Lin approached directing a movie very much the way he would a workshop for a play. Our prep was a discovery process, very collaborative, with lots of people involved. How did you approach shooting the musical numbers, whether to be close or wide, what performer to be on? This is just one example we experienced where it felt like Jonathan was invisibly guiding the making of the movie. Amazingly, only later did we find out that was the pool Jonathan Larson actually swam in every day and that the song literally describes. We kept on noticing that the lyrics of the song mentioned characteristics of the pool. Lin said, “What if he touches the 30 - the number he is so scared of turning - and it becomes a treble clef?” That is the inspiration for the music notes appearing, it wasn’t originally written in the script. I dunked my iPhone under water to explore the pool and we noticed a “30” foot marker at the bottom center of the pool. Lin loved it because the inlaid tile on the bottom looked like music staff paper. When we were scouting for a pool we fell in love with the Tony Dapolito Pool on Clarkson St.
When you hear it with the pulsating music, it really works. The camera crew suggested that we throw the camera on a dolly, but I said no, this is exactly what we want, I’m a hundred percent sure. That’s probably my favorite shot in the New York Theatre Workshop. “Swimming” starts with Jonathan delivering a monologue on stage. “Swimming” and “Sunday are my two favorites. We really wanted to make sure we knew exactly how we were getting into every single song, and for those transitions not to be an afterthought or something found later in editorial.įor songs like “Sextet,” which starts in the rehearsal space for the Superbia workshop and then takes us into Jonathan’s apartment, we did lots of transitions, mostly hidden cuts to get us into different spaces.
We worked much harder on our transitions than I did on other movies. One problem with musicals is getting in and out of songs without jarring viewers out of the story. Nan Goldin ended up being a really big reference for us. I showed Lin a bunch of street photographers from the eighties. That’s how we started creating the musical numbers, from Jonathan’s frame of mind, where the line between dreams and reality are somewhat blurred.
In the opening number, “30/90,” he sings about not wanting to grow up about Peter Pan and “which way to Never Never Land.” That’s very similar to who Jonathan was, his mind was very childlike. It’s etched into my mind, a ten-year-old’s memory where light and color and emotion are all heightened. How did you two develop a visual approach to the script?īecause I left New York when I was 10, that moment in time is forever my New York. Miranda has a background in theater, he’s never directed for the screen before. Well, it can’t get more personal than that.” And then five minutes into our talk, he’s like, “Wait a second, these are your pictures. Lin’s looking at them and thinks that they’re examples of what I think the movie is going to be like. The first page of my look book was just family photos. I was 10 years old, Lin and I are the same age. My family left New York for LA right before this movie begins. As a kid, you don’t realize how great it is to have creative people in your house all the time. Our house was filled with my father’s artist friends, an amazingly wonderful group of people. We lived in a tenement on 29th Street and Second Avenue, an apartment with a bathtub in the kitchen. My dad was a playwright and my mom was a dancer, very similar to Jon and Susan in this story. I started reading the script, and page after page after page, I felt like these could be scenes out of my childhood. The Film Stage: How did you and Lin-Manuel Miranda get together on this project?Īlice Brooks: The Friday we wrapped In the Heights, I got a call from my agent saying Lin wants you to read the script he’s directing. Please note this interview contains significant spoilers about the number “Sunday.” Netflix released this statement: “Lin and the creative team want musical superfans to watch without being ‘spoiled’ on all of the surprises in that scene.” Therefore, one can read at your own risk. Andrew Garfield plays Larson, who would gain posthumous acclaim for Rent. Reuniting with Miranda after In the Heights, cinematographer Alice Brooks––who is currently working on the film adaptation of Wicked––spoke with The Film Stage at the EnergaCamerimage International Film Festival in Toruń, Poland. Marking Lin-Manuel Miranda’s screen directing debut, tick, tick…BOOM! follows composer Jonathan Larson as he struggles to stage a musical show despite the overwhelming pressures of day-to-day life.