Rent/Trivia

• Author Existence Failure: Jonathan Larson, the guy who wrote the libretto and plot, died on the night of the final dress rehearsal. Which actually provides the perfect illustration of the show's message that you never know when your life will be over, so you should do as much as you can all the time.
• Cast the Expert: Roger is usually played by a guitarist.
• Cut Song:
  • The stage show is nearly entirely sung-through; the movie converts several songs into dialogue scenes or nixes them completely. Notable cuts include the various "Tune-Up" sequences, "We're Okay", "Christmas Bells", "Happy New Year" and "Contact". Furthermore, "Halloween" was recorded and filmed, but cut from the theatrical release. Less than 1/3 of "Goodbye Love" made the cut.
  • Not to mention all the songs that got cut from the stage version. "You're a Fool", "Because You Were Right", "You'll Get Over It", "Real Estate" and "Open Road" are a few. Some are rather bad ("You'll Get Over It"--a duet between Mark and Maureen about her dating a woman--made him sound like an ignorant lout and her like a callous whore). Others, like "Real Estate" (a Villain Song for Benny) were cut for length.
  • The high school edition of RENT cuts "Contact", though this is understandable. It would be hard enough to get RENT put on in a high school without there being a onstage orgy.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Mimi "You look like you're sixteen." "I'm nineteen, but I'm old for my age!" Marquez, originally played by the 27-year-old Daphne Rubin-Vega (though, since many of the other characters are only mid-twenties, the potential exists for them as well).
  • The age of the cast in the film seems to add to this as well — most of the actors were in their thirties at the time, and while their ages weren't set in stone in the play or film, they certainly felt more like twenty-something "starving artists".
  • The 20th anniversary tour in the UK removed the line about her age entirely due to Mimi being played by the gorgeous but in no way teenager like 32 year old Kerry Ellis.
• The Other Darrin: Only Mimi and Joanne are recast in place of the originals for the movie, because Daphne Reuben-Vega was pregnant at the time and obviously gained too much weight to play a junkie dancer with AIDS, and Fredi Walker felt she was too old to portray a recent law school graduate. Her one request was to keep Joanne black.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Beautifully, beautifully inverted- Jonathan Larson wrote this in memorial to his friends who had died of AIDS, but it's almost as if he wrote his own memorial. See the book "Without You" by Anthony Rapp for details.
• Romance on the Set: Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel; Wilson Heredia and his makeup artist from the movie. In the 2007 Australian production, Anthony Callea (Mark) and Tim Campbell (Roger).
  • Unfortunately, after 10 years of marriage, Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel divorced but still remain best friends.