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November 2005
Rent: An Interview with Rosario Dawson and Adam Pascal

Rent: An Interview with Rosario Dawson and Adam Pascal, continued

By Wilson Morales

When Rent opened it was very timely. How timely is the show now?

AP: For the movie, we pre-dated it to when the show was dated. The show took place in the early 90's, but now that it's 10 years later Chris felt that it needed to be pre-dated just a little bit because it's very important for the audience to understand that these characters who are HIV-positive, because it was true, that they were going to die very soon. And in the late 80's that was the case. If you were infected with AIDS you were going to die. You could take AZT, you could prolong it to a certain extent, but eventually it would kill you.

RD: But that medication didn't work for a lot of people, especially women. It actually gave them a lot more problems, if anything, and kind of expedited the process for some people.

AP: And now AIDS is so under the radar here in this country and in industrialized nations. The only visions of AIDS that kids in America see today are of these poor, dying people in Africa. Growing up, the only pictures I even ever saw of African people were of these poor people dying of whatever they were dying from. You become so desensitized to it. Kids need to realize that these characters who look just like them, these young white kids, can get this disease and did get this disease, and that back in the 80's it was a death sentence. It's not so much of a death sentence today. There are great drugs. You can live with it. But, hopefully, for the movie to be believable, the audience needs to realize the fear. The fear has to be real. The audience has to get and understand why there's such fear about having this disease.

RD: It was a visible disease then, with people walking around with lesions on their face. You could see it. Now it's so under the radar you have people like Magic Johnson doing press about, "Hey, I still have it, people." Before it was only this big moral disease and it only affected homosexuals, and so if you stayed away from a lot of these sweaty little places, then maybe you won't get it. Then it went under the radar and you couldn't see it anymore, and now it's only something that's happening in Africa and we need to go and save (people) there. It's interesting how it's turned into all of these different ideas, except for it just being a disease. It's a disease that's affecting humans across the world and we need to treat it like that, and that's why it's spreading. I think if we had the heat of that and the idea of it, especially when put this play out and it was so present for people to look at, it shows you 10 years later it's spread so rampantly since then and we haven't taken it seriously in that way. We haven't said, "This affects everyone and we need to not tolerate and we need to take care of it," because it's become a pandemic now, and that's because we haven't paid attention. So hopefully putting this out there (will help). But there are so many other things about this movie. It's not an HIV movie. It's not an AIDS movie. It's about people. But, it is a part of our lives, just as much then as it is now. We need to take responsibility for it and we need to look at it straight in the eye because it's ugly. But it's something that we can handle. So, if we look at it like that, then there's something we can do positively for our future. Putting it in the hands of the teenagers who are going to be seeing this, for a whole new generation of kids to see it, it's going to be, I think, very powerful.


Adam, where does the movie stand so far as you playing the role, as far as the whole Rent experience?

AP: Well, it's certainly my best performance as Roger. That, I can tell you. It's an incredible sense of closure that I've been given to have been able to have originated it and come back 10 years later.


Would you play Roger on stage again?

AP: No


Has it opened up films for you?

AP: It hasn't yet.


Rosario, what do you have coming up?

RD: I just finished working on The Passion of the Clerks, which is Kevin Smith's sequel to Clerks, that we did 10 years ago. I play the manager of Moobie's. It's actually really quite funny and probably going to be a different kind of press situation after this, talking about it. But I think it's just really funny. Sin City 2 is a possibility. I just finished, also, another film, Kill Shot, with John Madden, based on Elmore Leonard novel, up in Toronto. And the day after the premiere (of Rent) I am starting production on the film I'm producing with my company and with my producing partner, Talia Lugacy, which is titled Decent. It's a rape revenge story.


You sound incredibly busy. Are you able to focus at all on your life?

RD: Not so much! There has definitely been a little bit of suffering in my personal life, not so much, obviously, with my boyfriend or the very close people in my life, like my family. But extending out, it's a little bit hard. Like my godchildren, it gets a little bit difficult because I just moved out to LA and they're out in Queens. But the film I'm producing is being shot here in New York. It's six-day weeks, which is pretty rough, but on my days off I plan on spending time as much as possible with my family.


Do you worry about being put into the sexy girl pigeonhole in your career?

RD: No so much. I've done over 20 films and maybe four or five of them have been quite sexual, but the other ones not so much. I'm excited about the one I just did with John Madden. The character itself is supposed to be in her 50's and they cast me. So I was like, "OK, I'm playing a woman in her 50's, who lives in a trailer home and loves Elvis. I'm gonna channel that through Rosario?" So we did a lot of things. I have this really bad, curly hair with a ponytail on the side of my head. I have no makeup or anything, except for pockmarks on my face. You have to see something about her, that she has low self-esteem about herself and imagines herself in a situation where she can be in a room with Mickey Rourke and Joe Gordon Levitt and being abused and feeling like she doesn't have any hope or any other options. So I'm excited about being able to play a lot of different characters. I think as sexual and young and sprightly as someone like Mimi can be, you also see how insecure she is and how needy she is, and I think that shows so much. Just because you have that beauty on the outside doesn't mean that it's always working on the inside because otherwise she wouldn't be taking heroin every five minutes. So I think I'm lucky and I'm blessed to be able to show a diverse group of characters. I don't just have to be a character actor because nobody wants to hire me for the pretty girl, and I also don't also have to always just play the pretty girl. I'll do what I can for as long as I can. I said that on Alexander. The nudity worked for me. I thought it made sense for the character and also I'm glad that I can look at in my 80's and be like, 'I was hot!' But I don't feel pigeonholed into that because I don't pigeonhole myself into that. After I did He Got Game every script I got was playing some guys girlfriend who was hot, and that was it. I was like, "I'm sorry. I did that. And I did it really well, with Spike Lee. "I don't want to do it just randomly because it's not an interesting character for me to play. I guess also coming into this industry and not wanting to be an actor, it doesn't ever make me feel like I HAVE to do these different things in order to be successful because I don't want it that bad. I just am enjoying myself. And something like the film I'm doing right now, it's not an explicit film, but it is a very harsh films. It reminds me more of Kids than anything else. And it has a lot to do with race. That's something that I'm taking on in that film. That's really exciting for me and I hope that that also, like Kids, breeds a lot of conversation and communication. That's the stuff that's interesting to me


What did you make of Rent when you finally saw it?

RD: I had seen it before. I just hadn't seen it with the original cast. I was 17, I think, when it first opened and definitely could not afford to see it even if I wanted to. Also, it being such a similar mirror of what I'd experienced growing up. I was like, "OK, it's a bunch of bohemians living on the Lower East Side in squats, struggling, starving and dealing with HIV. Hmm, I know that really well. I don't see where there's anything to sing and dance about. "So I was thinking it was, "Let's just make really interesting characters on the Lower East side. No." I was actually quite insulted about it and specifically didn't see it. When I finally came across the soundtrack my uncle had, my Uncle Gus, actually, I was so moved by the articulation of these characters and finding out, when I finally did get to see the show, how beautiful and respectful it was, and what a human story it was, and about the relationships. It's not about exploiting the characters, like we have on a lot of our TV shows, where it's like, "We're gonna have a little drag queen and the little Latino will be spicy and have funny little lines." It wasn't like that at all. He wrote it about his friends and there's this resonant true that's in it that really moves people. I dare people to watch this movie and not be moved when you see Angel die. I don't care if you respect his lifestyle or not, that's a lot of human being to lose, and that's beautiful, and that's something that can really breed conversation and breed tolerance, which I think is a really powerful thing. That's not why he did it. He was doing it to celebrate his friends, and I think that comes across. It is a celebratory movie. Even in the midst of heartache and death and sadness and being broke and being hungry and cold, there was beauty there between these people because they supported each other. They didn't just survive together, they thrived together. And that's a beautiful thing. I think that's why we watched Friends so much, because we want to have relationships like that, where people are going to be there for you good, bad and ugly. I think that's what's going to be so moving about this. That's what was moving about this for me. It gave me the articulation to look at my past. So I'm very excited to be able to talk about it and to bring it out to more people.


America has changed a lot since the world has changed a lot since the play opened. Do you think with today's current conservatism that the movie will be embraced outside of the big cities?

RD: I've gotten asked about that, like "How are going to accept this film with liberal issues?" And I don't see where the liberal issues are. This is about people and relationships and living. A lot of scenes and dialogue were cut where it was very specific talking about the HIV and AIDS and the situations. It's not a preachy film at all. I don't think it's trying to make you anything. I think you're just watching people's lives unfold, and you're watching it over a year's time. The things that moved me are like the montage, when they're all together, just laughing, at New Year's. I don't know about you, but when I think about my life I want to be around my friends, having that kind of joy together. And that's how the memories strike me. When you have music the way that this music is, and it's so moving; these people are either going to be people you recognize or people that you want to know. I think that's a powerful thing. Whether you want to exclude one or two of them, there's still something in there for everybody. Everyone of these characters, first of all, they wouldn't normally be protagonists in any story, and that's why I'm so proud of Jonathan for putting it out in the first place. But, two, each of these individual stories would be a movie unto itself, and he didn't just do that. He showed a mixture of people, and that's New York. I think that's what is so attractive about it. It's New York City and the diversity of what it is, and it's all possible.

RENT opens on November 23rd, 2005

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