, the entire time. And also Anthony Rapp for his Alditschever, Rint sang, losing my religion. And after he got the role, Jonathan Larson wrote song specifically in rap's voice with his voice in mind. Adam Pascal grew up in New York and played in rock bands as a kid,

which so that makes him really perfect for this while also getting interested in musical theater. It was actually Edina Menzell's boy. at the time that told him about rent. And so we went out and auditioned on a whim, which ended up getting him a Tony Award. And he was in a... I was gonna sing the song, but I can't remember the...

Your eyes. I don't know, song, glory, whatever. One song, glory, one song before I go. I know how to sing it just like Adam Pascal. But apparently he was a rock and rollist of sorts. And although he did very well, in his audition, apparently he had a very big problem is that he couldn't keep his eyes open when he sang.

Yeah, yeah, that was the thing they had to learn and he had to learn because, and I had this too for the longest time. And Calman, I would really close my eyes closed a lot while I sang. To get into it. Just to get into it and just to kind of just get into my own space. And then I started playing to the audience.

Lexi actually... Oh, you mean like not squinting when you're singing loud, but just like when you're getting into it. Your eyes just shut while you're singing a song and you're really losing your music. yourself to it and you're just kind of like also maybe super self-conscious about being on stage to the beers haven't kicked in yet i used to close my eyes a lot more um also though i will say uh lexie got to won the lottery we'll talk about the lottery in a while i didn't know rent

established the broadway lottery oh oh really so she won the lottery one time and was front row and she said when they do seasons of love i mean they sing it to you wow and she said it was so powerful like all these people they stare right at you like right into your eyes and sing that song and it is powerful. Daphne Ruben Vega. I want to sit in the front row. I know, right. I know.

I know. Daphne Ruben Vega moved from Panama to the U.S. at the age of two. Her mother died when she was just 10 years old. She studied theater at the new Labyrinth theater company and performed in a comedy group called El Barrio USA, which led to an audition for the role of Mimi Marquez.

She sang Roxanne by the police. So this hurts my heart. For the audition. Yeah. Because a lot of people say that they don't like the original Mimi's voice because it is so, like, that it isn't a musical theater trained voice that it's like that raspy growl. But as someone that has always had a low raspy voice to have like essentially the sexy character in a show or one of the many sexy characters show, sing with that kind of growl was something that I loved. Because how many musicals did I listen to that I couldn't sing along to the girl parts? Right.

And I could sing her songs. Why did people not like it? Because it just like, it is a very specific sound. And it wasn't, again, it wasn't a musical theater sound. And I will say people were super mad at the animation adaptation because they cast Marge Simpson. And people just like, yeah, yeah. And even like, I'd love to see a Simpsons rent.

Jesse L. Martin moved from Virginia to New York at an early age. And insecurities revolving around his southern accent caused him to be quite silent. and shy. I've heard this story in terms of actors a million times. They get really shy early on. A mentor convinces him. He got really quiet, almost like a speech to a speech impediment degree. A mentor convinced him to join an after-school drama program and this is what gets him out of his shell. He ends up studying at NYU and then waited tables while trying to get work until he got a couple of roles on Broadway leading up to rent. And he didn't feel that he was a strong enough singer for this. So he went in and apparently he said, I walked in and I sang amazing. in grace, and they cast him on the spot.

What did he play? I'm sorry, I didn't have. Jesse L. Martin, plays Angels lover, Colin. Tom Collins, perfect. All right, awesome. Just trying to keep it in my head. So he's the one with the,

live my house. And so, and he was, again, he didn't see himself as a singer, which is why he didn't really want to go in for it necessarily. And, but, I mean, how do you say no when you're cast on the spot? Unbelievable. Wilson, Jermaine, Heredia, was the first angel on Broadway. He grew up in Brooklyn, the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic.

Don't have a ton more on him. He says, drag was not something I'd done before, but the lifestyle was very familiar to me. I'd been a club kid. I went into my audition in overalls, combat boots, and a goatee. I figured I'm not changing for an audition. I'd done a couple off-Broadway shows, but at that point, I was working the graveyard shift at the complaint center for a property management company, and my health insurance had just kicked in. Even after I got the part, I was debating taking it because it was a limited engagement.

And what about my health insurance? Because that is the time here. I just got health insurance. We're going to give it up for a small. I mean, that's still the case now. Yeah. I mean, there's a million shows that didn't go for this one that did. So I totally get having hesitancy. And then we have Edina Mansell, who also grew up in the greater New York City area. She was working at just 15. As you mentioned already, Jackie, has a wedding in Bar Mitzvah. which supported her through college at NYU's Tisch School for the Arts. Her first professional theater job was actually rent as Maureen,

which is kind of incredible, as we now know, you know, frozen. She was really young during that. Very young. And this goes to show of why, like, in this business, of going into any audition that you can because the director had seen Idina in an audition a year earlier. And he had written a note because he knew that they were going to be working on rent. Not exactly right for this, but she'll be great as Maureen.

a lesbian performance artist. She had that sexuality and innocence and kookiness. And so she came into the audition with a leather patchwork miniskirt on of all different colors and she just came in and nailed it. So he called her in to do it. And I love that you said that as you mentioned, the collaborative rehearsal process that she actually improv, he had her improvised her whole performance arties.

I would love to talk about that because apparently before rehearsals even started, Jonathan Larson invited the cast over to his loft. and they had what they called a peasant's feast rap remembers he gave us this really lovely toast which was like you're bringing to life my friends some of whom are friends that i've lost and so i wanted to open my home to you they built this together and it's such a beautiful like that there's so many songs that like if it just wasn't working they'd take it out they were able to talk and work on things to make it work for all of them because in his brain they didn't know what was going to happen to this this was just going to be essentially staged readings that they were kind of fleshing out a little bit more. And that is what, it's just so, yeah, and Idena Mansell was allowed to improvise her whole performance art piece because he wanted it to be her that brought it to life. And one of my favorite songs would have been different because apparently Grief says in the 94 workshop, there was another song at Angels Memorial Service, a very beautiful song, a woman from the ensemble sang. One of the first

conversations Jonathan and I had with Tim's participation was, what would the extraordinary payoff be if Collins sang that song instead? It was very exciting to be there the moment the notion of the I'll cover you reprise was born. And Martin said, Jesse L. Martin, who played Collins. I was always struggling with the reprise. I'd go home and try my damnedest to open up my voice and let the song come to me, but it wasn't coming. I remember Michael telling me, you need to sing the shit out of this song. I remember grabbing myself by the balls and saying, just sing it. Let's. Let's see. it out. I had to go to a gospel place. And then he's saying it, when he sang it, he was, Oh, hello, why did you die? And then he let go of his balls. He was like, maybe I shouldn't grab

my balls so vigorously. And then, um, heredia who played Angels said knew that his portrayal had to not be a caricature of the queer culture. Yeah. But one thing that really helped him was that yeah, fugging Jesse L. Martin. During that time, portrayals of LGBTQ characters were more like comedy relief. And I didn't want Angel or the relationship to be that. Jesse has such a warm personality. You look into his eyes and even if you're straight, you'd fall in love. I trusted him wholeheartedly. That made it easy. Yeah, there's such a really, it was, it was notable that they, they showed a real romance. Yeah. And it was like a love story that we weren't watching for comedic relief. No. And it wasn't like, it wasn't just like, oh, they're gay, huh? And by the way, a very masculine African-American man,

Right? Yes. A very like, and I think that was important to show as well. From one order. You know Jesse L. Martin. Yeah. And I would say a person in drag. They say in drag.

I'm not sure exactly how to refer to Angel at this point in our current cultural lexicon. But I will just say that also in their own right, you know, to be this very like exactly non-characurie, very present, very like, like, and badass at the same time. Yes. Like in presenting that because I think people forget how badass you had to be. Right. And still you still kind of do, but how, especially in New York doing that, like you had to be able to fuck some people up if you're going to do that.

Freddie Walker also went to NYU and playing Joanne Jefferson was also her Broadway debut. Amazing. And lastly, you have Tade Diggs who got a BFA in musical theater at Syracuse University before making his way to New York to start in rent after doing a lot of regional theater in New Hampshire. He will later marry his co-star, Dina Mansell, which I didn't realize they were together. Oh, they were married for a long time. And now they're divorced. But he had a lot of hesitancy taking on this character. He's like, honestly, I really just thought it was the character with the least amount of lines.

And what they needed is actually very important for that character to be likable at the end of the day. Even though he was just trying to do his job. Right. And so the casting director really felt that Tate Diggs brought a genuine charm with him. You can definitely even. easily look at it from the perspective of like, these guys are being complete fuckers. They gotta pay their for sure.

You gotta pay the rent. You gotta be an artist to like not have a date. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, I would, that's the thing. I don't know if when you were younger, if you saw it differently, but that's the kind of character I could see as when I was young being like, oh, gross, fuck this guy.

Oh, yeah. And as he's just trying to keep the building. He's got to pay the mortgage. No, it is very, it's very funny. I've definitely heard that take for people who like were, you know, were critics. Against us, you mean?

All of those that were against us? They were living for tomorrow and tomorrow's written. Not today. Before we get to the part where I cry on Mike, did you want to talk about anything else with the rehearsal process? No, it's just that they built it together. It just makes me, I, Anthony Rap says, he spoke very eloquently and specifically about how personal the show was

to him. As someone who was witnessing what was going on in the community and to his friends, he felt he had to write something in response. I think that it's just, I really never knew that it was this much of a collaborative effort. And it does change how I feel about things. And what we will talk about later on, which is the song that Roger's writing through the entire musical, was never finished. And Jonathan Larson was not happy with the final product of that song when they, and they're like, well, we'll just find it in the previews. We'll figure out because he's supposed to be writing this epic song.

And in the end of the, me, me. as like Mimi's dying in his arms. It wasn't exactly. Like even Roger, Adam Pascal said it wasn't the best song in the musical. And they, but they kept it as a way of showing, which does come across of like, none of it's finished. And he couldn't have finished it then. He needed to experience so much more of his life to be able to write that opus that he was looking for. Yeah, did I already mention about take me or leave me being this very last minute edition?

and like I couldn't remember if I'd thought, I've been thinking about it so much because that is really the biggest tell that my favorite song in the musical was an offering. Literally, he came up with overnight during like that last couple weeks of previews. So that just goes to show, I mean, he was cranking out great work all the way up until his passing on this show. And just another nod to the idea that, I mean, there's another show in there, or even possibly stronger show in there, which is a crazy. even think about because it is, I think, so strong as it is.

But either way, Larson had been sick through tech rehearsals of this show. You're going to deal with it. You're going to deal with it. I had to deal with it. And I cried while I wrote some of these quotes down so I can't wait to try to read them aloud. He's dead. He's dead.

And it's not even AIDS. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, you should be fucking sorry. Why'd you make his heart explode? You could have been a doctor and you decided to be a dancer instead. I did. I should have gone to medical school.

You should have been a Dukyhouser called Natalie Hooser, and you could have been a young doctor. Yeah, I don't think Natalie Hooser's a good one. Oh, is that not? No, that's not a good. She could just be Natalie Weiser. Natalie Jean Ph.D. Oh, I thought it was that like, like Duggy Houser, though, like Natalie Wiser. Why?

Oh, yeah, I'm pretty great. Oh, like how and why? All right. All right. Rent to, oops. I do, do, dude. You've stunned me into silence. This bit has stunned me into.

utter silence. I don't want to talk about this. I know. We're going to have to talk about. All right. Here we go. Oh, God. So people thought it was the flu.

He managed to make it to that final dress rehearsal. Director Michael Greaves said... This is the thing. So he was in and out of the hospital. And they didn't know what it was because he's 35. And they're like, oh, maybe it's food poisoning. Like he just, he ended up, in fact,

in one of the rehearsals, he fainted at some point. And it was at the exact line of them saying, because we're dying in America. And everyone crowded around him and he came back to and he said, can you believe it? I pass out in the theater right as the characters are singing,

dying in America, and everybody laughed. Oh. That's so awful. Because he's sick and they don't know why he's sick. Michael Greaves said, we were having this meeting in the Time Cafe and that's a place we often had an early morning meeting

to discuss the next steps in the musical's development. And I remember first hearing from Lynn that Jonathan had died the previous evening. I can't remember if I actually got to the Time Cafe or if I heard that news on the way to the Time Cafe. It was pretty straightforward to know that what Jonathan would want would be for this show to go on. We all knew this show was unfinished.

I feel like the show was still unfinished. The people who worked on it most closely know that most. And it certainly would have been different with Jonathan's continued participation. And it's crazy because that night before, a critic from the New York Times had come to watch it before it opened. And he wanted to have a sit-down conversation with him.

So Jonathan Larson was talking to Anthony Tomasini, the New York Times critic, while everyone left the night before. So no one got to say goodbye to him because they saw him in the booth up front and like kind of waved at him as he's talking to the New York Times critic. Because like, you know what that means. Yeah. If a critic comes and you're not even in like the full previews yet, that's insane. And Tomasini said he talked about his ambition, how it bothered him that pop and show music. that got divorced. But then he talked personally, too,

how he'd been a waiter for 10 years, that he'd finally been able to quit his job, and that one of the messages of rent was that it's not how long you're here. It's what you do while you're here. And so apparently on his way home, he walked under a ladder, a black cat crossed his path,

and then a homeless man just pointed out and said, you're going to die tonight. And he was just like, ha-ha, that's all a bunch of funny things that would happen. You doomed. Also, his roommate found him. Yes. He was like in the middle of the night, he was making himself some spaghetti.

And there was just like water all over. Or no, he's making, he was an empty tea kettle that he was trying to fill up. And he found him on the floor. And something that they saw on his computer that he had written the night before he died, it said, in these dangerous times where it seems the world is ripping apart at the seams, We can all learn how to survive from those who stare death squarely in the face every day. And we should reach out to each other and bond as a community rather than hide from the terrors of life at the end of the millennium. And his father found that written on his computer.

So they read it at his fucking funeral because even his family had come in to see the opening night. Well, no, no, I don't think they were going to until they found out he died. They flew in. He died. They didn't even know if they were going to make it in time for open. 35 years old. He just dies. He suffered an aortic dissection, which is believed to have been caused by an undiagnosed genetic disorder called a Marfan syndrome. You said you looked into it a little bit.

Yeah, it does, it kind of makes your bones grow really long. It's like, I don't know what he looked like if he had those characteristics, but everything I saw, it was like you have long, like it makes me think of how Joe, he looked just like you. He kind of looks just like, but without the beard. Yeah. Well, like Joey Ramon didn't have it, but it's like that kind of. I love that you looked up to see if he had it. I know, I did. I did look at it.

But it is like that. And so I guess they hadn't known because it's not curable, but you can treat it. Yeah. Probably they could have. If they could have pinpointed it, they would. He even said, he could have lived. Burkhart said literally, I can't, I hate this quote. Literally his heart ripped open.

His aorta ripped and he bled out into his chest. And when you hear the songs that he's written about giving your art, and he actually has a line in there about your heart ripping. or you're heartbreaking. It's very poetic and it's very painful. I told you I'm going to cry on mic, so. So, yeah. Stop.

So just the idea of that is so that's why I'm like watching, that's why I watch the musical now and I'm just like bawling because I'm just like, he put so much love in his work, his heart ripped open in his chest. Can you imagine, can you imagine that the cast had to get together

that they've been working on this and they've been working so closely together. And Andy Rap says it was incredibly shocking. He hadn't been feeling well, but there was absolutely no indication or warning. It seemed to any of us that he was going to die. And he goes on to say, the show itself is about living fully and joyfully

in the face of crisis, in the face of grief, in the face of loss. That's what happened to us in that performance. And they, because that night, it was open. So you have this cast of people. They've been working so hard on this thing. this guy gets ripped from their life. They're in the middle of this production.

They literally just did the final preview. If you've ever worked in the theater, I mean, opening night. It happened overnight, and the next day it's opening night. Jason Burkhard, he was on the phone with Jonathan Larson's father, Burkhardt was. And his mother and him were on their way from Chicago to New York, like at that moment, trying to get there just to even deal with his death, much less this musical. And Burkhart said, I remember saying to him, I was just on the phone with Jim Nicola and I asked him what do we do about the show and Al said very clearly the show

goes on tonight. Goes on tonight. Well, I feel like it would have been a disservice to him to not do the show. Right. He like he gave his wife to this show. If you would just, I mean, that would be the last thing he would want to just go, well, we have to shudder it because he passed. But he was so cold that dad like knew that.

Yes. And he knew his son enough. And that's why I like that his, we'll get into it, that his family was. very supportive of them like, no, you must live his legacy. All right. And then a crime doesn't stop. Producer Kevin McCollum said what Jeffrey and I did that day, I remember vividly,

we took a walk around Brian Park and we just said everybody has to see this show. We have to do this. We don't know why he's dead. We don't know anything. We can't let anyone forget who this guy is. Crazy. I just hate that Jackie, steal magnolias.

I can't talk about people dying before their time anymore. It's fucking makes me upset. Oh God But it's a beautiful thing I mean it's I'm crying And it's incredibly sad But it's like so I wish

I hope this is how I am treated I will yes I will go on a go Oh Into the darkness You'll scream ho Into the darkness

Because maybe I But that's what I plan to do I plan to write a musical And then die at the night Before it goes on Yes That's what I play It's in my wishes

It's in my last wishes No no no Hopefully that doesn't happen, but if it does, but if it does, Holden McNeely says the show must go on. We will still make the podcast. The director. And then this is like the most both beautiful and ridiculously musical theater thing I've ever heard in my entire life. They were all just going to do it sitting down. They were just going to do a staged or no staging, just a sit down intimate reading. For family and friends. And however, they all broke out into the choreography, During La Vibre M and the act one finale and act two, they just did full choreography as almost a rebellion,

a life-imitating art moment. Anthony Rapp said, sometimes in crisis people can really fall apart or it could really splinter people off. But it was like the opposite thing happened for all of us. It brought us even stronger together so that foundation is always there. But it is just so crazy as someone that it,

like I like to listen to many iterations of different musicals. Like I'm not a. Stan for just the original Broadway cast. But this one specifically, I am. When I was listening, I put it on Spotify, and I was listening to a song, I was like, this is the movie version. And I'm just like, flip down.

I don't want the movie version. I want them. I want to hear them singing it. And Jeff's just like, honey. He is so excited for us to not be doing rent anymore. What did he like better? Steel Magnolia's Week or Rent Week? I just, all of, honestly, it was the, I think

that Britney Spears was, I think that was still the roughest time. That was like, when he was like, it needs to end. It has to be done. So I love this part of the story as well. The remaining powers that be, they had to have an all hands on deck meeting to figure out how to move forward. They decide to go by committee vote between the four top dogs. And those folks

are artistic director, James Nicola, director Michael Grief, musical director, Tim Weil, and dramaturg Lynn Thompson. So, Tim Weil said we knew we could do a certain amount of editing without betraying Jonathan's conception. And we took a look at earlier drafts of rent so that if something had to be added, we could use his own material. None of our own writing was incorporated by any stretch of the imagination. But it wasn't done, which does make sense that they had gone to like to the extent that it could have been. And they did like move some things around. But for on the whole, this is what Jonathan Larson wanted.

And it's just, it really sticks with me that your eyes, he wasn't done with it. And they all knew it, so they kept it like that. And that makes that song resonate with me so much harder. And I mean, this was supposed to be originally a six-week run at this village theater. And man, talk about Muppet's Stig Manhattan, but going to Broadway. Right. Like it does, like, it is, it explodes. And people didn't know the story.

Yeah. That's what I know when it's like, oh, yeah. You love it because, like, oh, it's all this mythology. It got popular only because of this tragic passing. No, it exploded from the beginning. Yeah, for sure. But also, I think, I don't think that it became popular because of the story behind it, but I think the story behind it is what made everybody who was working on it go ham.

Yes. Go hard in the paint for this thing. Oh, yeah. Producer Kevin McCollum said, everybody had a higher purpose and it was to get Jonathan's work heard and seen. And there was no looking back. It was an assault on the impossible. That's why it became possible. Burkhart said, each day there was an awakening with a new audience, and word of mouth was just exploding out of that theater.

And every day the ticket sales were going faster and faster and faster. A New York Times article came out soon after the run started calling it, quote, exhilarating landmark rock opera. They very quickly realized they have to get this show to Broadway. However, the theater they want was taken. So there were two theaters that were dark because they were deemed uninhabitable. One of those theaters was the Netherlands. So they decide to move it into the Netherlands. And again, they wanted to keep it under renovation through their run to make it look like a place where the musical would live.

I love this, too, that Julie Larson, who is Jonathan's sister, said when the show is moving to the Netturlander Theater, half his friends said Jonathan would have hated it. And half said, oh, my God, he'd love it. And McCullum went on to say the first day of sales was $750,000. Wow. He said, now that's nothing. But back then, there wasn't the technology. you had to actually show up and buy tickets at the theater. And so, yes, it opens on Broadway, April 16, 1996 for previews and fully opens 13 days later.

Rapp said at the top of the show, we dedicate this performance and every performance of rent to our friend Jonathan Larson. Anthony Rapp talks about it in a really good way, I think, just how crazy this must have been. Because not only it's both dealing with grieving and also becoming a massive overnight. success at the same time. Anthony Rapp said, all of it is so vivid, partly because of trauma. When we would show up at the New York Theater Workshop and Vanity Fair is coming to do a photo shoot, it's this surreal thing happening at the center of what is also happening, which is this personal grief. The founder of Friends Indeed, Cy O'Neill said, boy, was it clear that a loving and loved man, Jonathan Larson was.

How do you measure measuring love? That was the first time I heard any of those lyrics. It totally blew me away. It was so thrilling. Jonathan didn't tell me that there was a support group in the show. I had no idea. It was just staggering. There were friends indeed phrases, things we'd say all the time. No day but today. No day but today.

There you go. All right. The cry part's pretty much done, I think. Oh, I'll still cry. Do you want me to sing more? I'll sing more. You can say it's just the whole thing with the guy dying early. I know.

It's just so upsetting. And now this is the beautiful part that makes your heart. sing. I love this review of it. And then rip apart inside of your chest. AIDS. Rent was written. That wasn't AIDS that he died. I know, but I just had to scream it to the hilltops. Wren went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama along with four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, book, score, and featured actor in a musical Heredia who played Angel. But Heredia, who is of Dominican descent, says he wasn't able to fully comprehend the significance of his Tony win or the magnitude of the show itself until much later.

So all of this is like, and how much of them, like they talked about this where they, like their careers exploded, their lives exploded. Everything just kind of happened. And it is like a child actor way of just like, we didn't know what was up. And also we're dealing with the greed of losing the head of this. It ran on Broadway, by the way, for 12 years, 5,123 performances. That makes it the 10th longest running. Broadway show.

I'm sure that's well behind. Stupid ass cats. Definitely a stronger run probably, but either way, yeah, it goes all the way until I think 2008. And again, that whole final performance is on YouTube. And I highly suggest everyone check it out. I don't get why cats is the one. I can't.

It's cocaine. I think it's cocaine. Yeah. I think cocaine got really big in New York. And I could imagine nothing more thrilling for people who love cocaine at the musical theater. Dense, dance, dance, dance, dance. And then like a 20-hour long songs. It's just people wanting to fuck a bunch of people dressed

like cats who are dancing around on stage. And they're like, oh, yeah, and they're drawn so hard. You know what I mean? That's probably true. Love cats. Hitler would have loved cats. I think so. I mean, he loved Disney stuff and he loved cocaine.

So I think he probably would have loved cats. Either way, I don't know, maybe strike that. Who knows? But either way. I say, keep it in. Yeah. I tried to find this article that I read. read one day at, I think, an office job about rent heads because it was talking about these.

Rent runs, you mean? Rent runs. Tenants. No, that's people who love the movie tenant. And those people should be quarantined. No more talking about tenant. And taken somewhere else. But yes, the rent heads were definitely a thing.

Refer to those dedicated young fans that really took after the whole bohemian lifestyle, too. I mean, these are literally vagabond. Oh, it's Jackie we're talking about. Yeah, you're talking about me. I'm a bit of a vagabond. It was Jackie if Jackie was like, cool with being homeless. Yes. Because it was a lot of just wayward souls almost like the, it was like the musical theater

version almost of like gutter punks, but they seem to be less like shitty than gutter punks. But you know what I mean? Yes. They need to not have dogs. Whoa. They should never. I agree. I agree.

Honestly, I'd be cool of them if they just stopped having the dogs. I get it. And screaming and harassing people when they pass by them on the street. This was a time period that like that so then people started camping out. Yeah. Because the rush tickets were 20. So yeah, rush taking $13, first come for serve at first, right? So everybody's camping out.

But the thing is, it was funny. Even back in the 90s, we forget this. Broadway Times Square area, not super safe. It's still not. And it's still not, but, I mean, you know, they've cleaned it up and made it all ridiculous. But like... So Jeffrey Seller, who's one of the producers said people would camp out for days to try and get, like, to sit in line. And they were worried about their safety.

He said, we became worried that kids were going to get hurt and get into trouble in the middle of the night with what was still a pretty large contingent of low lives around there, the show ended up replacing its ticket rush with Broadway's very first lottery system. And I had no idea that this established the lottery system, which is now commonplace for every show. There's a lottery system you can hang out out front a couple hours before. You put your name in the thing. If you win the lottery, you get the cheap seats.

And what I love about it, too, is these tickets first two rows. And I love when anything does that. Like, I love the Springsteen thing where they, like, send people up into the nosebleys to bring down folks, you know, put them in the front. And it's the people who really like deserve to be in front, the ones that camped out, did whatever. Yeah.

And so that's really cool. And that's what created this mystique around rent. I didn't realize they were doing it for the first time. Of course that created a bunch of rent heads because it's about bohemian lifestyle. It's these super cheap tickets as long as you put in the time and the work. And so these kids who just, this was what their world revolved around was this show. And they'd see it tens of times, hundreds of, you know. I was saying I've seen it 11 times, but I saw it nine times before the age of 60.

Wow, that's so crazy. Where? Yeah. How? I kept going to New York. Oh, wow. And my mom, who was very, very supportive of me, was down. So we would go and we, like, I didn't know you did that.

Oh, yeah. And then my friends and I would follow, this is sad. We also then would follow a company as far as we could drive, like, on a weekend so that we could go like my friend who had first gotten the license at 16. He was like, let's go. And so we would go like following the dead, but we did it with rent instead. Got in the south? So that we could go. Yeah. Okay. And but the same. This is what Lexi had said to hold in earlier that they cut the part in rent, which is the simulated sex. It's called contact, right? They cut that. Yeah. You know, and it's all underneath a sheet. And I think it is a fun

but I will say it's not, even as a horny person, it wasn't my favorite part of the show. Right. It's not the most, yeah, it's definitely kind of a, go get a cup of water or go to the bathroom if you were allowed to. But they still didn't trust the South enough to have a queer sex scene on stage. Of course. They also did, I can't remember whether it was in mine or not in Charlotte.

I really can't, but I will say. But when Angels in America came to Charlotte, there were classically protests, which, by the way, just leads to a sold out run. Geez, of course it does. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for showing up out front of the theater for that one. Yeah, I guess who those people are?

Josh Dugger. Wow. Just like, just don't go see it. Yeah. Are you going to waste your time? Wait. Please protest because, again, it leads to sold out runs and so much more publicity than it would have gotten. But that said, also there was a rent school edition.

They cut that song from it as well and obviously cleaned up a lot of the drug references and sex references and stuff. Oh, good. Yeah. So wait, what was it about? I don't even know. I was watching the show knowing that, and I was just like, how, how? This is all about candles, I guess? I don't really know.

So, yes, then there's also the film directed by Chris Columbus. He directed Home Alone, Miss Stoutfire, Gremlin. I love the guy. Yeah, it's great. Right? The screenwriter was done by Stephen Chbosky, I think, who wrote the novel, Perks of Being a Wallflower, which we should probably do an episode on. I do need to say so, just real quick.

the film rights were sold in 1996. Damn. And they had tried to make this movie over and over again. In fact, Jane Rosenthal, the movie's longest suffering advocate, says my proper title of the movie should not be producer. It should be Sisyphus. Who recalls how the events of September 11, 2001, derailed a key meeting on the project with Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein. And so they had tried. Spike Lee was originally attached to the movie.

and he was having such a fucking runaround with Weinstein who was like, yeah, we want you to do it, but he wouldn't write them any checks. And so like Lee was like, dude, we got it written, we got to just do it, can we do it? And long story short, between 9-11 and moving that one huge meeting and Weinstein giving them the runaround,

it gave them a runaround until 2002 when Chicago won the Oscar for Best Picture. Interesting how the fucker changed his tune. And then I wrote, So what is the fat bastard? do goes behind the back of the family because the family was the one who held the rights and still had to be able to sign off. And even though they were working with Spike Lee, he tries to sell rent to NBC to make a television movie out of it. And then Jonathan Larson's family was like,

no, because they still had veto power. So they wouldn't allow him to bastardize the production. But then it gets pushed. It gets pushed. Scorsese wants to. to direct and have seen Spike Lee's version. I know, and I want, like, all of this. And I hope that we get a revival, I think we're going to get a revival in about five to 10 years. Probably.

Because it just came out too late. And it's just what, you're right, it had a glossy sheen on it, Natalie. It didn't really, and also the weirdness with, I think it's awesome because I want to see them perform their roles, but they're too old for them, arguably at the same time. Tay Diggs, Wilson, Germain, Heredia. I mean, I'll watch Tay Diggs, though.

Not that they weren't great at it. It's just, it takes away the fact that, like, they're supposed to be, like, ages 19, to 21-22. Jesse L. Martin, Adina Mansell, Adam Pascal, and Anthony Rap all returned for their roles. Rosario Dawson and Tracy Tom's

join the cast as well, the main eight. And yes, it comes out in 2005 it receives mixed in negative reviews. I think 2005 may have been the exact worst. I mean, the show closes on Broadway in 08. So I think this might have been the exact worst timeline for it to come out in terms of its relevance, in terms

of its importance. I just think Chris Columbus is the wrong director. Yeah, as much as I love his work. I do too, but he does, he's not gritty. He's not gritty. I hear Spike Lee and even Scorsesey and I'm like, oh, immediately better. They can do the grittiness and don't put the polish on it.

Didn't need polish. I do love Chris Columbus. I love Chris Columbus. He's made like all my favorite childhood movies. Absolutely. Since I've started doing research. I'm a big fan of the first Harry Potter, and I think he did a great job with it.

He also did that. He did that. So yes. And then there's also RIT Live, Fox Saturday Live television production with an all due cast. Jonathan Larson's father and sister were credited as executive producers. At least they were involved. And during the dress rehearsal, I didn't know this. Brennan Hunt, who plays Roger, broke his foot, but the show went on anyway with Hunt in a wheelchair.

And they also used mostly, it looks like footage from the dress rehearsal mixed into like three live songs. That's crazy. That's a real center stage moment. It was. But not in a good way. I feel like they should have pushed it back. I didn't see that one. Is it, are the performances, like, lackluster?

Yes, because they, like, it was like, oh, one of our leads just got hurt. He's in a wheelchair. Everything's fucked. Like, you know, if you do theater, like, you do it over and over and over again so that it's in your bones. Yeah. And then to have it all fucked up, of course it fucked up. Totally. Yeah, I really felt that way about the live Rocky Horror too.

I think that it was just like they didn't, it did it like the chemistry wasn't there yet and people kind of like did stun. So I felt about that how the grinch who stole Chris is. Oh God, I forgot about that. Oh my God. Remember that? No. What a nightmare.

Wow. I forgot all about that. Oh, just awful. I have like one final juicer of a quote to read, but I am actually finished on my notes and I really don't want to dwell on rent life. No, no, we don't. Keep it moving. Do you have anything else you want to say?

I'm going to read this quote. or any other fact-toids. Thank you guys. I feel like I learned a lot about, honestly, even just like looking up the words, Sodomy, because I didn't know, like, that's sad to be, it's between God and me. That, like, I learned a lot from this

in a time period that, like, I had to go to the library to understand some of the references that I did. Yeah. That's very cute. It's filled with all these, like, art references and stuff. And I was like, I don't know any of these people.

So, you know, like, it's how I learned about Gertrude Stein. It's how I learned about all of these, like, references that they put in. That was another funny thing I said to Lexi. I was like, what was it about songs in the 90s and just needing to, like, list things? List things. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, end of the world.

As we know it. Like, all there were all these songs that came out. There was just like, in this verse, we just list stuff. I always wonder if it's because you couldn't Google stuff, so it made you feel like you were really smart. Yeah. This references on the shit back to back. So, yeah, I would also say that I realized that I actually love musical theater and they were the cool one. and I was the lame one for feeling like I had to roll my eyes at it when I should have been up there singing along with all those kids.

That's what I realized doing this episode. Here we go. One final quote. Michael Grief. There are so many scenes in rent that are completely and totally relevant today. And I think probably the most important theme is one of worthiness, of feeling worthy and being loved, of being able to share love, of never taking for granted the time. We may or may not have because we can never be certain of what's really right around the corner.

I feel the show is so much about finding ways in which everyone can feel that their identity is valid and the relationships are valid and honored. That diversity is welcome. There's an inclusivity and an empathy in rent and the ways in which the characters form a family and community and treat each other with kindness and respect. Those issues are every bit as relevant now as they ever were, if not more so. Also, AIDS. Also, I am tired of talking about people who died to you. Thank you so much for joining us for a tear-filled episode of Rent. Thank you guys for allowing me to do this.

No, it was great. It was cool to learn about it. And I'm really looking forward to the Rent Baby Version. I'm excited for Rent Baby Version. I think there will be a resurgence. I think this musical will come back. I think it needs a little more time in the incubator. But as even we are starting to see with our recent episodes about 90s movies and things like that,

they're starting to feel actually like period pieces. And I think as the 90s entities slowly become period pieces, this shit's going to come back in a really impactful, important way. And I hope Jonathan Larson's legacy lives on. I'm sure. I'm sure it will. Hell yeah. Jackie.

Oh, my heart. It's going to explode. No, no, no, it's not. It ripped open because he won't explode. He loved to do hard and do his work. Thank you guys so much for joining us. My name is Jackie Zabrowski. Follow me on Instagram and Jack that worm, no date but today.

Don't forget it. Hell yeah. My name's Natalie Jeannie. You follow me at the United Gene. And you can also find me at a podcast called someplace underneath where if you want to be more upset about missing women, please join Amber and myself. There you go. Wizard Podcast, I guess I should say. And I always forget to plug my other podcast.

Also check me out Twitch.tv.4. Holdenatorsho on Fridays. I do a stream with Jackie. It's super fun. Check us out on there. And yeah, if you want to support us further, again, Patreon.com forward slash page 7 podcast. And that's all she wrote.

Have a good one, everybody. And no day, but today. Yolo. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors. You can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.