I checked the movie out cause I'm a sucker for a filmed adaptation of a musical. Maybe I would dislike RENT less if it had a character who seemed grounded in big-picture reality. Maybe Collins as well, but he seemed sidelined most of the time. In RENT, the closest character to Michael was Benny, who was treated like an out-of-touch buffoon. When Michael revealed he was HIV-positive, Jon realized there were worse things than not selling his musical. Whereas Mark and his friends were all so self-serious (and self-absorbed), blinded by their righteousness in making their art, here you had Michael remark: "You write musicals in your living room. Just to add, it feels like with Michael and Susan, this musical has a perspective that was lacking in RENT. (Sadly I was right - though I won a screenwriting competition, it didn't translate into a sale or a writing job, so I eventually went and became a lawyer who writes on the side.) I could also relate to the storyline, as I remember being an aspiring writer in Los Angeles and fretting that I wouldn't sell a script by the time I was 30. Not only was Andrew Garfield great, but so was Robin de Jesus as Michael.
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