"Angels in America" Celebrates 20 Years

I mentioned very briefly this summer that I was working on a piece about Angels in America for a magazine. (That's why we covered HBO's Angels in the 'Best Shot' series -- multi-tasking!)  The magazine is WINQ which covers global queer culture and the issue is out on newstands now. My piece was timed to coincide with the New York City revival. I'm seeing both halves during the Thanksgiving break.

<-- Here's the magazine cover, in case you see it and wanna pick one up to read the piece. There's also some sample pages from their digital edition you can peruse and it's available to download and whatnot. My piece is referenced on this cover near the bottom right hand corner "ANGELS ARE BACK IN FLIGHT: The Great Work Begins, Again."

I'm so used to staring at a computer screen that seeing a piece I've written in print is a different and much rarer feeling.

I also got a chance to speak to Mark Harris while writing the piece -- he's the author of the Pictures at a Revolution that we were all devouring last year -- since the article has a sidebar on him and husband Tony Kushner. Kushner is the playwright behind Angels and an Oscar nominee, too (for the screenplay of Munich). Here's a video from Signature Theater company on Angels 20th anniversary. Tickets are still available for shows in early 2011 as the play has been extended.


Angels In America at 20 Years: Tony Kushner from Signature Theatre Company on Vimeo.

Tell me you'll see Angels on stage first chance you get, wherever the opportunity happens to present itself. It's even amazing in tiny regional theaters (which is where I first saw it in the mid 90s) so seek it out.

Posterized: Dame Emma Thompson

Okay, so she's not a Dame yet. Shut up. It's only a matter of time!

Nanny McPhee costar Maggie Gyllenhaal at Emma's star ceremony
for Hollywood's Walk of Fame earlier this month.

Nanny McPhee Returns is on 2000+ of the nation's screens but I probably won't be seeing it. Remember two days back when we discussed what we were always looking for in a movie? One of my answers should have been beauty. I am not a beauty fascist in real life but I suppose I am at the movie theaters. Hollywood's great actresses should be immortalized with key lights, flawless makeup and evening gowns. Movie stars are supposed to be fantasies... our idealized selves. That's why Old Hollywood still has so much appeal. The studio system understood this. I like beauty on my silver screens so I really don't want to see Emma Thompson -- who can be just ravishing (see Much Ado About Nothing. I mean, my god. She's breathtaking in that movie) -- made to look purposefully hideous.

Anyway... her career in posters.

The Tall Guy (89) | Henry V (89) | Impromptu (91)

Dead Again (91) | Peter's Friends (92) | Howard's End (92)

Much Ado..., Remains of the Day, In the Name of the Father (93)

Junior (94) | Carrington (95) | Sense & Sensibility (95)

Intermission. In early 1996 after five Oscar noms and two wins (acting & screenplay) and several arthouse hits, the screen career seems to slow down. She was only 36. It's difficult to say what caused this. A listers sometimes just volunteer for that and if so who could blame her? Her first six years of fame were crazy huge and chaotic.

<--- Emma with her husband Greg Wise at the premiere of his most recent movie in 2009

Consider... She was 30 when fame hit. The first six years of fame were bookended with her wedding and then divorce from Kenneth Branagh (also often her director and co-star) and the movies were iconic arthouse titles. And then there's that stellar 1993 wherein she won the Oscar in the spring then appeared in three more arthouse smashes, two of which she was Oscar nominated for. [Tangent: If you ask me I think Much Ado... is the best of those three '93 performances -- even if it's the least of the three films -- so it figures it's the one she was snubbed for.]

Or maybe it wasn't an intentional break but maybe the offers just started to dry up? The cinema is sometimes nonsensical like that. This is also the time period in which she and Greg Wise, the dangerously good-looking man who breaks her screen sister Kate Winslet's heart in Sense & Sensibility, fall in love. They've been together ever since and were married in 2003.

The Winter Guest (97) | Primary Colors (98) | Judas Kiss (98)

Wit (01) | Angels in America (03) | Love Actually (03)

Mike Nichols to the rescue with two acclaimed pay cable movies that reminded fans what a sensational screen presence she is.

Imagining Argentina (03) | Nanny McPhee (05) | Stranger Than Fiction (06)

Brideshead Revisited (08) | Last Chance Harvey (08) | An Education (09)

not pictured: Pirate Radio (09), two Harry Potter films (04/07) the current Nanny McPhee sequel and a few cameo parts or voice roles.

How many have you seen? Is it odd that she's not in the last two-part Harry Potter film (I can't remember if that character is in the last book)... or if she is, that they aren't crediting her since she's not listed as being part of the cast? And don't you wish she'd have more plum parts again? She was so moving in Last Chance Harvey but it was one of those sacrificial December lambs needlessly disposed of during the year's busiest month. When I rewatched Angels in America a few weeks ago, I was reminded what a glorious comic personality she has. She's the best of both worlds, really, able to wear both of those iconic thespian masks. She sells comedy and tragedy with equal inspiration.
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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Angels in America

We're only three episodes in and I've already polluted the idea of this new series, in which participants are supposed to choose their single favorite shot from a film. I offered up a fantasia of multiple shots from Showgirls. The idea is to choose only one shot from each film. I did a better job with X-Men. And I'm so happy that people are now playing along... even if the one shot thing is difficult difficult difficult. But this time our indecision is totally rational. Tony Kushner's extraordinary stage epic Angels in America was adapted for the screen in 2003 by Oscar winning Mike Nichols. Rather than limit myself to one shot I'm picking one from each chapter. This I can manage!

Chapter 1 "Bad News"


Mary Louise Parker and Justin Kirk in their pre-Weeds duet. Harper and Prior, the abandoned lovers, are dolled up to provide themselves with distracting glamour in their shared hallucination. But their lonely hearts club memberships are too strong for these distractions to be successful. The framing is deliciously funny here. You could title this still "The Lurking Homosexual" and really, whether it's the men she imagines behind walls, or her own husband or this imaginary friend "aren't you too old for imaginary friends?" she knows he's there.

Chapter 2 "In Vitro"


There are so many shots in the six hours where Prior looks devastatingly lonely as both his condition and his fury at the deficient boyfriend grows. The darkness is going to swallow him up.

Chapter 3 "The Messenger"


It's a slightly canted angle, which tends to be lazy shorthand for "TENSION!" but I mostly chose this shot because the physicality in the relationship between leering Roy (Al Pacino) and confused Joe (Patrick Wilson) is so fascinating. Roy is constantly pawing at Joe, totally hot for the young buck. Joe is mostly oblivious but likes to be touched and yet, it always comes out wrong... particular between the two of them (their next close physical contact will involve clenched shirts, gay confessions and lots of blood). Joe raises his fist and Roy keeps egging him on (he wants sex but he'll definitely take violence as a substitute -- check out the dirty thrill in Pacino's eyes with a sideways glance to Joe's fist)... it's all so disturbing. Roy Cohn is basically the devil. He's asking Joe to sin -- pick a transgression, any transgression -- but the genius of the scene is that it's not terrible advice in this case. Something's gotta give.

Chapter 4 "Stop Moving"


This scene is excitingly lit, both for its obvious bids for EPIC MOMENT status and for its rapidfire shifts in feeling: glaring whites, golden softness, blue mood. Plus, Emma Thompson is just hilarious as the self regarding, impatient and highly vocal heavenly creature.

Chapter 5 "Beyond Nelly"
Here's where I stop being able to choose. It's late at night. I'm exhausted and I love every hallucination in this great piece of theatermovie. An astounding monologue about racial impurity and the afterlife from Belize (Jeffrey Wright) to Roy ends with this condescending dreamy dismissal "Go to sleep now baby. I'm just the shadow on your grave." Director Mike Nichols and cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt chase that line with this incredible image.


Both the dead (Meryl Streep as Ethel Rosenberg) and the living (Belize...but "out" gay men in general, really) are haunting Roy. And they'll cast a shadow over him forever. But isn't it rich that you could layer that threatening lullaby monologue over the nearby image of Joe and Harper's tragically unsexy reconciliation and it would work just as well.


Everyone is haunting everyone.

Chapter 6 "Heaven, I'm in Heaven"


My favorite part of chapter six is the frankly incredible duet between Meryl Streep and Al Pacino as they trade hauntings and tauntings, one dead and one dying but both entirely obsessed with defeating the other. "I WIN!" It's the kind of lengthy scene you dream of seeing Great Actors perform together. Neither of them pull any punches but it's also not lazily over the top. It's just perfection, a lucid dream of a duet. But I couldn't decide on a shot. So let's hear it for the absurd diorama (so chintzy, boxy and tiny) that is the angel's final arrival. It's an epic in miniature, both entirely cinematic and thoroughly stagebound. Any time Angels in America embraces both modes simultaneously, it wins.

"Best Shot" Angels
Thank you to these fine heralds for spreading the holy 'Best Shot' word. "I... I... I... I... I..."

• Crossover Man 'Joe & Roy gathered at the edges' is totally interesting. Read it.
• Serious Film "The magic of the theater" ohmygod. almost picked this same shot.
• Nick's Flick Picks the always provocative Mr Davis, picks a naked addition to the text as an emblem of his feelings.
• Low Resolution Belize and Ethel and the most potent of Angels many messages.
  
• Well, Hello Achilles divvies up the best shots to part 1 (Prior) and part 2 (a chaos of character)
• Much Ado About Nothing highlights the characters and great quotes (but doesn't like the way the movie treats Joe Pitt)
• Against the Hype goes all Lust, Caution on us. Not only do I think Angels in America is brilliant but I think it tends to inspire brilliance in the audience, too, lifting them up. It's just so rich for personal connections and time and place cultural slotting.
• vg21random Redemption as Orgasm. See what I mean?
  

 Other Films in This Series

• Angels in America (2003)
• X-Men (2000)
• Showgirls (1995)
• Bring It On (2000)
• Black Narcissus (1946)
• A Face in the Crowd (1957)
• Pandora's Box (1929)
• Se7en (1995) 
• Requiem for a Dream (2000)

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Angelic Visitations

I was just working on tonight's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" (we'll be posting about 10 or 11 PM so get yer post up before then for linkage!) Had to pause my skimming for much laughter about this post funeral scene. So I figured I'd share it. In the sequence Prior is telling his best friend Belize (Jeffrey Wright) about the heavenly visitor (Emma Thompson) who had recently come calling. Belize thinks it's just a fever dream. But Prior tells him all about their sexual progress.

She had eight vaginas.

Wright's two beat silent reaction shot just slays me.


A shrug, then a mouthed "eight". So so funny. Little moments like this are why I've been obsessed with actors forever. And Jeffrey Wright is such a great one. He's 'Best in Show' in Angels in America (maybe) and that's like being the best holiday in a year. The other ones are merry, too!

Speaking of "Best in Show"... I hope you've enjoyed the first three installments of my new column at Tribeca Film where I've covered Winter's Bone, The Kids Are All Right and Inception thus far. I was going to cover Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom next Monday or Tuesday (the film opens Friday) but I ended up interviewing its new Aussie director instead. His name is David Michôd ... remember the name. You may have already read my seven word review or picked up on Glenn's enthusiasm for it. I fully expect Animal Kingdom to win awards attention come year's end. At least of the Independent Spirit variety. You can read the interview here.
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A Postcard from the Edge of Shutter Island.

Thought I'd share a fun little trivia nugget from a recent interview with the actress Robin Bartlett. You may remember Bartlett from her recurring role on TV's Mad About You or as the unusually named "Aretha" from Postcards from the Edge.

"Are you black?"
"...no."

Robin: I loved playing Aretha. That was another good piece of writing. Carrie Fisher is no slouch in that area.

Bartlett has appeared in two Streep movies (she's also in Sophie's Choice) and now she's taking over a role many viewers will automatically associate with the great one herself. She's currently in rehearsals for the mammoth "Mother Pitt" role in Angels in America (it's actually six roles on stage). The classic play is getting a New York revival this fall. Tickets go on sale on August 3rd. (I've just finished a magazine piece on the revival -- yes print still exists.)

During our chat we talked briefly about her big scene in Shutter Island earlier this year. Leo is questioning all the asylum crazies and we see Robin madly scribble something dramatic into his notebook before sliding it his way, all sneaky like.


Nathaniel: Is that your actual handwriting?
Robin: If that was my handwriting, you wouldn't be able to read it.
Nathaniel: [Laughter] The magic of the movies!
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Cast This! "Scar Night"

The Film Experience book club is returning. Hell, I figure I'm turning the pages anyway. Reading is a great subway activity and we New Yorkers spend much time on subways. So why not hold those monthly weigh-ins with readers about 'who should play who?' in imaginary movie versions of novels. We've done this a few times in the past: the historical fantasy The Curse of Chalion, the corporate satire/drama Then We Came to the End and one play August: Osage County. The latter turned out to be one of the biggest comment threads ever (109!) at TFE .

So, the next selection will be Scar Night by Alan Campbell. I'm about a fifth of the way in and have already met enough interesting characters to make it a worthwhile casting discussion. So, if you like fantasy novels, pick it up and read this month. We'll discuss casting on Wednesday, June 30th. This is a debut novel which takes place in the chained city of Deepgate (it's a bit steampunk flavored) and stars two very different angels (the last of their kind), a sinister theocracy, and all sorts of secretive unsavory business and dark magic. An intriguing read so far.

We'll discuss casting on Wednesday, June 30th.

DVD: Legions of Doctors With Dark Edges and Days Broken

I have two DVD assignments I haven't completed but I have them on my docket of many things to write about (per your requests: An Education and Bad Lieutenant await) but you can give me another one today because sometimes I play like this is The Masochist Experience* Here are some movies that have arrived on DVD in the past week or so. Which will you be watching and which one do you want to read me writin' about? I'm not offering up Nine the musical as an option since I've already written so much about it though secretly I'm kinda eager to see it again. Don't hate. I just really don't believe it's as terrible as people made it out to be. Oscar season does weird things to consensus.


the new stuff

• Daybreakers -In which Ethan Hawke is vampiric and Willem Dafoe is...? What is Willem Dafoe. I sometimes do not know.
  
• Doctor Zhivago (45th Anniversary Edition) -In which Omar Shariff and Julie Christie have an epic romance. I've actually never seen this. And it's strange that people don't talk about it more. It's actually one of the most successful pictures of all time. If you adjust for inflation it was a bigger hit than Avatar, Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Godfather. No joke!
  
• Edge of Darkness -In which Mel Gibson unleashes his trademark whoopass on bad guys... even though he never exactly behaves like a good guy himself.
  
• Leap Year -In which Amy Adams and Matthew So Goode earn paychecks.
  
• Legion -In which Paul Bettany is a badass angel fighting God's supernatural devils or something. I don't really understand what's going on here, theologically or otherwise.
  
• Tooth Fairy -In which The Rock continues being the modern day equivalent of Ahnuld: action flicks alternating with jokey family flicks.

poll by twiigs.com

* I have a lot on my plate but I am unemployed at the moment so I am going to wrap up all the things I've been lagging on. I know what they are...

Warren Worthington III

9 Days til X-Men: The Last Stand opens.

I try not to be excited for this installment. But I just can't help myself. I mean, Angel. It's like they made this movie just for me. Well, except for the Brett Ratner directing it part. And the Kelsey Grammar playing the beast part. And the Halle Berry still playing Storm part. And the non-focus on the Dark Phoenix storyline part.

But...Angel.

What can I do but count down the days?