Jeffrey Seller

And I said, well, what did Sondheim say?

He said, that show is just you whining about Superbia.

And, you know, those listeners who remember the movie Tick, Tick, Boom that Lin-Manuel directed with Andrew Garfield knows that they had done this big workshop of Superbia and nothing happened from it.

And when Jonathan calls his agent after suburbia doesn't get picked up by any theater, she says, pick up your pencil and go back to work.

So he writes Tick, Tick, Boom and or Boho Days.

And in so many ways, it's his rant about not getting suburbia produced, at least according to Sondheim.

And for me, it was a show about how do I stay true to my dreams without selling out?

And guess what?

Every theme, every motif that's in Tick, Tick, Boom!

ultimately finds its way to the better show, and that's Rent.

Yeah, early on in our professional friendship, he shared with me this idea that someone had given him to make a version of La Boheme that would take place in the East Village in which Mimi would have AIDS instead of tuberculosis.

And I thought it was a genius idea from the moment he told me.

So he was kind of working on two things at once.

But the thing about Tick, Tick, Boom was that

If you took away all the other instruments, and he was just at the piano, and he was in a rehearsal room, and doing it for a bunch of people that could be investors, it seemed, as he was getting older, it seemed to lose its luster.

Like, I wonder if he had moved on himself emotionally, because at some point, as we were trying to get Tick, Tick, Boom!

done, it just sounded like a 30-year-old who's afraid he's never gonna be successful

And I'm not sure audiences really are going to be that sympathetic to a 30-year-old who's already in despair that he's not going to be successful.

Because most of us would say, well, get on with it.

Oh, Lord.