Tick Tick Boom! True Story Behind The Film! The Relationship Between Musicals And Films

After the resounding success of In the Heights and Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda pays homage to one of his myths, the man to whom he owes a gigantic debt: the great composer Jonathan Larson, author of musicals that have entered Broadway history. Tick Tick Boom! is Miranda’s directorial debut and the film adaptation of the semi-autobiographical musical of the same name that Larson staged between 1991 and 1993 as a “rock monologue”.

Produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, Tick, Tick … Boom! is the musical tale of Larson’s difficult beginnings, played by a well- trained Andrew Garfield. It is January 1990 and the composer is divided between the dream of success and the anxiety of failure, the turbulent relationship with his girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp), the AIDS catastrophe that is changing the lives of millions of people, between including his best friend Michael (Robin de Jesús), and the hard work in a diner to make ends meet while waiting for some producer to finance his work.

“This is the story of Jonathan Larson. Before the Tony Awards. Before the Pulitzer Prize. Before we lost it. Everything you will see is true. Except the parts made up by Jonathan,” Susan’s over voice announces at the beginning of the film. But how much truth is there behind the story of Tick, Tick… Boom! and what was lifelike for Larson between SoHo and Greenwich Village in early 90s New York? Let’s find out together.

Life (and death) of Jonathan Larson

Born in 1960, a true New Yorker born into a Jewish family, Larson grew up with a solid rock culture, is a multi-instrumentalist and has been performing since high school, when he attended White Plains high school. After graduating from Adelphi University in Garden City, he lives in a Lower Manhattan loft between Greenwich and Spring Street. His friends are penniless guys and passionate about art and music. Michael’s character is inspired by James Clunie, his roommate who quits his acting career to become a big shot at advertising agency BBDO.

Not only that Jon really works at Moondance Diner in SoHo. It is here that he meets Jesse L. Martin, his apprentice who will later become Tom Collins in the original cast of Rent, the acclaimed and revolutionary Broadway musical (which ran for 12 years in a row) inspired by Puccini’s Bohème and life. complicated of the protagonists Mark and Roger in the East Village. Destiny is mocking Larson, a pure talent who never received the gratification of future success in life. On the morning of January 25, 1996, the same day as Rent’s first Off-Broadway, Jonathan dies of an aortic aneurysm, caused by an undiagnosed form of Marfan syndrome. He is just 35 years old.

Superbia The “Cursed” Musical

Tick, Tick… Boom! scripted by Steven brings Jonathan Larson’s troubled artistic career to life through a faithful reconstruction of the musical that the composer brought to the stage as a soloist. That work retraces the steps that precede the fateful date for the composer’s future: the presentation workshop of Superbia, an ambitious science fiction musical on which Jon, on the eve of his 30th birthday, has been working for the last eight. It is the constant challenge of those who love and make art.

Superbia is a dystopian-satirical rock opera inspired by George Orwell’s 1984 and Catastrophes of choice by Isaac Asimov. The show is set in the future, on a now poisoned Earth where most of humanity spends their lives watching the screens of “media transmitters” such as modern smartphones, filming their existence as in a television program.

Larson describes Superbia as “the first musical written for the MTV generation“. But producing such a work turns out to be more difficult than expected: the project is rejected by all Broadway and Off-Broadway producers, by theater companies, record companies and film studios.

Superbia is a ferocious social criticism of consumerism, of the ever-widening gap that divides the rich and powerful elite from the rest of the population, of the selfishness of the capitalist world and of the society of appearances. Larson anticipates by twenty years the advent of social media, the growing fear of contact and the detachment from reality. At the same time, he doesn’t want Superbia to turn into one of the “all-alike” musicals that Broadway is constantly churning out.

The True Story Behind Tick Tick Boom!

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film testifies to the constancy, the struggle against the passing of time and the obsessive search for perfection by the author, contained in the composition of Come to Your Senses, the song for Elizabeth, the female protagonist and fulcrum of the show, which will be sung by Karessa (Vanessa Hudgens) at the workshop.

Focusing on that song had been the advice of his idol Stephen Sondheim (playing it is Bradley Whitford) the greatest composer and lyricist of the American musical, author of West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, just to mention the best known works. “The world you have created is truly original and fascinating, the problem is that it is not easy to follow the emotional aspect”, is his warning. Sondheim was the only one who really supported Larson during that unfortunate time, often writing letters of recommendation for him to various producers.

“Write what you know” is his agent Rosa Stevens (Judith Light)’s out-of-the-way suggestion. It is then that the composer realizes that audiences need reality and rock embodies that truth. This is demonstrated by the one man show Tick Tick… Boom! in which Jon talks about himself and his suffering alone to avoid budget problems. Rent will arrive in 1993, first at the New York Theater Workshop and only three years later off-Broadway, when it will be too late for Jon. The cast includes actors unknown at the time and today Broadway hits such as Idina Menzel, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal and Taye Diggs.

Rent wins the Tony Award, earns over $ 280 million, is made into a film by Chris Columbus and honors Larson, winner of two posthumous Tony and Pulitzer awards. Broadway “discovers” that an entertainment work can be brought to the stage with healthy hints of social criticism: between one song and another, AIDS and its spread are faced a society wounded by marginalization and mistrust. After Larson’s death, Tick, Tick … Boom! is recovered several times: in 2014 by Miranda himself (in the title role) at City Center’s Encores! Off-Center Theater in New York and in 2016 by David Auburn with Garfield, Hudgens and Joshua Henry in the cast.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly Miranda says she first saw Rent when she was 17: it was her birthday and he was shocked because, after all, that story was also his. Since then, he has decided that Tick, Tick … Boom! it would become the only movie he really wanted to make.

From Broadway to the Moondance Diner: The Cameos Of The Film

The musical number inside the Moondance Diner, choreographed to the tune of Sunday, is filled with popular Broadway actors. At the beginning of the sequence appears Roger Bart, Larson’s longtime friend. The young women sitting at the counter “on the soft green cylindrical stools”, asking for Baileys in coffee and vodka in orange juice, are Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo.

The friendly duo ordering challah, the typical Jewish bread, is made up of Howard McGillin and Chuck Cooper, while the arrogant customer who is indignant because his omelet without yolks is not brought to him is Brian Stokes Mitchell a familiar face to the TV audience thanks to Scott Knowles’ character in Mr. Robot. The elderly gentleman who asks the busy staff for the bill in vain is Joel Gray.

The gentleman who wants a table for four, named Richard Caplan “with C for dog”, is André De Shields. The smiling woman sitting by the window is Phylicia Rashad, the popular Claire of the Robinsons the “lady” with the wide-brimmed hat drinking a Manhattan is Chita Rivera. Bebe Neuwirth, Beth Malone, Chuck Cooper, Howard McGillin and Bernadette Peters are still seen.

When the choreography moves outside, the three tramps arrive: they are Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin Vega and Wilson Jermaine Heredia. All three were part of the original Rent cast. Finally, the enraged cook that no waiter brings the eggs to the table is Lin-Manuel Miranda himself.