Lin-Manuel Miranda Exhausts His "Appeal" With "Tick, Tick... Boom!"

It's New York! It's music! It's the THEATER! It's... awful.

May 10, 2022

In writing, there is no more damning word than “I.” It is the death of credibility. It sucks the reader out of the journey and establishes a voice of wish fulfillment rather than one with something to say. It is only acceptable under two conditions: you're locked and loaded with the anecdote of a lifetime, or a feeling is so intense that leaving yourself out of the situation is equivalent to sticking your hand into a deep fryer and trying not to scream. The pain is searing, the emotions high, the need for self-preservation inescapable. The poison must get expelled, even if it means, with sadness and regret, using “I.”

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In July 2019……. I (SIGH) ventured to San Francisco. It was my third time in the City by the Bay, but this occasion was significant.

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I was going to see Hamilton.

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No greater sin has ever cursed the world than the musical: not the Black Plague, Adolf Hitler, or even the great Milli Vanilli lip-synching scandal of 1989. No mode of storytelling is so convinced of its greatness. It's the crack where theater people slither in and infect movies with their pointless songs and spastic dancing, where ordinary conversation get disrupted by bellowing about things that could get resolved by simply speaking normally. Alas, I still desired to like musicals. I wanted to find the one that would relieve my traumas, and with all the rave reviews, Hamilton seemed to be the one. I knew not to trust people, but it is difficult to fight belief when many seem zombified.

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As I filed into the theater, I felt a creeping dread envelop me like a crisp fog on an autumn night. It was a familiar feeling. I suffered it before West Side Story, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Gigi, Dreamgirls, Singin’ in the Rain, La La Land, Chicago, Moulin Rouge!, and every other musical I’d ever seen. I told myself to shake it off and assumed my seat in the Loge of the Orpheum Theater. The damage done to my soul that day cannot get quantified.

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I could not figure it out. I had no clue what was going on or why. Every song got rapped so quickly you were lucky to discern what was said. The cast was insultingly stacked with minorities. Representation is not arbitrarily casting minorities as white historical figures and then having them stumble their way through the most watered-down imagining of rap ever known. The songs got rattled off one after another so quickly you could not breathe. The story ham-fisted illicit love and flung its actors across the stage, employing spectacle to distract from lacking substance.

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I could feel the people around me forcing laughter, although it is difficult to ascertain when theater people are being disingenuous vs. being so warped by their pomp that genuine laughter sounds fake. I knew it in the clapping. You see, there is a secret audiences have kept for centuries. It is veiled to protect the performers, but it also shields the self-perceptions of the crowd. “Nice” is the most American concept. It is a baseless word of no value that gets taught as the objective standard of human decency because we do not want to be honest. If we project some vague idea of politeness, it means we are “good.” We crave the simplicity of a moral binary. Nuance is the arch-nemesis of such binaries: if the simplest means of attaining “nice” status hold firm, setting apart the “bad” people is effortless.

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Alas, we cannot mask the clap (except with 500 mg intramuscular ceftriaxone). When an audience claps sincerely, the beat is jumbled only for a moment. No one knows quite when to applaud, so an overeager ticket holder bursts with joy and begins the clapping. As everyone recognizes it is now time to cheer, the furor spreads. Outside that one moment, you can hear the uniformity. When an audience is unimpressed but feigning amazement to appease that destructive concept of being “nice,” you can discern it. The beat is off. No one is in rhythm because the experience is not communal.

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In other words, they are lying.

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I, on the other hand, cannot lie. As the intermission came, I could stomach it no longer. I got up, walked out, and got met by a peppy usher outside the theater doors:

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“Make sure you keep your ticket, sir!”

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Little did she know, that ticket never made it out of the theater.

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I knew at that moment musicals would never be for me and that no matter how much the world tried to pretend otherwise, Lin-Manuel Miranda was a talentless nuisance. He is all showmanship, using heightened activity to mask his lack of imagination. He creates entertainment for rich, old white people who think themselves progressive. He is the epitome of confusing the ability to do something with the ability to do it well. When In the Heights bombed at the box office and got few awards rumblings, I was happy that I could skip it. Little did I know, lurking in the shadows, shrouded in darkness, aching for the moment it could burst into the light and drown out all joy with its irritating earnestness, was a film more horrifying than any slasher flick: tick, tick… Boom!

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It recounts Jonathan Larson’s (writer of Tony-winning musical, Rent) life as he toils away in a crappy New York apartment struggling to write the great American musical. His artistry is undeniable in his mind but little appreciated by the viewing public. It is not difficult to see what prevents their adoration, and therein lies the primary issue of tick, tick… Boom!, outside of being a musical.

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Larson’s impact is negligible compared to how the film presents him. He is the man behind Rent, which means a great deal if you enjoy theater and nothing if you are anyone else. Anyone can exploit the admiration of those feigning respect after death. After all, no artist knows success like one who died young.

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We have no reason to invest in Jonathan. We cannot condemn him for his folly because the film insists on painting him as the patron saint of artistry. We cannot enjoy him as a character because he always takes the selfish course and hides his iniquity with a goofy haircut and the earnest “charm” all artists mistake for actually being charming. His persona on stage may have been appealing in short doses, but the man we get presented is insufferable. We cannot support him in his dreams when he rolls over so many people and principles to achieve them, minimizing everyone in his life for his supposed genius. His best friend, Michael, establishes a career in advertising, which cues the pseudo-artist manifesto as Larson chastises him for not emoting the soul or something. When he gets gift-wrapped a money-making opportunity he undermines it, risking said best friend’s reputation because of his narrowness.

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Michael, offended over Jonathon’s disrespect for his career and forsaking the opportunity he gave him, throws his platitudes back in his face. He clues him into his privilege without being preachy. It is simple, after all. We can write essays or make documentaries, march down city streets or post pissy philosophies on Instagram, but the truth is plain: not everyone has it easy.

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It is not simple for people to pursue their passions. The film takes place nearly ten years after the onset of the AIDS crisis, and the world is different for gay men than it is today. Jonathon, a straight white male, can easily criticize those without his options. Michael could test positive tomorrow. If your life is ending sooner than you planned, who is someone else to dictate how you spend your time?

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It is something worth exploring, but the movie disagrees. It resolves the conflict by not addressing it further, as though acknowledging shortcomings and warped views once can develop them. The film thinks the art matters most, but as with all art, the artist, or at least what we can learn from them, is more interesting.

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But tick, tick… Boom! thinks popping off hyperactive, cutesy songs in quick succession makes something worth watching. It believes that a man who loved music needs to have his life story turned into a musical where every second cares more for spectacle than story. It imagines that it can manipulate us into caring about someone by giving a weepy narration establishing his death and then refusing to make him an authentic person for the rest of the movie.

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It is not uncommon for such movies to fail. Everyone in the same profession believes genius is objective. Everyone thinks the truth is plain as day and more staggering than anyone outside the realm of that genius can fathom. Former athletes speak wistfully of their contemporaries, swearing their superiority over the recent stars for no other reason than era. Artists recall the brilliance of past creators, behaving like today’s inventions are copies and not evolutions. You can see the misty eyes staring back at you. You can see the admiration oozing through the screen. Everyone involved has such adoration for Larson the movie feels like a "thank you" to God for gracing us with his life. It makes for a great passion project… and a terrible film.

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When we look at things through rose-colored glasses, we see rosy colors. It may be one-dimensional, but at least our perspective has some context. In a film so devoted to its internalizations, nothing gets externalized. It is lively with no buzz; it is animated but lacks color. Every song is peppy to mask a lack of creativity. It moves and speaks and bolts around the Concrete Jungle but has no mind of its own. It has no imagination, vigor, or zest. It is just a buzzing bee, making noise but no honey.

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The movie eventually realizes it has not told a true story or made a sincere effort to capture its subject, so it has Michael test positive for HIV and Susan dump Jonathon to inject unearned feeling. The problem is, that feeling is in Larson… the real Larson.

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His real-life performances show a clever man with a knack for performing and a voice with something to say. He feels like a complex balance of winking at the camera and believing every word in earnest. Sadly, the movie sacrifices him for a fetishist, saintly depiction of a man whose sole quality was apparently disguising his iniquity with song. It is no surprise. Miranda is so in love with taking speedballs and then vomiting rainbows that creating a fully-realized human being was always a dubious proposition. But without Larson feeling like a genuine person, the genius tick, tick… Boom! wants to impart feels like your grandkids putting on a song and dance for your birthday. No unique quality exists to help understand why this man means anything. The closing narration tells us Rent changed the idea of what a musical could be: it does not say how, and that could have been a story worth telling.

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It is bad enough that it's slow, almost because of the rapid-fire musical numbers. It is bad enough that the collection of talent around its lead is subpar. It is bad enough that the closing number, meant to justify the movie devoted to Larson’s genius, is a straight white dude in New York bellowing “WHYYY???” while lecturing us on the importance of actions he is not undertaking himself. It is damning that a movie so enamored with its hero says nothing about him. Worst of all, however, is that tick, tick… Boom! is more an exercise in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ego than an examination of the man he seems to admire so deeply.

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I knew it would be this way the moment I left the Orpheum Theater two-and-a-half years ago. I was unaware tick, tick… Boom! would ever exist, but I knew a horror loomed on the horizon. It was something that would zip and zing and sway and sing but mean and feel like nothing. It would be something hollow, where activity would distract from the emptiness. It would be something that would tick, and tick, but never boom.