Andrew Garfield & Lin-Manuel Miranda Break Down 'tick, tick...Boom!'s' Party Scene

A note on just the incredible production design

of Alex DiGerlando. Yes.

[Lin] This is a real painting that hung

in Jonathan Larson's apartment.

A friend of Jonathan's painted it,

and we got permission from them to mount it here.

There's the wall of books and the bend in the shelf,

which is a detail we found from this extraordinary video

Julie Larson gave us,

of Jonathan filming his own apartment

for insurance purposes.

Hi, I'm Lin-Manuel Miranda,

the director of Tick, Tick... Boom!

I'm Andrew Garfield.

I played Jonathan Larson in Tick, Tick... Boom!

And this is, notes on a scene.

That's right.

♪ This is the life ♪ ♪ Yeah! ♪

♪ This is the life ♪

♪ Bo bo bo bo bo ♪

♪ This is the life ♪

♪ Bo bo bo bo bo, hey! ♪

So, this is our a Capella number in Tick, Tick... Boom!

It's called Boho Days,

and in John's original performance,

when he would perform this as a rock monologue

in the late '80s and early '90s,

he would start the show this way.

And it was this very personal song full of inside jokes.

And he would just go,

[clapping]

and just sing a Capella to the audience.

And I wanted to figure out a way to put that

in the body of the piece.

And so, we reconfigured it

as an impromptu number at a party.

I was stressed about most scenes,

but this one in particular, because, you know,

when you read and you see

John gets the party started with an impromptu

improvised singing number,

solo,

a Capella, you kind of go, no thanks,

I would rather not do that.

[laughing] And then, of course,

you realize you have to.

♪ Shower's in the kitchen ♪

♪ There might be some soap ♪

♪ Dishes in the sink ♪

♪ Brush your teeth if you can cope ♪

And Lin didn't know if I could sing,

and I knew that I couldn't.

So, there was an interesting dynamic at play there.

Andrew and I shared a massage therapist,

but that's a very misleading title,

because what he really does is

stick his elbows into you as deep as possible,

and it's painful.

I knew that Andrew was a client of his,

and I think I asked him,

Do you think he could sing?

He's amazing at everything he seems to do.

And Greg was like, Oh, sure, buddy.

Sure, buddy.

And, you know, that was enough for me.

I just, you have no idea how incredible this man

was in Angels in America

and what a force of nature he is onstage, full stop.

And I just felt like that guy can do anything.

And the particulars of playing piano and singing

is something that if I can give him the time and resources

to feel comfortable doing it,

I know he'll attack it with the same fearlessness

he attacks everything he does.

And me and Lin were brainstorming,

we were talking with with Steven Levenson, our writer,

and I was just trying to figure out a way to get into this

so it didn't just feel, that, so it didn't-

Like a beach blanket party, where it's like,

hey guys! Yeah, exactly, yeah.

And everyone knows the words, and everyone joins in.

I don't want that corny musical theater, like weird,

awkward leap from speech to song.

So we talked about lots of different ways in.

And I think, what I finally felt

was the most organic way in,

and kind of spoke to where Jonathan

was as a character at this point in the film,

is that the party is dying,

and that's devastating for someone

who never wants the party to end, which is Jonathan.

The beginning of this song, it's like the final attempt

to seduce my best friend back to a life of poverty.

Like stay with me here in destitution

and look at all the beautiful ugliness

and joy that you're going to be missing out on.

♪ Showers in the kitchen. ♪

♪ There might be some soap ♪

♪ Dishes in the sink ♪

[laughs]

Immediately.

Just to talk about some of the folks in this room,

Anna Louizos, and her wife, Robyn Goodman,

and Anna Louizos is an amazing set designer.

She was the set designer for In the Heights

on Broadway and her, and her, and her wife,

Robyn Goodman, was the producer of

Tick, Tick... Boom off Broadway,

and was friends with Jonathan Larson.

So I, I love the idea of them

as Jonathan's neighbors who come to

any, any shindig that, that,

[laughs]

that Jonathan and his friends throw.

There's the great Ben Levy Ross and Evan Hansen alum,

who plays Freddie, who's his cohort in the diner.

There's the great Anissa Folds, who's in our improv group,

Freestyle Love Supreme.

Who's going to be in the Superbia Workshop,

and Kate Rockwell, who was a Bring It On: The Musical alum,

who is also in that workshop.

And then, you know, there's Gabriela Montez

from high school musical, also known as,

Vanessa Hutchins, who is just

truly the life of any party she's in.

And so, it was real, some of the cutaways to her

taking up the mantle of the song,

really some of my favorite things.

[Andrew] And she has a lollipop in her hand,

and she's, she's banging it on a pipe right now,

but she'll be banging it on something else

a little bit later.

[Lin] Indeed.

That is not a euphemism.

It's a, that's a real thing.

[laughs]

♪ Dishes in the sink ♪

♪ Brush your teeth if you can cope ♪

♪ Toilet's in the closet ♪

♪ You better hope ♪

♪ There's a light bulb in there ♪

Not today!

This is the great Lauren Marcus.

This character we created for Lauren

is actually based on Vicki Leacock,

who was an indispensable asset in the making of this movie.

She was one of Jonathan's closest friends and patrons,

helped pay for productions.

If you watch the movie a second time,

you'll always see Lauren in the frame

whenever Jonathan is working on a production,

she's the one behind the camera.

So often in real life,

she was the one who was filming moments in Jonathan's life.

She was there with a camcorder on John's last day

in the Moondance Diner.

I love this interaction with them,

and it was compounded by the difficulty of queuing,

the light going out, right when she opened the door,

that was tricky.

But, you know, it was,

that was a really kind of interesting

kind of character that,

that has emotional resonance for the folks

who really knew Jonathan and loved him.

We took it from the beginning of Jonathan

starting the beat all the way to this moment

without cutting.

And we did it in a wide

and we did it closer, as you see here.

To really buy that everyone is picking up

this beat and running with it,

I think you need to see it uninterrupted.

This is terrifying to do.

We wanted it to feel really,

really spontaneous and alive and improvised,

like as if it was all being done on the fly.

I wanted that feeling of him finding the lyrics

as he was doing it.

So he, you know, him going to the kitchen

and saying bath tub in the kitchen,

there might be some soap, like,

him just really finding the song as he goes along.

And he charted the path to, to be able to do that.

And I- Kind of covering

the whole apartment as well,

because it's like,

it becomes an honoring of every nook and cranny.

And it also brings everyone else into,

it brings those guys who were drinking in the kitchen to

sort of see what's going on over there.

♪ Revolving door roommates ♪

♪ Prick up your ears ♪

[Lin] [laughs] I see Kate Rockwell, steadying, you.

[Andrew laughs]

And now he's going through a roll call

of all of the roommates that he's lived with.

And these are real name checks of the people who lived

with Jonathan, in the many years,

he sort of stayed in this five story walk-up

on Greenwich street.

♪ David Tim ♪

♪ No, Tim was just a guest ♪

♪ From June to January ♪

♪ Margaret, Lisa, David, Susie ♪

Sorry. A note on just the incredible production design

of Alex de Lando.

This is a real painting that hung

in Jonathan Larson's apartment.

A friend of Jonathan's painted it,

and we got permission from them to, to mount it here.

There's the wall of books and the bend in the shelf,

which is a detail we found

from this extraordinary video Julie Larson gave us,

of Jonathan filming his own apartment

for insurance purposes.

One of the things his best friend said,

that also really directs, you know,

sort of inspires the impetus of this number,

is that I remember Matt telling us that, like,

he somehow made really ordinary things,

this occasion, he always found a way

to make something a sense of occasion.

So, no, it's not just

a cast party for his girlfriend's friends.

It's a celebration of our lives.

♪ And Stephen, Joe, and Sam ♪

♪ And Elsa, the bill collector's dream ♪

♪ Who still is on the lam ♪

♪ Don't forget the neighbors ♪

♪ Michelle and Gay ♪

It's like John is seeing them last minute,

and it's like, there's something so beautiful

about the honoring of,

you know, these, these, these,

this older generation of artists,

and like, I don't know, there's like,

it's all inclusion, look at that frame.

[Lin] Yeah, it's pretty beautiful,

and also, the, the, the

the fact that Robyn logged hours in the real apartment

on which this apartment is based, and it's,

it's really kind of a lovely embrace across time

in a lot of ways.

♪ Michelle and Gay ♪

♪ More like a family ♪

♪ Than your family, hey ♪

[Lin] Here's the emergence of the great

Alex Shipp and she is wearing, she's wearing a coat,

because we've got the iconic green,

green dress that Jonathan wrote a whole song about

underneath that coat.

And we've got to reveal that later.

The other thing I'm trying to set up here

is making sure that those lyrics

that Jonathan in this context is making up on the fly.

This is the beauty and the, and the,

the curse of John's brilliance is that

he would be honest in a way that was, you know,

maybe borderline inappropriate or hurtful to his own

causes, and he's stoned, and he's drunk, and you know,

what happens in those moments,

and he's high off of performing and everyone's into it,

so he's just going to keep rolling with it

and flowing with it.

And that was one of the things about,

I was thinking about this today, a lot about the, the,

the space that you set up on, on set.

After all that prep, and after all that study,

and getting to know his friends and

his family and reading and, and,

and looking and learning and getting the skill set up

for singing and piano,

I felt like I was able to come on to set

and get out the way, and let Jonathan

just kind of like tell me where to be and

how to, like, it was the joy you brought,

but it was the trust that you brought.

And it was the confidence that you had in us,

and in yourself and all that spontaneity and,

and like inappropriateness was able to come through in ways

that were subtle and sometimes not so subtle,

and this next moment, it's not so subtle.

♪ The time is flying ♪

♪ And everything is dying ♪

♪ I thought by now ♪

♪ I'd have a dog, a kid, a wife ♪

♪ The ship is sort of sinking ♪

You said the quiet part loud, John Larson,

you know, at this point,

they are at a point in their relationship

where it's is this going to, exactly,

is this going to a deeper level,

or are we going to sort of pursue our muses?

And is that going to take us in different directions?

And so for him to say, I thought by now,

I'd be married to this person

he hasn't had this conversation with yet.

It's a really lovely sort of impetus to get us to the next

place and their relationship.

We know that conversation's now gotta happen because

John said the quiet part loud and it rhymed.

♪ Sorta sinking ♪

♪ So let's start drinking ♪

♪ Before we start thinking ♪

[Lin] And here's his friend, Roger,

Josh Henry's character is based on,

is based on Roger Bart.

Who's an incredible actor.

I think he's performing on the west end right now,

as we speak.

And he and John were starving artists together

in the eighties,

they waited tables at different restaurants,

they'd feed each other during their respective shifts.

And if you see any footage of John performing

tick, tick, boom, that grainy VHS footage

that we had access to,

Roger's always in the background, singing high harmony.

And Josh fulfills that function beautifully here.

He's like, oh, he said the quiet part loud,

the ship is sort of sinking.

And he gives me the drink.

And he gives you the drink, and he like,

let's, let's move elsewhere, buddy.

That's a good friend, right there.

Yeah, that's a good friend.

♪ This is the life, yeah! ♪

♪ This is the life ♪

♪ Bo, bo, bo, bo, bo ♪

♪ This is the life ♪

♪ Bo, bo, bo, bo, bo ♪

He was brilliant, in writing a hook that you

could get stuck in your head within seconds,

that, you know,

even as he's like messing around with this song,

you're seeing his, his virtuosity on display.

♪ This is the life ♪

♪ Bo, bo, bo, bo, bo ♪

♪ Bohemia ♪

♪ Ya, ya, ya! ♪

[both laugh]

And then finally, ya, ya, ya,

which is just Josh Henry having fun.

Just being genius.

When we finished it, I could feel it was really special.

I'm very aware that I'm standing here

talking to you because I saw Rent

for my 17th birthday in 1997.

That was the show that made me

feel like I could write a musical.

And then when I was 21 years old,

I see the off-Broadway production of Tick, Tick, Boom,

and it felt like a message in a bottle, for me,

and hopefully for all artists.

And so for my directorial debut,

I knew that that story was one I knew on a

bone-deep level.

And if I only ever get to make one movie,

I think it's, this is one I,

I know I could feel proud of,

and knew something about making.

I think you're going to get to make

at least one more movie.

Oh! Thanks, man!