Andrew Garfield shines as the creator of Rent in the Netflix musical Tick, Tick… Boom!
Lin-Manuel Miranda makes his directorial debut with a unique biographical musical set in 1990
Film Reviews Tick
In the most charming moment of Tick, Tick… Boom!, a group of New York City artist types lounge around a cramped apartment in the waning hours of a party. Suddenly, host and aspiring musical theater composer Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield) launches into an a cappella tribute to the bohemians who sacrifice creature comforts and steady paychecks in the hope of following an artistic dream. It’s less a fully realized musical number than a semi-realistic rendering of the sort of navel-gazing that theater kids are inclined to indulge in, harmonized vocals and all. Meanwhile, a finance bro watches in awe at the spontaneous group creation happening around him—gawking at a world so different than his own that it might as well be another planet.
In his debut feature as a director, Lin-Manuel Miranda can see both points of view here. His adaptation of this deep-cut stage show is an unabashed ode to theater kids, one filled with so many Broadway Easter eggs and cameos it’ll have fans pausing their Netflix screens every few minutes to catch them all. But Miranda’s bigger goal is to make the insular, self-involved world of musical theater accessible to those who are more inclined to gape at a spontaneous performance than join in. Like Miranda’s other big 2021 project, In The Heights, Tick, Tick… Boom! is refreshingly unembarrassed by the fact that it’s a musical. But it’s also a musical that tries to deconstruct why musicals matter.
Garfield plays Larson, the real-life composer who changed Broadway forever with Rent, his generation-defining rock musical. Tick, Tick… Boom! is an earlier, semi-autobiographical work written by Larson, which started life as a one-man “rock monologue” performed by the composer himself. After his untimely death, the musical was revamped as a three-person show about a composer named Jon and the personal and professional anxiety he feels on the verge of his 30th birthday, which just happens to fall right around the same time as a high-profile workshop presentation of his avant-garde new musical. For their big screen adaptation, Miranda and screenwriter Steven Levenson rework the material into something even more explicitly biographical, pulling in context from Larson’s life and his place in musical theater history. “This is Jonathan Larson’s story,” the opening voiceover explains, before adding a cheeky caveat: “Everything you’re about to see is true. Except for the parts Jonathan made up.”
It helps that Miranda has found a pitch-perfect match of character and star. The real-life footage of Larson that plays over the end credits confirms that Garfield’s turn is an impressive act of mimicry. But, more importantly, it’s also a full-bodied, fully realized performance in its own right. Garfield’s solid singing voice is surpassed by his wildly impressive physicality. He embodies this role from the tips of his toes to the top of his curly mop of hair. And his lanky, jittery energy is as compelling in quiet moments of realism as in the big production numbers where he quite literally throws himself into the choreography. In Garfield’s hands, Jonathan becomes a charismatic, mercurial, anxiety-ridden, soulful, funny force.
He’s also the sort of myopic artist who can be frustratingly self-absorbed. (“I’m the future of musical theater,” he says by way of explaining his job.) Yet he has an earnest puppy dog quality that makes it impossible to stay mad at him. It’s a push-pull that characterizes Jonathan’s relationship with his girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp), a dancer who wants to inject some pragmatism into her life. That’s also true for Jonathan’s lifelong best friend Michael (Robin de Jesús), a former actor who switched to a more lucrative job in advertising. Both are annoyed by Jonathan’s tendency to bury himself in his work at the cost of everything else in his life. But there’s something that keeps drawing them back to him, too.
It’s not a million miles away from the themes of Miranda’s Hamilton, which is also about a sometimes difficult man who spends his life writing like he’s running out of time. But Tick, Tick… Boom! brings Miranda much closer to his own experience as an aspiring composer looking to shake up Broadway’s sound. In many ways, this is just as much Miranda’s story as it is Larson’s (Miranda has even performed the role of Jon on stage), and it’s that lovingly personal touch that elevates Tick, Tick… Boom! Though the movie deploys a framing device that lets Jonathan serve as the narrator of his own story, Miranda doesn’t get too bogged down in trying to come up with rigid rules for how the musical numbers work. There’s a wonderful fluidity to the way a grounded dialogue scene suddenly becomes a dance number that weaves among the shelves of a bookstore, or how a trip to the local pool becomes a fantastical representation of creative inspiration.
But there are missteps here, too. The attempt to root the story in the AIDS crisis of the early ’90s is well-meaning but clumsy, and save for a few standout numbers, the songs here are more uneven than the ones in Rent. And some shoddily composited green screen backgrounds may reflect the difficulties of shooting during a pandemic—the production had to shut down after only a week of filming in March of 2020.
Regardless, Tick, Tick… Boom! is buoyed by Garfield’s towering performance and its game supporting cast, particularly Vanessa Hudgens as a vivacious musical theater performer and Bradley Whitford as legendary composer Stephen Sondheim himself. In joyfully embracing just about every tool in the movie-musical toolbox, Miranda crafts a fitting tribute to the act of artistic creation. And he might just make some musical converts in the process.
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Jonathan Larson has to think about his whole life before he writes a musical…
*after witnessing a montage of all his friends succumbing to AIDS* “Goddamn, this is a dark fuckin’ period!!!”
I mean …
That was part of the irony of Larson’s death, right? One of his best friends had been diagnosed with HIV at a time when it was still considered a death sentence. Given the ubiquity of HIV in the performing arts community through the 90s, it informs Larson’s experience (and all of RENT). But then it was Larson who dies unexpectedly young just before the premiere of what would be his legacy (and the chance to workshop a couple of more lyrics … looking at you “think twice before you poo poo it”). Other people found themselves the survivors.RENT is now a period piece, but so is Larson’s life to some extent.
Dude I was just making some Walk Hard references!
In an interview with the New Yorker about this, Lin-Manuel Miranda got to note that the likeliest Michael analogue, Larson’s close friend Matt O’Grady, is still alive and kicking.
I love the line from the bag lady in Rent who says “my life’s not for you to make a name for yourself” as it’s basically what Larson did to all his friends who died.
That totally reaffirms my feeling that Mark was the author stand-in (in addition to the character I most related to as a teenager). One of my favorite parts from Rent is when Roger is telling Mark that he “pretends to create and observe when [he] really detach[es] from feeling alive,” and Mark says that “perhaps it’s because [he’s] the one of [them] to survive.”
That’s between Larson and his friends – and maybe they’re arguing about it in the great beyond – but personally, if I have to choose between my death inspiring something and just being dead, I’m going with Door Number One. Who cares if someone gets rich or famous with it? I’m dead in this scenario—there won’t be any part of me left to care.
Fair enough.I do think it depends too on how someone dies and if the person inspired by it brings awareness to the cause. Did Rent do that? ….Kinda?
Garfield plays Larson, the real-life composer who changed Broadway forever with Rent, his generation-defining rock musicallmao he did no such thing.
I mean maybe he did, but in no good ways.
I adore “Rent”, but the rest of Broadway just went flowing on around it largely unchanged.
Interesting.I am ambivalent about Rent at best, but I see it’s fingerprints all over Broadway musicals of the last 20 years or so.
It would certainly make a good discussion… with listening and visual aids, maybe? 😀
I disagree. I feel like Larson’s rock/pop music influenced style basically became the norm for Broadway musicals that followed. The musical itself has aged poorly, but you can still see that style all over new musicals today.
“Everyone has AIDS! AIDS, AIDS, AIDS!”
“My best friend has it, and so do you!”
It’s deeply flawed, but you can’t for second argue that Rent wasn’t massively influential on the Broadway musicals that followed.
How? He cribbed the story from La Boheme, it wasn’t the first rock musical, it wasn’t the first musical to feature queer characters (or even queer characters of color), it wasn’t the first musical about “artists in NY”…
It was massively successful, yes, and inescapable for a few years, but there’s nothing about the musical itself that distinguishes it.
Were you around when it came out and did you see what shows looked like before and then after? Having the band onstage alone was an enormous deal. Having it be a rock band was an enormous deal. Having it be rock music at all was a big deal (I don’t know how to tell you this but JCS is not actually rock). It just sounds like you don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean I hate Zack Snyder but I don’t deny he is influential
I mean I hate Zack Snyder but I don’t deny he is influential
Ouch, ANathanofFillions!I resemble that remark….
Hair broke open Broadway for rock musicals about 30 years prior to Rent. Grease, Rocky Horror, Little Shop, among others, all carried that torch forward as successful and/or influential productions. Broadway audiences were not unfamiliar with rock music when Rent arrived.
name a rock musical with actual rock music between Hair and Rent. Also, the difference between 60s rock and 90s guitar driven rock is significant, but you don’t know anything so there’s no point in talking to you
The Apple (1980). It was a film not Broadway, but I think it counts. It’s weird as all hell and doesn’t really work, but I love it.
that doesn’t count, we are talking about broadway audiencesbut I really do need to get around to seeing that and Xanadu
“Hey hey hey… BIM’s on his way!”
Fun fact: the villain Boogalow was played by Vladek Sheybal, who was close friends with Sean Connery and Michael Caine when they were all starving stage actors in 1950s Britain. Unlike the other two, Sheybal’s film career was much lower profile despite Connery trying to help him out by getting him cast as a secondary villain in From Russia with Love.
But those musicals were all exceptions in their moment. Little Shop and Grease were pastiche musicals, representing pop music from a different era. Little Shop didn’t even make it to Broadway until 2003 (after Rent). The Rocky Horror Show only played about 6-7 weeks on Broadway when it first came out. The movie found cult popularity, but it certainly wasn’t a Broadway zeitgeist like Rent. Even its Broadway revival only played a little over a year. (And again, that was after Rent.) Most importantly, the sound of other Broadway musicals that followed those three still sound a lot more like more classic musical styles than the styles of new musicals that followed Rent. Larson took modern (for its day) pop-rock stylings and applied those to musical theatre, thus giving audiences what sounded (at the time) like a very fresh, hip sound.I am definitely open to the argument that those musicals unlocked the door to more pop-rock style musicals, but I also argue that Rent opened that door.
It wasn’t the first, but it popularized that style of musical. (Rarely is the thing that has the biggest impact the thing that is the first to do it.) I went to see a new musical that’s in a pre-Broadway run this fall, and while I was watching it, I just kept thinking to myself, “This is the Rentification of musicals.” Now, I would agree that most of the better Broadway musicals that have come out in the past 25 years have more unique sound styles (though I can almost certainly draw a straight line from Rent to Hamilton), but if you look at the middle ground new musicals, their songs sound far more like Rent than like Andrew Lloyd Webber, Les Mis, R&H, Sondheim, etc.
Garfield did INDEED play Larson, I saw the trailer and everything. . . .
I read that and had the exact same reaction. My closest cousin and his family are big Broadway buffs, and they are all “Rent sucks”. And they’ve been saying this for 25 years now. Truly personal aside: I first read about this two years ago, and the title still just…JFC. It hurts just reading the title. How fucking pretentious can you get?? I’m sorry he died the way he did, but he did himself a disservice by this name on his play.
Bullshit—Garfield clearly plays Larson. Oh, you meant the other one.
Come now. This is the AV Club, man. Nothing is just a movie/show/book/album/song. Every single thing that comes out is a groundbreaking, gamechanging, flex of a masterpiece. When something is reviewed by the AV Club, they start by assuming it is a groundbreaking, gamechanging, flex of a masterpiece and work from there.
I really really really dislike RENT, but that doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge that it had a major impact on theater. There’s a good argument to be made that it’s one of the most impactful musicals of all time.
“Garfield plays Larson”imagine it’s cartoon cat Garfield playing Gary LarsonLasagna ToolsThat’s what it would be called
Tons of mixed feelings on Rent, Lindsay Ellis summed it up pretty well, along with the context of the government’s response to AIDS. Some chilling parallels to Trump and Covid. I guess things were always shit.
“I guess things were always shit.”Pretty much.
Man, I’m so tired of seeing her after that shit where her followers were complaining that Twitter “cancelled” her. She just draws the worst kind of audience for some reason.
Yeah her Reddit is surprisingly reactionary and full of bros. She was the protoSarkeesian so it’s weird how things have changed in her fandom, people who would’ve hated her 6 years ago now defend her every action.
I think it’s primarily because Lindsay shares an audience with Natalie Wynn who peaked in 2018 and, ever since, basically manufactures drama on Twitter by punching down on nonbinary and asexual people and than making one or two 90-minute video essays a year which is just her vlogging in pretty dresses about how people on Twitter are mean to her. It also doesn’t really help that Lindsay also capes for Natalie whenever she causes this drama. They’re also not above using reactionary rechtoric to the point where I both find them way too toxic and there are so many better Left Wing YouTubers who don’t spew toxic drama to boost their views.
I just got tired of her, and to a much greater extent Natalie’s, drama that could easily be solved by just apologizing. There’s enough bad shit in the world that I shouldn’t have to deal with some YouTuber’s vlogging in pretty dresses about how people on Twitter are mean to them rather than just own up for doing a microaggression.
There’s just a degree of pretentiousness and narcissism to her(and many other of her peers) that’s been increasingly apparent. Ellis basically was one of the reason that made me realize a while back that people can have the moral opinions on things yet still be a self-serving asshole.
Maybe it’s just awkward phrasing, but “The attempt to root the story in the AIDS crisis of the early ’90s is well-meaning but clumsy” reads as if that was shoehorned in to the movie versus it being a huge real life component of Larson’s story, for better or worse.
I unabashedly adore Rent, but Tick Tick Boom always felt like the first draft of a show that got tossed out and retooled to become Rent.
It seems odd to me that the filmmakers took a semi-autobiographical story by Larson and turned it into a biopic about Larson. The cynic in me thinks they did it so that awards bodies would commend Garfield for his impersonation of a real person rather than a great portrayal of a fictional (albeit, based in reality) character.
I think it may have been intended as more of a tribute to Larson. Impersonating Larson wouldn’t be that much of an achievement since he was not really personally known by an audience outside of the NY theatre community. I think any attention Garfield gets will be based on how he plays the ‘character’.
Are we allowed to say Rent is shit? Its aged like milk and outside a few good songs it can be skipped. This film could be great but the play isn’t.
I dislike all the characters. They’re the worst kind of hipster assholes. They immediately turn on anyone who has the audacity to get some success, and sneer at their apparently loving families who are concerned about them. None of them actually GAF about the homeless people.
What’s your opinion of La bohème, which is basically the 19th century version of the story which RENT is aping?
Jonathan Larson was Jewish (and so is Andrew Garfield), but of course the movie doesn’t mention that. It’s about the 478th film or mini-series over the last several years to take out the fact that the lead is Jewish (a real person this time), along with Birds of Prey (Harley), My Salinger Year (Joanna Rakoff), Shirley (the couple), Pet Sematary (the wife), The Undoing, Defending Jacob (the female lead), Wonder, Paper Towns, Beautiful Boy, etc., etc.
Jonathan Larson was Jewish (and so is Andrew Garfield), but of course the movie doesn’t mention that. It’s about the 478th film or mini-series over the last several years to take out the fact that the lead is Jewish (a real person this time), along with Birds of Prey (Harley), My Salinger Year (Joanna Rakoff), Shirley (the couple), Pet Sematary (the wife), The Undoing, Defending Jacob (the female lead), Wonder, Paper Towns, Beautiful Boy, etc., etc.Actors with two Jewish parents: Mila Kunis, Natalie Portman, Paul Rudd, Logan Lerman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bar Refaeli, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Adam Brody, Kat Dennings, Gabriel Macht, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Erin Heatherton, Lisa Kudrow, Lizzy Caplan, Gal Gadot, Debra Messing, Gregg Sulkin, Jason Isaacs, Jon Bernthal, Robert Kazinsky, Melanie Laurent, Esti Ginzburg, Shiri Appleby, Justin Bartha, Margarita Levieva, James Wolk, Elizabeth Berkley, Halston Sage, Seth Gabel, Corey Stoll, Michael Vartan, Mia Kirshner, Alden Ehrenreich, Julian Morris, Asher Angel, Debra Winger, Eric Balfour, Dan Hedaya, Emory Cohen, Corey Haim, Scott Mechlowicz, Harvey Keitel, Odeya Rush, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy.Aaron Taylor-Johnson is Jewish, too (though I don’t know if both of his parents are).Actors with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers: Timothée Chalamet, Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Franco, James Franco, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Radcliffe, Alison Brie, Joaquin Phoenix, River Phoenix, Emmy Rossum, Ryan Potter, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Connelly, Sofia Black D’Elia, Nora Arnezeder, Goldie Hawn, Kristen Stewart, Ginnifer Goodwin, Judah Lewis, Brandon Flynn, Amanda Peet, Eric Dane, Jeremy Jordan, Joel Kinnaman, Ben Barnes, Patricia Arquette, Aidan Gallagher, Kyra Sedgwick, Ali MacGraw, Ryan O’Neal, Dave Annable, and Harrison Ford (whose maternal grandparents were both Jewish, despite those Hanukkah Song lyrics).Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jewish and/or identify as Jewish: Ezra Miller, Zac Efron, David Corenswet, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Tiffany Haddish, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Andrew Garfield, Winona Ryder, Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Douglas, Ben Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nikki Reed, Jonathan Keltz, Paul Newman.Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised. Robert Downey, Jr., Sean Penn, and Ed Skrein were also born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. Armie Hammer, Chris Pine, Emily Ratajkowski, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, and Finn Wolfhard are part Jewish.Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism: Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.
Now I don’t feel so bad for walking out midway through the show. It was giving me a very bad headache.
If you’ve never heard/read David Rakoff’s (RIP) take on Rent, it’s worth seeking out.
I think it’s interesting that Miranda is directing it and has expressed great admiration for “RENT,” and his own smash musical “Hamilton” hasn’t aged that great either. Not like “milk,” but.. I dunno. Juice left out too long?
Yeah it hasn’t aged super great. Its not bad but flawless masterpiece its not.
High school liked-RENT-but-wanted-to-be-cooler-than-RENT me glommed onto this show. It cleay comes from the same mind, but is less valorizing and more honest, and thus more endearing. I will take Jon and Michael having fun with their divergent choices in “No More” over Roger and Mark doing the opening LA Boheme burning-shit-for-warmth any day.
You are!! Rent was doomed from the start! We are bohemes, downtowners, hipsters, queers, outsiders, squatters, …… Come to the Nederlander Theater and pay $150 for a ticket and buy our merch!You see the problem there?
I’m not much of a Garfield fan, but Never Let Me Go was both extremely moving and horrifying at the same time. The description of his character here sounds similar to that earlier part. It made his turn as Spider Man a little ridiculous, imo.
No one ever talks about Never Let Me Go. But I agree, Garfield was absolutely heartbreaking and magnificent in that role. As was Carey Mulligan. I left the theater a wreck that day and the movie stays with me in some ways still.
All of the actors were so committed. The performances were amazingly nuanced – almost to the point that one might altogether miss the utterly inhumane plot and storyline. It’s nice to know that someone else appreciated it.
I had to stop reading the book. It was just too too…. After you realize what’s happening it’s like looking into a personal holocaust.
I eventually figured out what you meant, but I was a loss at first as to how not being a fan of the cat who loves lasangna and hates Mondays (why? He’s a cat. It’s not like he has to go to work), had to do with appreciating a film based on a novel by Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro.
Because I’m old, I was at a party with the Rent cast right after it moved to Broadway, and they were the nicest people ever. Just so lovely, so enthusiastic and so happy the show was a success. Someone mentioned Larson and tears flowed. It was very sincere. I saw the show, and my conscious brain wanted to hate it but I the spirit was so infectious that I was totally won over.That said, it was dated at as all get out in 1996. It’s cringe-y “money is evil” stupidity drove me bonkers. But the worst thing was the idea of suburban white kids romanticizing things like being a transgendered sex worker, being homeless, being a squatter and dying of AIDS. Nothing romantic about any of it.
They say there’s no people like show people…
The songs from Rent are so catchy…“Where is the rent?I must have the rent!Dollars, dimes, and nickels,I need them all right now!”
A movie musical adapted from a stage musical about the writing of a stage musical that was adapted into a movie musical!
I love how weirdly a lot of musical FilmTwitter people are rooting against this musical for getting in the way of In The Heights’ Oscar hopes (as well as WSS). It makes me want to root for it.
“…a finance bro watches in awe at the spontaneous group creation happening around him—gawking at a world so different than his own”I hope you’ll all tune in to the sequel I’m writing, wherein said finance bro is so inspired by the experience that he goes on to invent mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps, and all manner of amazingly creative financial derivatives that these stinking bohemians could never even dream of.
Not a perfect film, has some flaws, but enjoyed it.
But one thing that was kind of fun is it felt like Miranda cast all the small parts while at a Tony after-show party. Dozens and dozens of Broadway stars in blink-and-you-miss it parts, but not done with the extra couple of seconds on them until you realize who they are. I enjoyed that.
Did not like Rent. But this had me really on board. There’s something about true talent cut down in its prime. The things Larson would have created are mourned here and rightfully so. His heart in the right place, his gift for musical language and mentors like the mighty Sondheim– just no telling what we missed out on. RIP.
I agree but for different reasons. Because Larson based Rent on an existing story, it feels a lot less personal, even if he did work in how so many of his friends were dying at the time. Tick, Tick… Boom! is definitely deeply solipsistic, but in a way that also feels genuine. I can’t speak to Larson’s original musical, but the way that Miranda and Levenson have written this story, it seems to address the ways in which Larson’s lifestyle and personality may have been very problematic, even if he was also a great musical writer. One example (and Lindsay Ellis covers this much better in her video about Rent): the fact that a lot of these characters clearly have adopted this starving artist lifestyle by choice. Rent doesn’t critique this much (it portrays the ones who have opted to be able to pay their bills as sellouts), and it makes the musical frankly shittier for it. But Tick seems to at least more openly address how Jonathan living this life is a choice he’s made, not something he’s been forced to do, and therefore all the hardships he has to endure as a result really are in some ways self-inflicted. (To be VERY clear, I would never argue that poor people have a choice. But Jonathan, just like Mark in Rent, could clearly take actual jobs or get support from their families. They are choosing to “Common People” it.)
can someone point me to the breakdown of the cameos in the diner scene?I know i missed about half of them.(btw the movies excellent. You need to love musicals, but there’s some excellent performances and bravura directing. Great fun)
https://slate.com/culture/2021/11/tick-tick-boom-movie-netflix-diner-cameos-broadway.html?fbclid=IwAR28FgVoGZWmaKCLeM3UAt7kKh1B0_90vv-XkOMQJx5b6q-0B1Vx7D2MvoY
you are a river to your people. Thank you SO much.
It was an interesting production with some cool cameos but I gotta say…the music was pretty awful, particularly the lyrics, which I found fairly cringey throughout. Surprised that Sondheim was supportive. I’ll see myself out…
the revisionist history on rent in these comments is hilarious, and i think its doubly funny that the movie AGGRESSIVELY didn’t engage with rent (beyond a few winks and nods) and that’s all we’re talking about here? god go piss in your own cereal lolthis movie was a great, unexpected treat. maybe a B/B+ movie but Andrew Garfield’s performance is one of the best I’ve seen in any movie, ever. Magnetic. Incredible stuff.
They cut “Just Want to See Her Smile.”Let me say again, they cut “Just Want to See Her Smile.”As much as I enjoyed the movie, I’m still aghast.
So this is why musical theater plotting sometimes doesn’t translate to film. I understand there are pluses and minuses, but compressing everything to the week of Jonathan’s workshop makes his girlfriend into a crazy person. The script makes it sound like “she needs an answer” but instead it’s the week of his workshop. It’s the week of his workshop. It’s the week of his workshop. So she busts in on him and starts a fight when he is in the middle of the most important professional week of his life so far. This was undoubtedly Larson himself or the adapters who turned it into this show who disserved her in this way but this WILL NOT FLY in a movie. We accept this crap in a musical, not in a movie. In the movie, his friend who needs his advice and his girlfriend who needs to have a talk are wrong because “when will we ever talk about it?”? NOT DURING THE WORKSHOP OF HIS SHOW. This is why people who don’t watch musicals, especially movie musicals, do not watch musicals, especially movie musicals. This compression is lazy. If anybody behaved like his gf does here during the most important professional week of their life the girl would get dumped immediately. If she wants to go to Massachusetts then go, forcing the issue during this week (which sounds made up to create dramatic tension) is a psychotic needy controlling thing to do. Then she tells him “what if” everything he does is a complete failure and says “what about me” and then tells him what she wanted from him was for him to tell her not to go and completely disrespect her career and needs (which she just said he was ignoring). I just don’t know women who act this way, A, and if they did, B, they’d be fucking crazy.
As compared to you, I was very sympathetic to her. Life doesn’t always time things conveniently. She had this opportunity come up at a time that was not convenient for him, but it also served to amplify flaws in their relationship and how their priorities differed which probably would have resulted in them splitting up in the long run. I felt like she gave him MORE room than she might have otherwise (given the deadline she was also under) since it was the week of his workshop.
and she wasn’t even leaving for spiritual and professional fulfillment.