From one-man show to Hollywood spectacle
‘Tick, Tick ... Boom!’ adaptation only film Miranda ‘already knew how to make’
Andrew Garfield was exhausted and upset. It had been weeks since Lin-manuel Miranda pitched him on starring in a musical and invited him to a workshop of the still-being-written script — an unconventional step for any screen project but a highly informative tool for theatermakers like Miranda. But it was scheduled for the day after Garfield closed Broadway’s “Angels in America,” in which he played the tormented lead, and the role left him desperate to rest and recover.
“Perfect, so that means you’re available,” Miranda excitedly told Garfield. “You don’t have to sing if you’re too tired or nervous. We’ll just read through it together and see how it goes.”
Reluctantly, Garfield agreed to participate and sat down with a handful of Miranda’s actor friends in a back office at the United Palace in New York’s Washington Heights.
“Two hours in, I’m having the time of my life in what was essentially a healing musical theater sound bath,” recalled Garfield, who, with Miranda’s gentle guidance, was starting to sing by the end of the weeklong workshop. Two more were held before filming began, which allowed Garfield and the other actors to establish a trust in the material, in each other and in Miranda.
“We felt like we were all in really great hands, which isn’t hard to feel because he is who he is,” said Garfield of Miranda. “Lin is an elemental force who doesn’t seem to need to sleep, who has this gleeful urgency when it comes
to something he loves and who genuinely believes that anything is possible. It’s contagious.”
These same descriptors can be applied to the project’s author and main character: Jonathan Larson, who, before creating the groundbreaking show “Rent,” spent the early 1990s developing and performing a solo work that became known as “Tick, Tick ... Boom!” The semiautobiographical rock monologue is about a composer-lyricist who aims to take the industry by storm with what he believes to be a musical masterpiece.
At first glance, “Tick, Tick ... Boom!” does not have the explicit makings of a successful movie musical: Its source material is an unfinished one-man show that, after Larson’s tragic death in 1995, was reconfigured into a threeactor
production; its main character is a charismatic but arguably self-obsessed creator navigating a niche field. Also, Miranda had never directed a major movie, and Garfield, who portrays Larson, had never sung in public before that first workshop.
But Miranda, also a musical visionary with a steadfast resolve, had asserted for years that a “Tick, Tick ... Boom!” adaptation is “the only film I already knew how to make,” he said. Now in theaters and on Netflix, the result “feels refreshingly intimate and specific, idealistic but rarely naive, and grounded in a way that gives an unexpected lift to its flights of fancy,” according to LA film critic Justin Chang. “Miranda’s talent for putting on a show has never been in doubt, but it takes a subtler dimension of talent to make this ostensibly small one feel big.”
This authentic expansion is achieved largely because of an unabashed embrace of the real Larson, who was inherently theatrical. His friends and family describe him as exuberant and generous, spontaneously making up songs about whatever was in a room and spending what money he had on celebrating his loved ones. His joie de vivre was matched by his mission to create a notable work of art. If only producers would discover his greatness at his upcoming presentation, conveniently scheduled for his 30th birthday.
Miranda drew from everything he knew about theater to make the stageto-screen translation of “Tick, Tick ... Boom!” as authentic as possible. It begins with “30/90,” a thrilling introduction to
Jon that quickly switches between his actual reality
— a diner day job, a pile of bills, countless rejection letters and a looming deadline — and his heightened perception: an animated apartment duet with his best friend, Michael (Robin de Jesus); a dance sequence in the Strand bookstore with his girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp).
“Sometimes you’re seeing something as it may have happened in his life, and other times you’re seeing what he imagines in his head,” said Miranda, who sprinkled the scene with visual motifs that recur throughout the movie.
A thorough exploration of Larson’s demo tapes, notebooks and other archival materials at the Library of Congress informed the film’s setlist; songs cut from the stage show were added to the movie (“Boho Days,” “Play Game” and “Swimming”) while others were left out (“Green Green Dress,” “See Her Smile” and “Sugar,” the latter cut down to a jingle).
Every included musical number — regularly performed on stage with just a few instruments — has a uniquely rethought arrangement, ranging from just a tweaked drum groove to turn “Louder Than Words” into an anthemic call to action, to a grandiose interpretation of “Sunday,” sung by a star-studded chorus and accompanied by a whopping 61 musicians.
With Joshua Henry, Vanessa Hudgens and MJ Rodriguez among the cast, each song has a distinct narrative setup, as Jon wrestles with his commitment to art while in seemingly magical swimming pools and ’80s rap music videos.
On set, Miranda was what de Jesus called “pure and joyous,” with a “childlike excitement that made me that much more excited to try whatever he came up with,” said Shipp. He’s not a man of many takes, and he knows when he has the shot.
“That instinct is something I’m still honing because it’s my first movie,” said Miranda. In comparison to other directors, Miranda “is extremely open-minded to the point he is constantly solicitous of knowledge from others,” said producer Brian Grazer.
Like his previous encounters with Larson’s work, making this movie has yielded Miranda yet another clarifying directive.
“I learned a couple of things about what I want to do, which is that I love telling musical stories on screen,” he said with a smile.
“Jon (M. Chu) can direct ‘Wicked’ — I don’t need that pressure in my life, he thrives on it! I’ll make the smaller, stranger musicals that wouldn’t otherwise get a green light. If I’m lucky enough to do that, I’d be so happy.”