Prince of Darkness Wrote:
I don't know if you're a theater buff or not, but in the stage production, it was very clear that Jonathan Larsen was a huge fan of Stephen Sondheim, almost to the point of losing his own voice in his idol worship. The thing that kept it from being a total Sondheim rip was the fact that Larsen just wasn't as talented as Sondheim. Maybe in time he would have grown, as it was an impressive debut. I just think people got caught up in the back story of larsen dying the night before his show went up.
I read a case on "RENT" in my Copyrights class. Apparently Larsen's first version showed "promise" but was pretty much a pile. It took the manager of the theater company that was working with him a long time to convince him to hire someone to help him with the script (a "dramaturg"), who apparently improved it drastically (she was suing for royalties as a "joint author," which she didn't get).
