In some ways, America is still processing the tragedy of 9/11, and judging by the below trailer for Clear Blue Tuesday, which is an actual movie actually debuting in limited release this week, we’ve entered the “overblown rock musical” stage of grieving. What Rent did for AIDS, Clear Blue Tuesday promises to do for the World Trade Center attacks—which is a charitable way of saying this film uses 9/11 as the starting point for a series of mawkish song-and-dance numbers performed by a random assortment of musical theater types in quasi-bohemian molds, all of whom are dealing with their super-confusing emotions (“I kissed a boy!”) and getting on with their lives, man, by rocking out.
According to the New York Times, the songs range from “’Spank It,’ a hair-metal piece about playing the drums” to “’Reckless,’ [in which] a harpist and science fiction fanatic imagines marrying an alien in space in a scene replete with twinkling stars and floating planets." (The film’s director, Elizabeth Lucas, says that she “find[s] naturalism a little pedestrian.”) All of the songs were written by the cast members themselves—including real-life 9/11 survivor Jan O’Dell, who drew on her experience of having her skull fractured and brain damaged by a falling piece of debris for her role as the elderly Caroline, who sings, “The Day The Sky Fell.” It’s all part of the Clear Blue Tuesday healing process, during which we’ll discover that 9/11 was really about, in Lucas’ words, “finding the release and the perspective to look at ourselves and laugh at our tragedies.” Casting “white Lenny Kravitz” here was definitely a good start.