Dear anyone who read the two articles I wrote late last night,
I apologise for anything I may have said to embarress myself and have sworn I will not visit Joeuser after 8pm.
Here I will attempt to re-review Angels in America - hopefully a little less insanely (I will be leaving the afore mentioned articles as a reminder to me that I'm nuts)
*** What a powerful movie, I wish I could have seen the theatre production. I've spent the better part of this morning trying to find a script online - or some memorable quotes particularly from the last seen but it was to no avail.
One of the interesting things I found - has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, cinematography, screenwriting or acting ability -- which were all first class -- I don't have anything bad to say about it apart from the aforementioned weird stuff I wrote in my other blog about this movie.
No the interesting thing I found was the director Mike Nichols -- he featured in a book I read last week called "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" by Peter Biskind -- it was a book about "how the sex 'n' drugs 'n' rock 'n' roll generation saved Hollywood" -- In it it dipicted the 70's from Easy Rider to Raging Bull and talked about all the major Hollywood directors at the time, Mike Nichols, Francis Coppola, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielburg and some of the big studio heads -- talked about their childhoods, battles ith drugs and alcohol and their roky relationships and how they got their movies made--- I read another book about a month ago about the same Era -- it was Robert Evan's autobiography - The Kid Stays in the Picture.
SO it was really interesting to note that one of the "characters" in the book i read was the director of Angels in America. Not only that but there were many references to other movies in AiA (street car named desire, rosemary's baby, the exorcist, wizard of oz, sunset boulevard)
Which was also weird because Pollansky who made Rosemary's baby and Friedkin who did the Exorcist were also featured in Biskind's book.
I really liked this movie - having never seen the play or read the script I can not say whether the adaptation is good -- although Tony Kushner wrote the screenplay for the movie as well as the play so he probably didn't stray too far.
Too sum up I think it was about tolerance. IMO -- Look at Meryl Streep's character of Hanna -- she managed to accept her son was gay, her daughter-in-law crazy, accept and SUPPORT Prior during his illness and she even had an orgasm with a female hemaphrodite angel -- still not sure what that had to do with anything but anyway -- maybe it's all about tolerence
I REALLY wish I could quote the last scene at the fountain with the Angel.