KINGSTON- Award-winning Broadway musical director Lin-Manuel Miranda’s biographical film “Tick, Tick… Boom!” — based on a musical about writing a musical — is this month’s Movies With Spirit screening at 7:00 p.m. on October 21, 2023, at New Progressive Baptist Church, 8 Hone Street in Kingston.
“A knockout,” critic Adam Graham writes in The Detroit News.
“Exuberant and big-hearted,” writes Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“A stirring tribute to the creator of ‘Rent,’” says Peter Travers of ABC News.
United Press International critic Fred Topel adds, “The life of ‘Rent’ creator Jonathan Larson was so dramatic, it could only be told as a musical.”
Indeed, Larson himself initially wrote “Tick, Tick… Boom!” as a one-man autobiographical show in 1991, five years before his death. The show was expanded into a musical in 2001.
The film tells the story of Jon’s efforts to write a Broadway musical in the hope of getting on Broadway. Jon also worries he made the wrong career choice to be part of the performing arts.
Miranda’s film-directing debut follows Jon (Andrew Garfield), age 29, who is waiting tables at a New York City diner in 1990 while writing what he hopes will be the next great American musical.
This lot in life feels particularly humiliating to Jon because his idol Stephen Sondheim had his first Broadway success with “West Side Story” when he was 27.
Days before Jon is to showcase his work in a make-or-break performance, Jon feels pressure everywhere, especially from his girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp), who dreams of an artistic life beyond New York City, and his friend Michael (Robin de Jesus), who left the theater world for a lucrative advertising career.
Jon’s anxieties are compounded when he learns that fellow waiter Freddy (Ben Levi Ross), who is HIV positive, has been hospitalized.
With the clock ticking, Jon is at a crossroads and faces a question: What are we meant to do with the time we have?
The 2021 film runs 1 hour 55 minutes and is rated PG–13.
Its 37 critic and festival honors include Movie of the Year at the American Film Institute Awards.
The film’s trailer can be found on YouTube at https://tinyurl.com/TickTickBOOM-MoviesWSpirit.
The screening will be followed by a facilitated discussion. Refreshments will be served.
Attendees over age 12 are asked to contribute $10 a person.
