Hedwig
Hands up if you saw it.
Hands up if you thought it was, like Rent, a totally halfassed, bastardized Disneyfication of a subculture.
Just once, I’d like to see someone who’s trying to tell this kinds of story get it right. It’s like everyone who tries to encapsulate a place and time in the New York that used to exist before Giuliani and 9/11 has lost the plot. No one seems capable of really nailing the grit and sleaze and “last night before the end of the world” vibe that permeated so many corners of New York subculture without making it glossy and quirky and cutesy, and it’s frustrating, because I don’t want to have to write things like this, but the stories need to be told and they aren’t being told in a genuine and authentic manner. To be honest in my appraisal of my abilities, I don’t think I’d nail it either. I know what some things are and were like, and I know what I’d want to see, but I wasn’t close enough to the subject matter to make people who were there feel like they are there again upon reading or seeing or hearing it, and unlike some folks, I’d want to accomplish that more than I’d want to con middle America. I’d rather see people who are more uniquely qualified than I am tell the stories, but they’re not. Again, frustrating.
Also, why do people who create things like this have such a fucking Jim Steinman fixation? Jesus. That shit has no place in this kinda work.