![]() Seller had a hunch that Larson would be the guy to pull it off. But no one seemed to have a clear idea of how to bring Broadway’s sound into the present. The literati of New York’s theater scene were forever griping over how far away American musical theater had gotten from any sort of sound that felt fresh and modern and rooted in the music that the rest of the country was listening to. “Here was a man telling his life story that I felt was my life story, and telling it in a musical vernacular that was giving me goosebumps,” Seller recalled in Michael Riedel’s 2020 book Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway.īroadway’s musical vernacular at the time was the sound of Cats, Les Miserables, and Phantom of the Opera: big, bombastic pop musicals that didn’t sound like anything on the radio. The show made the rounds at various small off-Broadway theaters, going through a few different titles - 30/90, Boho Days - before settling on Tick, Tick … Boom! It was a modest success, and it won Larson the attention of theater producer Jeffrey Seller. It would be a rock monologue about the twin ticking clocks of his potential and his friend’s life, both of which he feared might be about to run out. ![]() So he channeled his frustrations and his grief into a musical he could put on just by himself with a small band. He was also feeling bitter that every producer who came to his Superbia workshop had told him that it was both too expensive to mount off-Broadway and too weird to mount on Broadway. He was feeling very aware of his mortality. Larson had already lost several friends to the AIDS epidemic. Meanwhile, his close friend Matt O’Grady had just tested positive for HIV. He was about to turn 30, and he had just failed to land any producers for his ambitious space-age musical Superbia, which meant he was stuck at his weekend job as a waiter. Jonathan Larson started writing Tick, Tick … Boom! in 1989. “I’m going to bring rock ‘n’ roll back to Broadway” With Miranda’s Tick, Tick … Boom!, the story of these two composers is coming full circle. And both wrote musicals that are obsessed with the problem of mortality and ambition, and how to accomplish great works in a life cut short. Both wrote generation-defining, Pulitzer-prize winning musicals both pushed Broadway’s musical vocabulary forward toward the present. Miranda’s career has paralleled Larson’s for a long time now. Watching it, you can’t help but mourn the loss of Jonathan Larson all over again - and think that at least he’s got an apt guardian in Lin-Manuel Miranda. He wants to be great, and he’s committed to putting in the work to become great, but he’s not there yet.īut Tick, Tick … Boom! does operate with the understanding that Larson was a shockingly talented young composer, and that he was maybe on the verge of becoming great just before he died. What’s most compelling is not the actual music Larson is writing in this movie so much as it is his terrible, endearing commitment to his music above everything else in his life. Miranda keeps a sort of tender distance away from Larson’s perspective, so that we have room to critique both his egotism and his music, which is juvenile, frequently mediocre, and only occasionally brilliant. This movie is not a hagiography, and it stops short of treating Larson like a genius. Rent, which won him a posthumous Pulitzer and reshaped Broadway forever, will. Larson wrote Tick, Tick … Boom! before he actually did become a success, so he doesn’t know, as we do, that neither this show nor the show within the show will make his legacy. He’s landed a workshop for the big ambitious musical he’s working on, and he’s pinned all his hopes for the future on it: After the workshop, he won’t have to work as a waiter anymore after the workshop, he’ll be a success. Tick, Tick … Boom!, out on Netflix this Friday, tells the story of a musical theater composer named Jonathan Larson as he approaches his 30th birthday. Miranda’s desire to stay true to Larson’s vision breathes through Tick, Tick … Boom! The film, which stars Andrew Garfield as Larson, is suffused with an affectionate protectiveness: protectiveness toward Larson, who died at age 35 in 1996, and toward Larson’s musical legacy. “When I was making this film,” Miranda said, “I just kept thinking, ‘What would Jonathan Larson want?’ That was my first goal.” ![]() It was from Lin-Manuel Miranda, the film’s director as well as the creator and star of Hamilton. Boom!, the new movie based on an autobiographical musical by Rent composer Jonathan Larson, a message played. ![]()
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