tick, tick... BOOM!

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first feature began shooting in March 2020 and stopped 8 days later when the pandemic hit, the last day, 12 March, outside Jonathan Larson’s real apartment. The gap brought one gain: New York Theatre Workshop was now free, so the piece was filmed on the stage where Larson performed it 30 years earlier. Larson’s apartment was rebuilt from footage he shot for insurance 2 weeks before his death. The look of 8 years of Betamax tape shot by his friend Victoria Leacock Hoffman was tried as a visual effect; when that failed, a real Betamax camera was used. Andrew Weisblum began the edit, left for The Whale during the delay, and Myron Kerstein took over; the two share the editing nomination at the 94th Academy Awards, the other was Andrew Garfield for lead actor. Both lost, to Dune and King Richard. Garfield did win at the 79th Golden Globes for musical or comedy; the film’s best picture nomination there lost to West Side Story. A good fit if you can take an ending that turns documentary and reports Larson’s death and Rent from outside. Not for a viewer reading it all as biography: Janet Charleston, who inspired Susan, did not part from Larson as the film has it, and the two were still together when he died.