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    How Jonathan Larson Taught Me to Become a Better Critic

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    In the film version of “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” about a composer who dreams of Broadway, a “Rent” die-hard discovers more to love in musical theater.I watched “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” Netflix’s film adaptation of the Jonathan Larson musical, four and a half times in the span of three weeks. I’ve listened to the soundtrack three times, with the exception of the opening song, “30/90.” That I’ve listened to at least a dozen times.When you replay a song that often, whole verses start to inscribe themselves into your memory. You begin to see beneath the surface, unearthing the bones of the music: a key change, a tempo shift, a bluesy bass line that sashays in and is gone in an instant.When I talk about Larson’s work, I get romantic. That’s been the case since I was 15, thanks to his Pulitzer Prize winning musical “Rent,” and now, thanks to “Tick, Tick … Boom!” But there’s a vital difference in the way I engaged with his work then versus now: Then, it was as a fan just beginning to discover an art form that would shape her personal and professional life; now, it’s as a critic who better understands the possibilities of musical theater.But I still have a ways to go — I’m continually learning how to be a better fan and critic of the theater, and 26 years after his death, Jonathan Larson is my unlikely mentor.Larson, left, with the director Michael Greif before the final dress rehearsal of Larson’s breakthrough show “Rent.”Sara Krulwich/TheNew York Times“Tick, Tick … Boom!,” Larson’s precursor to “Rent,” is a musical about the playwright’s attempts to get his dystopian rock musical, “Superbia,” produced. His ambitions and anxieties create tension with his girlfriend and his best friend, whom he pushes to the sidelines.Though Larson’s show stars a composer named Jon and is, in large parts, autobiographical, the film — written by Steven Levenson and directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda — bridges the gap between the writer and his work, making Larson himself the protagonist. We shift back and forth between his staged production of “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and the correlating events in his life.The film casts an affectionate eye on Larson’s life and legacy. Larson (Andrew Garfield, who was recently nominated for an Oscar for the role) is an innocently aloof artist and yet also intimately present, transparent to the audience through his songs, which seem to erupt from the top of his head in an effervescent gust of rhythm.Garfield bounces across the screen with the energy of a child on a trampoline; his downright kinetic performance is a flutter and flush of gestures, limbs jerking and flailing in all directions. In some scenes, Larson stops to consider a thought or a phrase; his head cocks to the side and his jaw relaxes open, just slightly, as though to make room for new lyrics to fly out. It’s kooky. And endearing.As is the world Miranda builds: a bespoke version of 1990 New York City for theater nerds, where André De Shields strolls in as a haughty patron at the Moondance Diner, where Bernadette Peters is having her coffee and where three of the original “Rent” cast members (Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Wilson Jermaine Heredia) are bums singing on the street.That I even recognize so many of those faces is because of Larson.The original cast of “Rent,” which went on to a long Broadway run. Several of the performers show up in “Tick, Tick … Boom!”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesI’ve already written about my love for “Rent,” a love I share with my mother — how it provided a Bohemian fantasy that could be the repository of my teenage insecurities, anxieties, rages and woes. I also discovered the musical around the time I was taking baby steps toward becoming a critic, writing arts pieces for my high school newspaper.Larson taught me that the constellation of notes in a score has space enough to hold immense grief and irrepressible delights. That a musical doesn’t have to be breezy and carefree, nor campy and dated. It could be bold and contemporary — even tragic. Or as strange and subversive — “Rent” is full of sex and drugs, bonkers performance art and mentions of B.D.S.M. — as any form of art.The musical, I came to appreciate, has a nested structure: The book is the spine, and each song in the score contains its own micro-narrative, its own voice, conveyed through music.I still love “Rent” like I did when I was 15, but as my affections for it have aged, they’ve taken on the sepia tone of nostalgia.I’m not the same person I was a teenager — thankfully. I’ll raise a glass to la vie boheme but won’t stay out with the eclectic crowd at the Life Cafe for quite as long.Watching the “Tick, Tick … Boom!” movie for the first time, I immediately fell hard for “30/90,” which felt adapted from my own experience. Long before I became a critic, I was an artist, and I’ve always worked under a self-imposed sense of urgency; when I was a kid, I expected to be a famous poet, journalist and novelist by the time I was 25.When I turned 30, in the middle of our first pandemic summer, I had a monthlong existential crisis. Hitting that milestone age, as Larson sings in “30/90,” means “you’re no longer the ingénue.” I still fret needlessly about time and mortality, clinging to the same clichéd, self-important worries about one’s legacy that so many artists do, Larson included.Garfield, as Larson, struggles with anxiety about not fulfilling his creative dreams at an early enough age. Macall Polay/NetflixAt some point, as I rewatched the film after an anxious and depressed afternoon, I recalled how I used to do the same with “Rent.” Again Larson helps, not just in those joyless moments of mental panic but also in the moments of joy, when I sing along to the new film’s “Boho Days” while preparing dinner, shimmying over the kitchen counter.This is love.But I must admit that “Tick, Tick … Boom!” gave me pause when Larson’s work is being workshopped by Stephen Sondheim and a theater critic. Sondheim recognizes the potential in Larson and in the piece, while the critic quickly dismisses it. Seeing the critic’s closed-mindedness and pretentious posturing, I wondered: Have I done that? Have I failed a work of art in this same way?Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      What Did Stephen Sondheim Really Think of ‘Rent’?

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      The composer served as something of a mentor to Jonathan Larson and spoke frankly about the show after the younger man’s death.Stephen Sondheim appears as a kind of oracle in the movie adaptation of the Jonathan Larson rock monologue “Tick, Tick … Boom!” The film, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, doubles as an artful tribute to Larson, best known as the creator of “Rent.” Onscreen, lesser minds are eager to dismiss the self-proclaimed “future of American musicals,” but Sondheim salutes the younger man’s talent and potential. The depiction is based in fact: The master craftsman of American theater, who died last month at 91, did support Larson’s work, financially and creatively.But when I interviewed Sondheim in 1996, a few months after Larson’s sudden death, his view was complicated.“I think it is a work in progress,” he said of “Rent,” the Broadway sensation that won Larson a Pulitzer and a Tony. “He wanted to put in everything and the kitchen sink, and he did. I think it suffers from that.”In “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” Miranda pays tribute to the two theater greats who inspired him to make “In the Heights” and “Hamilton.” As the first writer to go through Larson’s papers after his death, part of my research for the “Rent” book I wrote with Katherine Silberger, I was moved to tears to see his complexity and compassion so creatively honored.It inspired me to revisit my interview with Sondheim. I had spoken with Sondheim on the phone. He generously wanted to honor his sometime protégé for the book that would tell Larson’s story, but he was not overly sentimental. He had been disappointed in the stage version of “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” which at one point was known as “Boho Days” and which chronicled Larson’s efforts to write a show called “Superbia,” originally based on George Orwell’s “1984.”With “Rent,” Larson was getting back on track, Sondheim said. “He was coming back into his own again. Some songs had a confidence and center to them.”Larson had his own complicated relationship to his mentor. One of his goals was to lead the charge of a new generation of playwrights who would provide an alternative to the Sondheims of the world. “It’s the 1990s, it’s time for a change,” he told a friend..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Here is the entire interview with Sondheim, portions of which appeared in the book “Rent”:STEPHEN SONDHEIM I met him at a show called “Superbia.” I don’t remember what brought us together. My guess is he wrote me a letter and asked to meet. I meet a lot of young composers: if they write a letter and the work interests me at all, I will always meet with them. He worked on “Superbia” for a long time while I knew him, which I think was right after the first draft. I thought the show was interesting and that what he was trying to do was interesting. What was wrong with it had to do with the story and how the story was told. Some of the songs were accomplishing things which the story wasn’t. It got less interesting as it went along because there was not enough tension and focus in the way the story was told.What did you think of the compositional work?I thought some of the songs were good and others not. The opening number had some originality to it, whereas the others didn’t. He was still finding a voice and I think he still is. But he had a voice and that was the important thing.There is a story about him wanting to be an actor.Oh, that was constant with him. Whenever he would get discouraged with his writing, that was his riff. I don’t think there was ever any doubt in his mind that he wanted to write primarily. Shakespeare started as an actor.What kind of role did you play in him getting that first grant for “Superbia”?Well, I’m chairman of the committee that gives the grant. I didn’t know him well enough to recuse myself. My relationship with Jonathan was entirely about his work. We had a few personal discussions, but I wasn’t championing a friend, I was championing a person whose work I liked. Everybody on the committee liked it too.Did you see “Boho Days” or “Tick, Tick … Boom”?I saw a tape of “Tick, Tick … Boom” and heard a tape of “Boho Days.”Did you feel the work [on “Tick” or “Boho”] was progressing, and did you identify with the material?Curiously enough I didn’t feel it was progressing and we talked about that. I felt there was more originality in “Superbia.” I worried that he was getting desperate to be accepted and it was starting to show in the work.In what way?It was getting more like everybody else who was afraid of being original.What did you think of the content of the piece in terms of the frustrations of composing and not being produced?Well, everybody does that. Standard operating procedure. Everybody works for years without getting a hearing unless they’re very lucky. One thing I would say is that he was clinging to “Superbia” too long. I was glad when he started working on the other things. I think his approach to the piece made it insoluble. It got a little better each time but it wasn’t solving the basic problem about the story.I heard you also told him the same thing about “Rent.”I think it is a work in progress. Story focus is it. He wanted to put in everything and the kitchen sink, and he did. I think it suffers from that.And you told him he should move on, he’d been working on it too long.Absolutely. Once a piece has reached a certain stage in development, if you can’t get on it, you should move on and that piece can be picked up later. You need to wait until you have a director in, or a producer interested.Yet you gave him a second grant?Yes. It may have been, my memory is blurred, it may have been that I was cautioning him not to fall into the same rut. I was worried about it.His collaborators were concerned about focusing the story on “Rent.” Do you think it improved?Somewhat.Do you think it was harder for him?No. I know people who have had a harder time than he. At one point I sent three songs from “Rent” to David Geffen, at Jonathan’s request I think, and he got turned down within a week. He said it fell between two stools. Partly showbiz and partly pop.Is this time a harder time to get things produced than when you were starting?No, it’s easier. Providing you don’t want to do it on Broadway, it’s easier with Off Broadway. There was no Off Broadway when I grew up. No producer will take a chance on an unknown unless it has been pretested at Off Broadway or at a regional theater. So it’s much easier with the proliferation of regional and Off Broadway.Do you remember a conversation you had about Jonathan being asked to do another rewrite?I said you have to learn how to collaborate. He learned. He called me back a few days later and said, You were right. I am willing to collaborate.Did you see the workshop production?Yes.Did you have any idea it would be such a success?No. I didn’t know that Jonathan would die, that made it a myth.The last time I’d spoken to him was in December. He felt pleased about the way he was growing up. He felt that way any author does in the middle of rehearsal. It’s terrible, it’s wonderful. I’m ashamed of it, isn’t it great?Did you feel that “Rent” was a progression from “Boho Days”? Did you feel he was getting back on track?Yes. He was coming back into his own again. Some songs had a confidence and center to them. The song with the two lovers was a swell piece of composition. I liked “Santa Fe” a lot. The whole score had somebody responding to a story, it was obviously a story he cared about. More

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      ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’ Review: A Bohemian’s Rhapsodies

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      Andrew Garfield stars as Jonathan Larson, the composer and lyricist of “Rent,” in this meta-musical directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda.For his feature directing debut, the “Hamilton” honcho Lin-Manuel Miranda points his spotlight at the composer who inspired his own creative awakening: Jonathan Larson.That artist heard little applause in his lifetime. He died at age 35 from an aortic aneurysm the day before the first preview of his breakthrough hit, “Rent.” In addition to “Rent,” Larson left behind the 1991 meta-musical “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” a self-portrait of the artist as an angst-ridden wretch, which Miranda has reverently dusted and polished like a sacred totem for a select cult. When Larson introduces himself as “a musical theater writer, one of the last of my species,” the line prods fans to protest that his as-yet-unwritten rock musical would galvanize a generation of creators. Miranda, who saw “Rent” at 17, is palpably thrilled to gain access to his hero’s hovel on Greenwich Street, here recreated with exactitude — right down to the Scorpions cassette.“Tick, Tick … Boom!” is an autobiography of anxieties. Larson, played with kinetic desperation by Andrew Garfield, fixates on success. How can he get it? How long can his wallet can hold out for it? How much might his all-consuming ambition cost him emotionally? Larson stakes his hopes on wowing producers with a head-scrambling sci-fi operetta called “Superbia.” At the same time, his dancer girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp, primarily tasked to look beatific), threatens to slink off to a teaching job in the Berkshires, and his best friend, Michael (Robin de Jesús), sells out for a corporate salary and an apartment big enough to host the film’s only full-on dance number. (The charismatic de Jesús celebrates his walk-in closet by letting Garfield spin him in the air like a Christmas puppy.)“Compromise or persevere?” Garfield’s striver croons, convinced that his impending 30th birthday — the time bomb in the title — will mark his decline from future superstar to “waiter with a hobby.” Foreshadowing carries the film. Even the songs cop that Larson was not yet the lyricist he would become. The lyrics dwell on chirpy observations about his diner job, his writer’s block, his favorite swimming pool (another location in the film) and, of course, his prescient fear of mortality, which is the only reason Steven Levenson’s screen adaptation has dramatic heft.Miranda’s devotion to his idol keeps him from expanding the musical’s myopic fretting into a universal story of sacrifice and resolve. Garfield at least gives Larson an endearing vulnerability. While he isn’t a lifelong singer like Vanessa Hudgens (in a supporting role as a cast member in Larson’s show-within-the-show), Garfield holds up his half of their duet with a capable voice that creaks just enough to sound sincere. As a dancer, Garfield is a gleeful pogo-bopping creature in the homespun key of David Byrne. His gangly limbs fill the frame, and the cinematographer Alice Brooks even follows his lead by eschewing pizazz for the humble grays of a walk-up apartment in winter. Instead, it’s up to a constellation of stage legends to bring the glitz — and boy, do they, in a centerpiece number with so many cameos that this small-scale film briefly becomes Broadway’s “Avengers.”Tick, Tick … Boom!Rated PG-13 for unmelodic cursing and a whiff of drug use. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters and on Netflix. More

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      ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’: A Musical Based on a Musical About Writing a Musical. We Explain.

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      Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut is an adaptation of a show by Jonathan Larson, creator of “Rent.” This guide unpacks the many layers.Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new film adaptation of “Tick, Tick … Boom!” is the musical version of the “Rent” creator Jonathan Larson’s musical about writing a musical.To clarify, that musical is not “Rent.” (Yes, our brains hurt, too.)“Tick, Tick … Boom!,” which premieres Nov. 12 in theaters and Nov. 19 on Netflix, portrays Larson (Andrew Garfield) and his efforts to find success in his late 20s. The audience watches him struggle to write “Superbia,” a retro-futuristic musical, while he frets about whether he should choose a more conventional career.To help you keep “Superbia” (Larson’s never-produced musical) straight from “Tick, Tick … Boom!” (Larson’s autobiographical show about writing “Superbia”) straight from “Tick, Tick … Boom!” the new film that tells Larson’s story, we’ve created this guide:Who was Jonathan Larson?The composer and playwright is best known as the creator of “Rent,” a musical loosely based on Puccini’s 1896 opera, “La Bohème.”But Larson never got to see the smash-hit success of his rock opera, which went on to win four Tony Awards. The composer died unexpectedly at age 35 in 1996 from an aortic aneurysm — on the morning before the first Off Broadway preview of “Rent” and a few months before its Broadway debut.But “Rent” was hardly his first musical, and was in many ways shaped by an autobiographical show he was writing at the same time, about his struggles to write “Superbia.”Larson himself in 1996.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhat was “Superbia”?No up-and-coming playwright in New York City is living in the lap of luxury, but Larson’s digs were especially hardscrabble. He lived and worked in a fifth-floor walk-up in Lower Manhattan, an apartment with no heat and a bathtub in the kitchen that he shared with two roommates and a couple of cats. He would write for eight hours on days off from his weekend job waiting tables at the Moondance Diner in SoHo.The musical he was working on was “Superbia” (based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” even though he had been denied the rights). He won a number of grants and awards to continue writing the show, including the Richard Rodgers Development Grant, chaired by Stephen Sondheim, which paid for a workshop production at Playwrights Horizons in 1988.But effort did not equal success. Though the music and lyrics won high praise among some downtown theater people, the show was considered too big and too negative, and no producer was ready to take it on, according to a 1996 article by Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times.So, Larson decided to do a monologue.Where does “Tick, Tick … Boom!” come in?Not dissuaded by the flop of “Superbia,” Larson began working on a new musical — “Rent” — as well as another idea: an autobiographical “rock monologue” that chronicled his struggles writing “Superbia.” Initially titled “30/90” — because he was turning 30 in 1990 — and then “Boho Days,” the one-man show that would later become “Tick, Tick … Boom!” was first staged, starring Larson, in a 1990 workshop at the Second Stage Theater. The show — part performance-art monologue, part rock recital — captivated a young producer named Jeffrey Seller, who became a champion of Larson’s work and later persuaded his fellow producers to bring “Rent” to Broadway.But “Boho Days” was difficult to pull off: Larson had to nail long monologues, often while playing several characters; sing musical numbers that represented multiple points of view; and simultaneously accompany himself on the piano and direct his band through a score that was a combination of pop, rock and Sondheim pastiche.Tommasini described the show as an “intense, angry solo” in which a man “wakes on his 30th birthday, downs some junk food and complains for 45 minutes about his frustrated ambitions, turning 30 in the tenuous ’90s and much more.”After the workshop, Larson continued to revise the piece, including changing the title to “Tick, Tick … Boom!” — a reference to the clock he felt was continually ticking on his life and career — and presented it at New York Theater Workshop in 1992 and 1993. It was still a work-in-progress when he died in 1996, and he left behind at least five versions of the script and a bevy of song lists.The 2001 Off Broadway version of “Tick, Tick … Boom” at the Jane Street Theater, featured Jerry Dixon, left, Raul Esparza (as Larson) and Amy Spanger.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow did the solo show become a three-person musical?After Larson’s death in 1996, the playwright David Auburn, who won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Proof,” revised the show as a three-person chamber musical that lessened the burden on the actor playing Jon. Now two additional actors played Michael, Larson’s advertising-executive best friend, and Susan, his dancer girlfriend, in addition to each portraying a variety of ancillary roles. Songs were rearranged for three voices, though the music and lyrics remained Larson’s.With the permission of Larson’s family, Auburn also excised most of Larson’s references to his terror of growing older and the feeling of being under so much pressure that his heart was about to burst in his chest, which would only seem callous given the audience’s knowledge of the composer’s fate.The revised “Tick, Tick … Boom!” premiered Off Broadway in 2001 at the Jane Street Theater, and went on to have a West End production, an Off West End production, two Off Broadway revivals, in 2014 and 2016, and an American national tour.Reviews were positive, with the New York Times critic Ben Brantley noting that the songs “glimmer with hints of the urgency and wit” that lend the musical score of “Rent” irresistible momentum.”Miranda — who’d found success with “In the Heights” but had not yet debuted his smash hit “Hamilton” — played Jon in a 2014 revival at New York City Center, a performance that the Times critic Charles Isherwood said “throbs with a sense of bone-deep identification.”Isherwood pointed out that it hadn’t been long since Miranda was “teaching high school English while scribbling songs on the side,” trying to make it as a musical-theater composer.Garfield in the new film, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who played the role in a 2014 stage revival. Macall Polay/NetflixHow does the film adapt all this?Twenty years after seeing the Off Broadway revival of “Tick, Tick … Boom!” as a 21-year-old theater major struggling to write “In the Heights,” Miranda directed the new film adaptation, which follows a young composer named Jon in the eight chaotic days leading up to a workshop production of his musical “Superbia.” As in the Off Broadway revival, Larson’s rock monologue has been expanded, this time to a cast of more than a dozen characters. (Bradley Whitford now plays an encouraging Stephen Sondheim.) The film cuts between Jon’s performance of Larson’s original staging of “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and the story as it unfolds in real time.Miranda has said the show is a combination of Larson’s rock monologue, the 2001 Off Broadway revival, and a cinematic exploration of Larson’s thought process. He used the Library of Congress archives to craft the film’s score entirely using Larson’s music, both from “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and the composer’s larger body of work.“It was like we were putting together an original musical with Jonathan Larson’s songs,” Miranda told Entertainment Weekly, explaining the process as finding the best way to “unlock” the songs and stories.Did Larson himself feel the urgency of his work? Sometimes it seems, to quote a “Rent” anthem, that he understood “There was no day but today” to do it. More

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      Andrew Garfield Can’t Remember Who He Was Before ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’

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      In the movie musical, Garfield plays the creator of “Rent,” who died unexpectedly at 35. Making the film helped Garfield process a death in his own life.Jon (Andrew Garfield) is throwing a party, though there’s hardly a reason to celebrate. He’s riven with anxiety, his cramped apartment is overpacked with people, and he’s just spent money he doesn’t have, a down payment on success that will not come within his lifetime. But still, with a wide grin, Jon toasts his friends, leaps on his couch and sings, “This is the life!”Jon is Jonathan Larson, the composer and playwright who died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm at age 35 in 1996 just before his new musical, “Rent,” would become a global smash. The new film “Tick, Tick … Boom!” portrays Larson struggling to find success in his late 20s, as he frets about whether he should pack it in and choose a more conventional path than scripting musical theater.Larson originally created “Tick, Tick … Boom!” as a solo show, “Boho Days,” starring himself in 1990; after his death, it was reworked by the playwright David Auburn into a three-person production that the “Hamilton” creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, saw in 2001, when he was still a senior in college.“Here’s this posthumous musical from the guy who made me want to write musicals in the first place,” said Miranda, who’s now made his feature directorial debut with the film.Miranda saw Garfield in the 2018 Broadway production of “Angels in America” and thought he was “transcendent” in that show. “I just left thinking, ‘Oh, that guy can do anything,’” the director recalled. “I didn’t know if he could sing, but I just felt like he could do anything. So I cast him in my head probably a year before I talked to him about it.”Miranda put Garfield through his paces, sending him to a vocal coach and ensuring that the actor would be able to play enough piano so the camera could pan from his fingers to his face throughout the film. But those are just the technical aspects of a performance that is impressively possessed: Garfield plays the passionate, frustrated Larson with enough zealous verve to power all the lights on Broadway.Garfield as Jonathan Larson in a scene from “Tick, Tick … Boom.”Macall Polay/NetflixIt’s all part of a very busy fall for the 38-year-old actor, who recently appeared in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” as the disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker and, it’s rumored, will suit up alongside Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” out in December. (Of that supersecret superhero team-up, Garfield can divulge nothing.) Still, it’s clear that “Tick, Tick … Boom!” meant much more to him than he initially expected.“It’s a strange thing when there’s someone like Jon that you didn’t have any relationship to before, and then suddenly now there’s this mysterious forever connection that I am never, ever going to let go,” Garfield told me on a recent video call from Calgary, Canada, where he’s shooting “Under the Banner of Heaven,” a limited series. “I just feel so lucky that Jon was revealed to me, because now I don’t remember who I was before I knew who Jon was.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.How did “Tick, Tick … Boom!” originally come to you?One of my best friends in New York is Gregg Miele, and he’s the great body worker and massage person of New York City — he works on all the dancers and actors and singers on Broadway and beyond. Lin was on his table one morning and asked, “Can Andrew Garfield sing?” And Gregg, being the friend that he is, just started lying, basically, and said, “Yes, he is the greatest singer I’ve ever heard.” Then he called me and said, “Hey, go and get some singing lessons because Lin’s going to ask you to do something.”Lin and I had lunch, and he told me briefly about “Tick, Tick” and Jon. I’m not a musical theater guy in my history — it’s not something that I’ve been introduced to until the last few years, really. So Lin left me with a copy of the music and lyrics, and he wrote at the front of it, “This won’t make sense now, but it will. Siempre, Lin.”Garfield hadn’t done much singing when he was cast in “Tick, Tick … Boom” opposite musical theater veterans. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die.’”Alana Paterson for The New York TimesYou’ve performed in plays like “Angels in America” and “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway, but in this film, Lin surrounded you with a lot of musical-theater ringers, and even some of the smallest roles and cameos are filled by major players from that world. That had to have been a daunting space to step into.I remember a very specific moment where we were in music rehearsal. Alex Lacamoire was at the piano walking us through the songs — he’s Lin’s musical arranger and producer — and I was with [“Tick, Tick” co-stars] Robin de Jesus and Vanessa Hudgens and Josh Henry and Alex Shipp. You can imagine how I’m feeling! They’re all just pros, they know exactly what they’re doing, they’re making notes. I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.”Then it comes time for me to get into the song and I’m just trying to get through it. I remember Alex Lacamoire going, “Woo, Andrew!” And then everyone behind him, like Josh and Vanessa and Alex and Robin, were like, “Yeah baby, that’s it baby! You got it, baby!” I go beet red and five minutes pass, and I’m just like, “Hey guys, sorry.” I start crying, and I say, “I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy in my entire life, to be surrounded by the most supportive liars I have ever known.”Garfield working with his director, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who cast him after seeing the actor in “Angeles in America.” Miranda recalled, “I didn’t know if he could sing, but I just felt like he could do anything.”Macall Polay/NetflixJonathan spends the movie anxious about this ticking that only he can hear. How did you interpret that?There was a line in the original one-man show “Boho Days”: “Sometimes, I feel like my heart is going to explode.” It was too on-the-nose for people after he passed away, and they had to cut it, but he spends the story trying to figure out what this ticking is: “Is it turning 30? Is it that I haven’t succeeded? Is it some unconscious idea of my girlfriend’s biological clock combined with the pressure of my career? Or is it all of my friends who are losing their lives at a very young age because of the AIDS epidemic?”It could even be a musical metronome. The way you play Jonathan, as this theatrical person who feels so deeply and urgently, it’s almost like he needs to break into song because normal life just doesn’t cut it.Everything is up at an 11. Even when he’s making love, it’s at 11! Somehow he knows that this is all going to end, that this is all so ephemeral, and I think he was acutely, painfully aware that he wasn’t going to get all of his song sung. And I think he was also agonizingly aware that he wasn’t going to get the reflection and recognition that he knew he was supposed to have while he was still breathing.On the last day of shooting, what I understood is that Jon had it figured out. He knew that this is a short ride and a sacred one, and he had a lot of keys and secrets to how to live with ourselves and with each other and how to make meaning out of being here. Once he accepted that, he could be fully a part of the world, and then he could write “Rent.” I don’t think there’s an accident in that. That very visceral knowing of loss and of death, that’s what gives everything so much meaning. And without that awareness, we will succumb to meaninglessness.So what kind of meaning did this story give to you?Every frame, every moment, every breath of this film is an attempted honoring of Jon. And, on a more personal level, it’s an honoring of my mom. She is someone who showed me where I was supposed to go in my life. She set me on a path. We lost her just before Covid, just before we started shooting, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. So, for me, I was able to continue her song on the ocean and the wave of Jonathan’s songs. It was an attempt to honor him in his unfinished song, and her in her unfinished song, and have them meet.I think that’s part of the reason I didn’t want this movie to end, because I got to put my grief into art, into this creative act. The privilege of my life has been being there for my mother, being the person that gave her permission when she was ready. We had a very amazing connection, and now an audience will know her spirit in an unconscious way through Jon, which I just find so magical and beautiful.“I’ve lost people before, but one’s mother is a different thing,” Garfield said, adding, “Nothing can prepare you for that kind of cataclysm.”Alana Paterson for The New York TimesStill, that’s a lot to deal with while you were shooting this movie. It can’t have been easy.I was hesitant whether I was going to share that, but I feel like it’s a universal experience. In the best-case scenario, we lose our parents and not the other way around, so I feel very lucky that I got to be with her while she was passing, and I got to read her favorite poems to her and take care of her and my dad and my brother. I’ve lost people before, but one’s mother is a different thing. It’s the person that gives you life no longer being here. Nothing can prepare you for that kind of cataclysm. For me, everything has changed: Where there was once a stream, there’s now a mountain; where there was once a volcano, there’s now a field. It’s a strange head trip.You put parts of yourself in other people, almost like they’re the stewards of who you are. And when you lose those people, suddenly you become their steward.As you say, it’s like my mother now lives in me in a way that maybe is even stronger than ever when she was incarnate. I feel her essence. For me, it only comes when one can accept the loss, and it’s so hard for us to do that in our culture because we’re not given the framework or the tools to. We’re told to be in delusion and denial of this universally binding thing that we’re all going to go through at some point, and it’s fascinating to me that this grand adventure of death is not honored.Actually, the only thing that gives any of this meaning is if we walk with death in the far corner of our left eye. That’s the only way that we are aware of being alive in this moment. I think that was the legacy that Jon leaves and the legacy that my mom leaves for me personally, is just to be here. Because you’re not going to be here for long.It reminds me of what was written on your script before all of this happened: “You don’t understand now, but you will.”“You don’t understand now, but you will.” I’m still reeling from the download of understanding what Jon’s life was about, what my mother’s life was about, what all of this is about. Oh God, how lucky to explore that in one’s work! More