I first heard of the movie “Tick Tick Boom” during the premier at the AFI Fest. I thought it was an odd title for a movie. I was intrigued. The lead actor was Andrew Garfield, and it was directed by first-time movie director Lin Manuel Miranda. It was a no brainer for me to check out the movie on Netflix.
The first time I noticed Andrew Garfield was in the movie “Social Network“. Ever since, I’ve been a fan of his acting prowess.
Tick Tick Boom made a huge impact on me. I could not stop thinking about the movie and the life of Jonathan Larson. Tick Tick Boom centers on the life of the late playwright Jonathan Larson who died tragically at the age of 35 of an aortic aneurysm on Jan 25, 1996, the night before his musical “Rent” debuted off-Broadway. According to Netflix QUEUE magazine, months after his tragic demise, Rent moved to Broadway and ran for 12 years and 5,123 performances before closing in 2008. Ever since, the popular musical remains omnipresent in the modern musical theater canon. Rent is the 11th longest running show in Broadway history according to Wikipedia. The composer/lyricist/playwright received three posthumous Tony Awards and a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the rock musical Rent.
The movie is a musical dramedy, at least in my opinion. The movie started as a one-man show with Larson on stage telling his story on turning 30 and waiting tables in New York city, hoping to write the next big American musical.
Bringing Larson to the screen and seeing Larson personally telling his life story, one really gets to know the playwright. Garfield didn’t have any musical theater background, yet he brought justice to the role and the songs. I couldn’t help tearing up when Garfield sang “Why”, and the cheerful side “30/30” was a masterpiece.
During the showing of Tick Tick Boom on November 20at the Aero Theater coordinated by American Cinematheque, Andrew Garfield was there to promote the film and had a Q&A with the audience after the showing of the movie. He mentioned that making the movie was all healing for him. Andrew mentioned the loss of his mother impacted his performance in Tick Tick Boom. “I needed this. This was healing for me. This was all healing. Having gone through a particular personal thing about a particular personal loss …. I was able to feel all the grieving… all the longing, all the unexpressed love that I was left, with the loss of my mother. I lost my mother before we did this film. Lynn Garfield [my mother]…was an angel and still is. Now she’s back with angel tribes,” Andrew said.
Andrew added, “It was the river of Jonathan’s songs and my mother’s boat was on that river. I got to sing across the water. I got to wake up everyday and honor two people. The honoring of John is healing, that’s how we approach the work.”
The movie is special for me. Like Andrew, I lost my mother in 2020. My mother was the closest human being to me biologically and emotionally and loved her very dearly. As Andrew mentioned when he was a guest on Monday’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, “Tick Tick Boom… has to do with the ticking clock that we all have. We all know somehow deep down life is sacred, life is short and we better be here as much as possible with each other, holding on to each other. For me, I got to sing Jonathan Larson’s unfinished song while simultaneously singing for my mother.”
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