Andrew Garfield was busy in 2021.
Almost a month before he reprised his role as Spider-Man in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Garfield entered the musical world in “tick, tick… Boom!” playing the lead, composer Jonathan Larson. The film is composer Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut.
Before Larson composes his hit musical, “Rent,” he struggles to break through to Broadway. The movie shows the week before Larson’s 30th birthday in 1990, which to him feels like a death knell. As Larson later describes, Stephen Sondheim had his first show on Broadway before he was 30, while Larson is fighting to finish his musical “Superbia” for a workshop, nowhere close to Broadway.
Larson has only one song left for his musical: the second-act song by the female lead and the turning point of the show. But he can’t figure out what to write. On top of that, his best friend Michael, played by Robin de Jesus, is leaving his dreams of theater to pursue an advertising job, and his girlfriend Susan, played by Alexandra Shipp, has a deadline to decide on a dancing job at a school in the Berkshires. All of this adds to Larson continually hearing a ticking in his head that grows louder as the workshop draws closer.
When the workshop is a day away, Susan needs an answer about the job in the Berkshires, and they argue through a song called “Therapy,” which the show describes as “scenes of a modern romance, told through song.”
As they finish the argument, Susan realizes Larson is trying to determine how to use this break-up as a song in his musical, and she leaves him. Larson goes to the pool, and while he’s swimming–and as the music gets louder and more chaotic–he suddenly reaches a moment of pure calm and the idea for the crucial song he needs hits him. As the workshop proceeds with very few problems, Larson transports back to the moments that inspired the song, envisioning Susan singing as the female lead in the song, “Come to your senses.”
Larson waits impatiently for a call after the workshop, and finally gets one from his agent. His agent says she’s only heard raves about his musical, and “they can’t wait to see what this Jonathan Larson does next.” As Larson realizes his musical is not understandable to any audience, his agent says to keep writing and keep writing, and to keep throwing things at the wall hoping that something sticks.
Broken, Larson goes to his friend Michael in his new advertising office to try to get a job. As Larson panics about running out of time, Michael reveals that he has AIDS, and has only a year at most to live. In this moment, Larson realizes how much he has ignored life in his attempts to write his masterpiece musical, which now won’t even be produced off-Broadway.
Larson runs away to a park, hearing the ticking increasing until it’s the only thing reverberating through his head. Larson then finds a piano in an outdoor concert hall and the ticking stops as Larson begins singing about his life, finding inspiration in his surroundings. Larson’s 30th birthday is the next day. While he sits in his apartment, the phone rings. It’s Stephen Sondheim, who saw “Superbia.” Sondheim tells Larson that he loved the musical and wants to meet up to talk it over.
The movie then moves to voiceover. Larson dies at 35, the day before “Rent” premiers and becomes a sensation. Once “Rent” took off, musical theater changed drastically thanks to Larson’s influence with rock instruments in his sheet music.
“tick, tick… Boom!” perfectly describes the pressure to be a success felt by so many Americans, especially in the modern day. While giving homage to a brilliant composer who changed Broadway forever, and influenced people like Lin-Manuel Miranda, it also shows that nothing can be forced.
While Larson tried to force a hit musical, he found his masterpiece musical later in life when he began to write about his own life experiences. It’s easy to get too focused on one aspect of life, and ignore everything else. But a truly happy life is one balanced between all sorts of things, including friends, hobbies, and jobs. The anxiety of being successful early, or having made this much money by this age is a detriment to living happily, and Larson’s life exhibits this fact perfectly to the audience.