TICK, TICK…BOOM!
TICK, TICK… BOOM! I Lin-Manuel Miranda makes his feature directorial debut adapting a little known stage play with a very personal connection…
Lin-Manuel Miranda on his directorial debut.
The name Jonathan Larson might not mean much to you, but it means a lot to Hamilton and In The Heights creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who’s making his directorial debut with an adaptation of one of Larson’s lesser-known stage productions.
Prodigious composer and playwright Larson died aged just 35, on the morning of the first Off-Broadway preview of his musical Rent in January 1996; Miranda saw the show a year
later on his 17th birthday. “It was the first truly contemporary musical I’d ever seen,” he beams. “It was the first time I’d felt like writing a musical was possible.”
But tick, tick… BOOM! isn’t really about Rent. It’s adapted from a three-person show (itself adapted from a one-person ‘rock monologue’) about the stresses and frustrations Larson felt while attempting to produce his first musical, Superbia. The title refers to an approaching deadline of a pivotal performance and his impending 30th birthday.
Miranda saw a production as his graduation from theatre studies beckoned. “It felt like: this is how hard it’s going to be, but also it’s worth it, if this is really what you want to do,” he says. “It was a very clarifying experience for me.’”
After playing Jon on stage in a two-week revival of tick, tick… BOOM! in 2014, Miranda caught the eye of producer Julie Oh. “I’ve never responded so quickly to an email,” he says. “I just wrote back, ‘Your search is over. I’m the only person who could make this.’ Because it just felt so personal to me. I’ve experienced my own version of what Jonathan has experienced as a struggling songwriter trying to get what is in your brain out of it, and onto a stage.”
Andrew Garfield plays Jon in the film; Miranda knew he could do it after seeing him on stage in Angels In America (for which he won a Tony). “He had never really sung before but had always wanted to explore that,” explains Miranda. “And he said, ‘When are you doing it?’ I said, ‘Not for at least a year.’ And he said, ‘Then I can sing.’ And I believed him.”
Though Miranda hadn’t made a movie before, he knew exactly how he wanted to handle this one. “I understood my take on it as soon as I heard tick, tick… BOOM! was a movie. I was like, ‘As soon as Andrew’s hands touch the keys; as soon as Jonathan’s hands touch the keys, we go inside the world according to Jonathan. And that can be as fantastical or as musical as he wants to show us.’ I really just felt like, if they only ever let me make one movie, let it be this movie...” MM
ETA | 12 NOVEMBER / TICK, TICK…BOOM! PLAYS IN SELECT CINEMAS BEFORE STREAMING ON NETFLIX ON 19 NOVEMBER.