Lin-Manuel Miranda debuts ‘tick, tick... Boom!’ and eyes new projects
LOS ANGELES: Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of Broadway sensation ‘Hamilton,’ said Wednesday he had returned to his first love of cinema with his directorial debut ‘tick tick... Boom!’ – but is itching to write musical theater again.
The movie, which had its world premiere at AFI Fest in Los Angeles, pays tribute to Jonathan Larson, the writer of ‘Rent’ who was Broadway’s wunderkind a generation before Miranda.
“Film was my first love. I fell in love with movies, my grandfather owned a VHS video store when I was a kid -- Miranda Video,” Miranda told AFP.
“I spent my summers watching everything – very little of it appropriate to a child of seven or eight years of age, but I watched it all! And so I feel like I’ve come all the way back around to my first love.”
Miranda’s ‘tick tick... Boom!’” is an adaptation of Larson’s stripped-down musical of the same name, which recounted his struggles to create art and his fear of growing old without success.
Larson died aged just 35, never getting to see and enjoy the huge popularity, plethora of Tony Awards and Pulitzer Prize for drama that ‘Rent’ would garner.
“It’s the only movie I ever actually daydreamed about [making] as a movie before I even got the opportunity to direct,” said Miranda, who saw Larson’s musical while still at university.
“It was the month after the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, when everyone was questioning, like, ‘what am I even doing with my life?’ And the entire musical is about ‘what are you even doing with your life?’ It felt like a personal attack and a call to action.” The film cuts between Larson – played by Andrew Garfield – performing the original rock monologue of ‘tick tick... Boom!’ on stage in New York, and flashbacks to the life events that inspired it.
“I brought the music I loved – hip hop music and Latin music – into my work the same way Jonathan took rock music into his,” said Miranda.
“Sort of just advancing his thesis, I feel like a student of his. It’s worked out pretty well!”
While ‘tick tick... Boom!’ is Miranda’s first feature film as director, he has been in growing demand in Hollywood since the colossal success of ‘Hamilton.’
Disney bought the streaming rights to a taped stage production of ‘Hamilton’ – which tells the story of the United States’ founding fathers via hip-hop – for US$75 million.
Miranda also produced a film version of his first musical, ‘In The Heights,’ and wrote the songs for Disney’s forthcoming Colombia-set magical realist fantasy ‘Encanto.’