Lin-Manuel Miranda on why Tick, Tick… Boom! subject Jonathan Larson would probably hate him
Miranda: "I feel a little Aaron Burr like, I don't know why I got to live and Jonathan isn't 61 years old and sitting next to me and maybe yelling at me"
Film Features Tick
Lin-Manuel Miranda always knew what he would direct if he was ever given the chance. He dreamt of how he’d adapt Tick, Tick… Boom!, a series of autobiographical monologues written and performed by the late Jonathan Larson. He would go on to create Rent, but tragically died on its opening night.
Miranda had both seen and performed Tick, Tick… Boom!, and it was an intensely personal production for him. On the carpet at the movie’s premiere in LA, he told reporters that the play “felt like a message in a bottle just for me,” a sentiment that’s not uncommon with much of Larson’s work.
The A.V. Club sat down with Miranda to talk Tick, Tick… Boom! You can check out that interview in the video above, or read the transcript below.
The A.V. Club: I was in high school in the mid-’90s, and I was one of those people that drove around in their friend’s car listening to Rent over and over and over.
I was reading some of what you said at AFI Fest, and you mentioned that first seeing Tick, Tick… Boom! felt like “a message in a bottle, just for you.” I think a lot of people feel that way about Jonathan Larson’s work, and I’m wondering: Why do you think people connect with Larson and his work so deeply?
Lin-Manuel Miranda: I can tell you what I connected with about Rent when I saw it at 17: It felt messy and homemade and personal in a way that musicals don’t always feel. A lot of the Broadway musicals I’d seen, I loved. I was a fan of musical theater from doing shows in high school, but they just feel like they came from some other place. It didn’t feel like you could write one at home.
But Rent was very clearly someone writing about his friends and his community. It was the most diverse cast I’d ever seen in a Broadway show, and that opened things up in me that I didn’t know were possible.
At the end of the day, it’s all about artists living and dying and trying to figure out how to do what they love. I was definitely a high school kid who walked around with a camcorder, and it was easier for me to film my friends than hang out with my friends. So when Roger calls out Mark saying, “You pretend to create and observe, but you really detach,” I felt personally attacked in the back of the Peter Landau theater.
Then, when I saw Tick, Tick… Boom! my senior year of college, it felt like all of those preoccupations in a more concentrated and personal form. It was like, “Hey, here’s what your twenties are going to look like, dude, if you’re really trying to do this.”
And so that message in a bottle thing feels really real. But I think people respond to it because it feels homemade, and feels like it’s for them. You feel artists in it that are flawed and still trying to do their best and get sidetracked by the wrong things and come back to what they love. That’s true of both Rent and Tick, Tick… Boom!
AVC: Part of the plot of Tick, Tick… Boom! is Jonathan struggling with turning 30 and fretting that he hasn’t made it, even though Sondheim launched his first Broadway show at 27 or something like that. You were 28 when In The Heights won a Tony. Would Jonathan Larson be mad at you?
LMM: Probably!
But, you know, when you choose Jonathan Larson as your hero, you’re so superstitious, because Jonathan never lived to see the mark his work made on the world, and that’s so tragic.
One of the things that was really our thesis statement about Tick, Tick… Boom! was that it’s not about Jonathan’s death; it’s about his life. This is about what a life force he was to his friends and the people who loved him.
I think about that a lot. I think about the fact that I actually have been lucky enough to survive, to live, to see how my work connected with the world. I feel really grateful for that. I feel a little Aaron Burr, like I don’t know why I got to live and Jonathan isn’t 61 years old and sitting next to me and maybe yelling at me.
AVC: You did a limited run of Tick, Tick, Boom! eight months before Hamilton came out, which, first of all, how do you get it all done? Secondly, how did working on that show mark that point in your life?
LMM: I did this show about Jonathan Larson at when I was at a crossroads. I was incredibly pregnant with Hamilton at the time. We would start rehearsals four months later.
My wife was incredibly pregnant with our first child, and I’m there doing Tick, Tick… Boom!, the show that clarified my resolve to do this, with Karen Olivo, who was my costar on my first show In the Heights, and Leslie Odom Jr., who would be my future costar in the next show. So it is this weird vortex when I’m actually in the in-between period in all of the phases of my life.
But my biggest takeaway from that production was actually how amazing it was to meet all the real life inspirations in Jonathan’s life who are still alive. His best friend, Matt O’Grady, on whom Michael was based, is still around. His girlfriend was there, his family was there. And there’s something about when Tick, Tick… Boom! is performed. It’s like Jonathan is still around because it was so semi-autobiographical and it was him writing about his friends and where he was at.
And so, it was exciting to draw on that community as a resource so that we could get the most well-rounded version of Jonathan on screen, and not a plaster saint. But the times when he’s frustrating and the times when he’s impatient and self-absorbed and all of it… just as much of it on the screen as we could muster.
AVC: Well, congratulations.
LMM: Thank you! I was late to the interview because I was reading The A.V. Club review! [laughs, then mimes reading his phone] I was like, “A B+ from The A.V. Club is an A anywhere else!”
Tick, Tick… Boom! is in select theaters now. It will hit Netflix on November 19. You can read that B+ review of the movie right here.
28 Comments
I like Miranda but wearing that In the Heights shirt on set feels kind of like wearing a band shirt for the band you’re in while you’re playing a show.
Don’t be that guy.
I saw that too and cannot agree more. If there was ever a perfect example of how to do a publicity shot, this is in the top ten.
Thank you for saying what needed to be said.
Deadstock merch is free merch and free merch is what every theater kid dreams of filling their closet with.
Somehow not as weird to me as wearing who pays you embalmed on a patagonia vest.
iron maiden does that and it rules.
I’m not reading all of this, but I assume the answer to the headline is “for the same reasons everyone else does”
Did Aaron Burr really question why he got to live and Hamilton didn’t? Because, and this is just a guess, I think it was the bullet.
Miranda’s Burr is his own character not exactly the same as the historical one. It’s like Amadeus — people criticize it because there is no evidence that the historical Salieri resented Mozart — in fact he was kind of a fanboy and was partly responsible for recruiting Mozart to the imperial court. But that’s missing the point because Amadeus (and Hamilton) aren’t really serious historical fiction but are using historical characters to tell a story.
So he’s using his own fan-fic version of the historical Aaron Burr to make the point? Eesh.
First time seeing a dork pretend their head canon is real?
Yeah, someone did a really good article on it
https://www.vox.com/2016/4/14/11418672/hamilton-is-fanfic-not-historically-inaccurate
The Hamilton Hustlehttps://thebaffler.com/salvos/hamilton-hustle-stoller
I’m quite glad my knowledge of American history is minimal nor do I have any investment in the founding fathers (not American innit). I think the piece of work Hamilton is very good (guessing you disagree on that) but that’s mostly as a music nerd who finds the work facinating.
Thankfully I got to have that opinion in a little bubble where I didn’t realise much of the way people responded to it in America was in a way that linked the real people with the characters portrayed in the show. That’s a fairly acceptable response, they are real people and LMM did clearly connect to some of Hamilton’s mentality with regards to writing. The way it was jumped on by politicians definitely exacerbated the fact.
To use an example that is plastered all over this website and thus in my mind I kinda wish it had been seen / presented more in line with “The Great”.
I mean but somehow it also makes it more insufferable. And I say this as a person who both enjoys reading and supports the exercise of writing fanfic.
Isn’t that kinda propaganda? Using like major political figures and using them as just an essence of a fanatic story? Creating a false mostly positive idea of historical figures who aren’t what people thought? It kinda forgets about like Hamilton owning humans?
I think propaganda would suggest a significant attempt to change the narrative in history – like if Hamilton had been a slave owner and the show portrayed him as an abolitionist.However at the time of writing the show there was no evidence Hamilton owned slaves (I believe there has been some further discussion on that subject potentially suggesting he did after the show happened) nor does the show portray him as anti slavery (he gives other people shit for being slavers but that’s cos he’s the sort of person who gives other people shit for anything)The “fanfic” aspect comes from over emphasising certain personality traits and making assumptions about motivation. It does also suggest certain historical characters had more in common with modern hip hop artists than they may have done as to highlight the connections LMM is making. As the original poster pointed out, we’re talkling how Burr felt about shooting Hamilton and that he might have regretted it.
Show also doesn’t make Hamilton out to be a good guy. Unfortunately an audience of 14 year olds and retirees may not have always had that takeaway…
I have seen Hamilton and it definitely makes him out to be somewhat anti slavery, but I guess I didn’t know that info came out years after the play. Hamilton is the really when I feel like culture became this thing where we all announce what is the new greatest art that has ever been made. It feels like all a lot of art either wants to be mind-numbing or announce itself as the greatest thing ever made. (I think it’s why people’s reactions to Last night in soho are so stark, because that movie never attempts to announce itself as acaxemic and smart but it also isn’t going for the LCD) I mean Michelle Obama called it the greatest show of all time and its like she went to grand school I’m sure she has read some Toni Morrison that is better no offense. I think that Hamilton is an okay musical but as a fan of history and rap music it’s takes on both are so cringe and annoying to me, it makes Rent look like the holy mountain.
Mostly it’s him giving Jefferson shit for being a slaver which is more Hamilton running his mouth i thought. Laurens is pretty anti slavery though.
You’re right though, things having to be the best thing ever definitely just skews discourse about pop culture. Same as people getting pissy because things get reviewed as B or B+ here. Whilst I was aware of what people were saying about Hamilton in America most of the chat here was between other music nerds noting that it was pretty cool (for the record as fan of rap I really liked how it used the form and history of the medium to inform the story but yeah it’s not really banging rap tracks). Definitely only being half aware of the hype and not being tied into the American politics of it all helped
I remember watching that Tonys clip and the Obama line really highlighted the hyperbole around the thing, I like this show a lot and I don’t at all thinks it’s anything close to the greatest show of all time, it’s not really even a discussion..
piece of fiction is fiction, that and the weather, at ten
Miranda’s everything is his own character not exactly the same as the historical one
I like Miranda and his work, but JFC this movie…aside from the title alone, which I know comes from the play/musical/etc. that Larson wrote, but who fucking cares?? Rent falls into the same category as Forrest Gump for me. I’ve never seen either of them, nor ever will. This is simply because I have been told every part of the story by so many people that I already know the plot, characters, and action, and I have no interest in wasting my time on such drivel. tl/dr. The point is that movies about how musicals or plays or even movies got made are just masterbation for the people making them.
Is it because he’s a fucking dweeb?
Fuck, we’re all on the internet, man. Not just “on social media” kind of on the internet, but “posting on forums/blogs” kind of on the internet. We’re all dweebs.
But that dweeb’s famous and in the public eye. Famous people aren’t supposed to be like us it makes me feel bad about myself.
Jonathan Larson would probably hate us too.
That’s because he’s a dweeb.
The most surprising thing about this film is that he didn’t cast himself as the lead, but I’m assuming he did that for the limited stage run he mentioned so maybe he got it out of his system.