Jonathan Larson (played by a pitch-perfect Andrew Garfield) and Stephen Sondheim (played by an empathetic Bradley Whitford) were two pillars of the musical theater world. The main difference: Larson was robbed of his chance to be as prolific as Sondheim when his life was cut short at the young age of 35, whereas Sondheim lived until just last week to the age of 91 and was often considered a father to any wayward spirit who found solace in musical theater.

What some may not know is that praise from Sondheim is often what kept Larson from giving up. There are touching glimpses of this brief interaction in Lin Manuel Miranda’s tick, tick... Boom! an autobiographical look at Larson’s life through his own eyes and the musical he never finished. With much to love and learn from the film, here are your five screenwriting takeaways this week.

1. Passing of the baton.  tick, tick... Boom! is a who’s-who of musical theater, and rightfully so. It honors those who paved the way—the diner scene about Sunday Brunch!—and will delight anyone who has ever journeyed to Broadway to watch a show. But what many may not know is that Lin Manuel Miranda was influenced by Rent (which Larson composed) when he was just 17. It’s what inspired him to write In the Heights, which he worked on in college before starting Hamilton. While tick, tick... Boom! was Larson’s tribute to the struggles of bohemian life, Miranda’s directorial debut is not only a tribute to Larson, but to all those who paved the way. 

2. The ticking clock.  With his most famous "Seasons of Love" song from Rent, Larson showed the world that he had, perhaps, his own prescient ticking clock. He does the same in Manuel's movie. While Larson watched too many friends dying of AIDS, his own ticking clock—striving for success—ticked so loud in his brain that every day he was motivated to work on his dreams (even if writing his space-aged musical took up most of his 20s). Larson fans are likely aware of his death at an early age, which makes watching the film bittersweet, and feeling Larson’s longing that much more succinctly. 

3. An insider’s look at the process.  tick, tick... Boom! often feels like a rough draft of the masterpiece that is Rent. It’s an insider’s look at a writer’s process as Larson can’t stop himself from tapping out the notes of a song on the shoulder of his girlfriend...as she breaks up with him (in a scene where he lights a candle, that most likely instantly launched Rent fans into "Won’t You Light My Candle"). It’s both lovely and heartbreaking to watch Garfield’s frantic Larson spin even eating cereal into a magical song.

4. Making a musical work as a film.  This feels like no easy feat and much credit is due to Miranda here. Stand-out numbers include "Sunday" as Larson’s Moondance Diner becomes a Broadway chorus of his dreams. Miranda wanted to populate the diner with the who's-who of Broadway, and he does:  Joel Grey, Howard McGillin, Brian Stokes Mitchell, André De Shields, Chuck Cooper, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Beth Malone, Phylicia Rashad, Bebe Neuwirth, and Bernadette Peters. Just as easily as Larson feels trapped in his go-nowhere day job, his imagination equally as easily sets him free when the walls from the diner literally fall away to make room for Larson’s grand ideas. Miranda equally captures the day-to-day mundanity of Larson’s endless stream of consciousness as Garfield seems to achieve the feat of singing underwater in “Swimming” when Larson seeks solace from his boundless ambition by taking to a local pool to clear his head.

5. A show within a show.  Miranda also masterfully melds a live performance of tick, tick... Boom! with Larson’s daily life that leads up to another show: the staging of his musical Superbia. It all sounds very meta, but it also works seamlessly, again working as an excellent device to tear down the four-walled feeling of a musical and giving audiences a more immersive filmic experience, inserting them into the brain, life, and 1990s world of Jonathan Larson himself as he struggles to live in his everyday life and enormous ambition. 

Final Takeaway: tick, tick... Boom! is a masterpiece of an adaptation to screen. With a big budget, a perfectly cast star, and first-time director with a huge reverence for musical theater, the film will please theater kids, Broadway connoisseurs, and the casual viewer alike.