The movie totally lacks all the elements that make the comics so entertaining. I have no problem with a movie being pro-children, but this is exaggerated and hardly accessible for adult viewers.
And yet, the film completely aims for a youthful audience. On the contrary, most of the dry humor and charismatic Garfield poses are difficult to 'get' for young children.
“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.All the years I've been a loyal reader of the Garfield comics, I never had the impression it's merely meant for kids. It reminds me of what was written on your script before all of this happened: “You don’t understand now, but you will.” Because you’re not going to be here for long. I think that was the legacy that Jon leaves and the legacy that my mom leaves for me personally, is just to be here. That’s the only way that we are aware of being alive in this moment. 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.Īctually, the only thing that gives any of this meaning is if we walk with death in the far corner of our left eye. 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. And without that awareness, we will succumb to meaninglessness.Īs 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. That very visceral knowing of loss and of death, that’s what gives everything so much meaning. 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.
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. On the last day of shooting, what I understood is that Jon had it figured out. 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. 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. 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.Įverything is up at an 11. 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?” Jonathan spends the movie anxious about this ticking that only he can hear. “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. 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. 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. 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. But still, with a wide grin, Jon toasts his friends, leaps on his couch and sings, “This is the life!” 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. Jon (Andrew Garfield) is throwing a party, though there’s hardly a reason to celebrate.