Tony Kushner’s ANGELS IN AMERICA (Millennium Approaches and Perestroika)

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

One scene, one night (Andrew Scott and Dominic Cooper, ANGELS IN AMERICA at the National Theatre's 50th birthday Gala, Saturday 2 Nov 2013) and I wish I had been there to see it.

Dominic Cooper and Andrew Scott

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the National Theatre of Great Britain presents

National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage

bringing together the best British actors for a unique evening of unforgettable
performances broadcast live from London to cinemas around the world.

[youtube=1250,700]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aasE8hkL2DY[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aasE8hkL2DY

If you find the audio is lacking, please use earbuds or head phones.

Angels in America
Part One: Millennium Approaches (1992)

by playwright Tony Kushner.



Andrew Scott [as Prior Walter]
and Dominic Cooper [as Louis Ironson]
in
National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage
Saturday 2 Nov 2013



Yulia Ryzhenkova
Published on Jul 16, 2014

And three and a half years later--

In April 2017, a new production began previews at the National Theatre, London
in the Lyttleton Theatre. Directed by Marianne Elliott, the cast included
Andrew Garfield as Prior with Russell Tovey as Joe,
Denise Gough as Harper, James McArdle as Louis Ironson, and Nathan Lane as Roy Cohn.

In 2018, the production was nominated for six Olivier Awards, including the Award for Best Revival.
In April 2018, Gough won Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the production Best Revival.

In February 2018, the 2017 Royal National Theatre production transferred to Broadway
for an 18-week engagement at the Neil Simon Theatre. The majority of the London cast returned,
with Lee Pace replacing Tovey as Joe.
Previews began on February 23, 2018 with opening night on March 25

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_in_America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Scott_(actor)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Cooper

http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/synopsis/43033-50-years-on-stage
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/national-theatre-50-years-on-stage-ten-tales-play-by-play/1994/

[Front-Ranger]

When and where will it next be staged?

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

When and where will it next be staged?

Do you know, Lee, I'm not sure. Googling, I find that it will be staged in the Phillippines in 2019.

However--I wonder if you have seen the 2003 filmed version (6 episodes/total 6 hours-12 minutes by HBO)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318997/fullcredits

I am only now just aware that it is not only available on Amazon Video--instant streaming!----but that it is free  with Prime! Amazing!  

https://www.amazon.com/Angels-America-Part-Chapter/dp/B00D6PP9LQ/ref=sr_1_1

I love the animated opening credits
that span the country from coast to coast
ending with the Angel in Bethesda Fountain
in Central Park--with an angelic score by
Thomas Newman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Newman

[youtube=1024,768]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27YF4D-HbPg[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27YF4D-HbPg

Angels in America HBO FILMS (2003)

Jesus Gonzalez
Published on Apr 3, 2008

"Main titles" de la BSO de Angels In America, serie de tv con un reparto espectacular y una banda sonora increible del genio Thomas Newman. He utilizado los propios creditos iniciales de la serie, en los que aparecía el tema principal. espero que os guste.
"Main titles" of the HBO of Angels In America, TV series with a spectacular cast and an incredible soundtrack of the genius Thomas Newman. I used the initial credits of the series, in which the main theme appeared. I hope you like it.





https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/12/08/america-lost-and-found





But the camera has its own advantages, and the opening credits of “Angels” offer an astonishing effect, which beautifully sets the stage, as it were, for the movie. The camera moves across the entire United States, high above the clouds and sometimes right through them, and you feel that you’re flying with it as it passes over the Golden Gate Bridge, up and over the Arch in St. Louis, past the Sears Tower in Chicago, past the Empire State Building, finally descending into Central Park and stopping at the statue of the angel in Bethesda Fountain, whose face, to your surprise, comes alive, lifting its blank, grave eyes to stare into your own. “Yes, you,” the eyes seem to say. “This is about you, too.” With this swooping introduction, Nichols has tied the thematic bigness of “Angels” together with the specificity of its story line.







On Television
America, Lost and Found
Mike Nichols and an all-star cast
tackle Tony Kushner’s masterwork.

By Nancy Franklin   December 8, 2003 Issue


There is wide agreement, and no compelling counterargument, that Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” is the most important play of the last decade. A fearless, ambitious work, it took in, and took on, the Reagan years (it is set in 1985 and 1986), American history, the aids plague, sexuality, love, death, religion, and the meaning of community. In its rigor, it made no distinction between the personal and the political, but it was open-minded and openhearted, epic not just in its intent but in its effect on audiences—people were swept in, swept away, and changed by it, their armor cracked. Those who weren’t so affected still more than likely walked away feeling that the chord Kushner had struck, consisting of notes of anger, instruction, intelligence, mysticism, and, not least, humor, would linger in their heads for a long time. Although it has been ten years since “Angels” was produced in New York, Kushner’s play hasn’t become dated; the offstage, real-life world has turned many times since 1993, but there are enough rough equivalents to the issues the play raises that its ironies still seem sharp and its over-all power—its harshness, its hard-won optimism—is undiminished.

“Angels” has now been made into an HBO film, and at least one of the challenges of transferring Kushner’s work from the stage to the screen is obvious: the two plays that make up “Angels”—“Millennium Approaches” and “Perestroika”—total more than six hours. (In theatres, they are performed on separate nights and also sometimes together, as a oneday marathon, with a meal break in between.) In the mid-nineties, Robert Altman planned to direct a film version; he and Kushner attempted to boil the play down to two or three hours. Then another director got involved and Kushner re-expanded the screenplay. Ultimately, Mike Nichols signed on as director and executive producer (his co-executive producer, Cary Brokaw, teamed with him on the HBO version of Margaret Edson’s play “Wit,” two years ago), and the result is a six-hour TV movie—albeit a TV movie with a feature-film budget of sixty million dollars. (“Millennium Approaches” will air on Sunday, December 7th, and “Perestroika” the following Sunday, and HBO will repeat both parts frequently in subsequent weeks.) Kushner has cut little from the original script and has maintained the work’s general shape, although the eight acts, along with an epilogue at the end of “Perestroika,” have been configured into six “chapters,” and the play’s subtitle, “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes,” has been eliminated.

Aside from length, the greatest difficulty in adapting “Angels in America” for the screen—the small screen, at that—is capturing its theatricality. In the theatre, there are times when two scenes are played simultaneously, and when a character from one scene walks into another on the other side of the stage. This presents Nichols with a kind of physics problem; what was represented in space now has to be represented in time, with one scene following another. Nichols wisely avoids using a split screen; what he does is move back and forth between scenes, and to a great extent this technique works, although occasionally the cuts are so quick that you’re forced to pay almost too much attention to the TV screen, in a way that is itself a distraction—you’re too aware of trying to keep track of who’s where, who’s talking to whom, and how the scenes are connected. Anyone who makes the effort to transfer a play to TV runs the risk of focussing excessively on plot and dialogue and of failing to catch the elusive nonverbal elements in his butterfly net. (This is what happened with the TV version of “Wit,” for which Nichols and Emma Thompson, who starred, wrote the screenplay. Most of the deliberately self-conscious stage devices, which were integral to the play, and necessary to give full dimension to the main character, were gone, and the TV version became largely a story about an interesting woman dying of cancer.) There is a certain kind of magic in the theatre that can’t be replicated in any other form, and it doesn’t depend on the audience’s not seeing how it’s done; it’s the fact that you often can see how it’s done—whether it’s an actor undergoing a transformation in front of you or a set design or a lighting effect—that makes you marvel. Kushner acknowledges this in his stage notes. Such moments, he says, “are to be fully realized, as bits of wonderful theatrical illusion—which means it’s O.K. if the wires show, and maybe it’s good that they do, but the magic should at the same time be thoroughly amazing.”

But the camera has its own advantages, and the opening credits of “Angels” offer an astonishing effect, which beautifully sets the stage, as it were, for the movie. The camera moves across the entire United States, high above the clouds and sometimes right through them, and you feel that you’re flying with it as it passes over the Golden Gate Bridge, up and over the Arch in St. Louis, past the Sears Tower in Chicago, past the Empire State Building, finally descending into Central Park and stopping at the statue of the angel in Bethesda Fountain, whose face, to your surprise, comes alive, lifting its blank, grave eyes to stare into your own. “Yes, you,” the eyes seem to say. “This is about you, too.” With this swooping introduction, Nichols has tied the thematic bigness of “Angels” together with the specificity of its story line.

“Angels” begins at a funeral. The grandmother of Louis (Ben Shenkman), one of the main characters, has died, and a rabbi speaks of the journey she once made from the Old World to the New, saying that the gathered mourners, in their own way, make the same crossing every day of their lives. Louis’s journey, it appears, has been one of self-involvement: feeling guilty because he stopped visiting his grandmother years ago, he is about to take on more guilt. After the funeral, his boyfriend, Prior (Justin Kirk), shows him a lesion on his chest—it’s Kaposi’s sarcoma, a sign that Prior has aids—and Louis, at the cemetery, wonders whether he has it in him to stay with Prior, for he is someone who “can’t incorporate sickness into his sense of how things are supposed to go.” By now, we have already dropped in on several other characters, who are at various stages of their own journeys: the powerbroking attorney Roy Cohn (Al Pacino) at his office in New York (where a Times  article about the execution of the Rosenbergs hangs on the wall), cajoling and bullying people on the phone and at the same time trying to sweet-talk Joe (Patrick Wilson), a promising young clerk in the federal appellate court, and a Mormon, into taking a job in Washington. (Later in “Millennium,” Nichols creates a sense of simultaneity, in what Kushner originally wrote as a split scene, with a prize-winning shot: Cohn and Joe are having what Cohn calls a “heart-to-heart” conversation in a bar, which in the movie is the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel, when the camera suddenly swooshes past them through the bar, out the window, across the street, and deep into Central Park, where Louis is having an encounter with a pickup; with this shot, Nichols draws the intended parallel, which is that creepy violence is going on in both places, though more obviously in the Park than in the bar.) Cohn is soon to be told by his doctor that he has aids; Joe will soon accept that he is gay. Meanwhile, Joe’s wife, Harper (Mary-Louise Parker), is at home in Brooklyn, popping Valium to numb her misery over her empty marriage. (When directors need an actress who can appear drugged, Parker is their go-to girl.) And then there is Joe’s spiny mother, Hannah (Meryl Streep), who flies in from Salt Lake City after her son calls her to confess that he’s gay. After telling Joe, “You’re old enough to understand your father didn’t love you without being ridiculous about it,” she says, “We will just forget this phone call.” Streep plays multiple characters, as does Emma Thompson; Thompson’s main role is as the Angel, who pays unwelcome visits to Prior (she bursts through the ceiling of his apartment and causes havoc—it’s all very “Poltergeist”-y), trying to get him to resign himself to his fate and give up on life. The one character who isn’t going anywhere is Belize (Jeffrey Wright, who also played the role, to perfection, on Broadway), a friend of Prior’s who’s a nurse in an aids unit and a former drag performer—that’s because he has already arrived at his full humanity. Belize is kind but unflinching about illness and death, and he is the heart of “Angels.”

It may be unfair to compare the performers in the TV version with the ones in the Broadway staging, but there’s a conventionality to Nichols’s choices in some cases, which gives the production a slick, starry glaze, like a high-polish M-G-M ensemble movie from the days of “Grand Hotel” and “Dinner at Eight.” The excess of glamour detracts somewhat from the play’s essence, and masks its machinery—the wires don’t show. There are some wonderful performances, though. Streep is terrific, and Pacino brings out both the brutality and the pathos of the son of a bitch Cohn. But the hardworking Thompson, who doesn’t have much opportunity to use her gift for comedy here, lacks the fearsome authority you’d expect of a messenger from another world; she’s more like a barking drill sergeant. Prior should be vinegary, even at his sickest, but in Kirk’s hands he’s classy, not sassy, and his frequent sarcasm falls flat. There’s a line of Prior’s, having to do with Hannah’s hairdo, that is known to get a huge laugh wherever “Angels” is performed (it certainly did when I saw the play, with Stephen Spinella in the part); in the TV version it doesn’t even register. Louis’s self-absorption and verbosity should have a measure of charm—we should be able to see that there is an element of boyishness in his endless theorizing and rationalizing and to sympathize with his stubborn immaturity. But, as Shenkman plays him, instead of transforming from boy to man, he just goes from being a cold drone to being a slightly warmer drone.

This version of “Angels” doesn’t fly as high as the opening credits promise (and there are some laughable special effects that help keep it from doing so), but Kushner’s brilliance isn’t easily denied. One character wonders, early in the play, “Imagination can’t create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions.” Kushner’s play answers both no and yes to this question—we have redemption within us, but only if we take the risk of change, and of shedding our skins. Nichols’s version hasn’t watered down the message, but watching it on TV alone in your living room reduces the work to the sum of its parts. What’s missing is the sense of community that you experience in a theatre. To get the most out of the film, watch it with friends; “Angels in America” calls for celebration. ♦

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Although he has contributed themes for TV series such as Six Feet Under  and Boston Public  lately, Thomas Newman has not written for television since his 1992 score for Citizen Cohn, a biopic of Roy Cohn, who ironically features prominently in Angels in America. He’s one of the few really high-profile composers to tackle a TV project of this scale, and although this is Newman’s first collaboration with Mike Nichols, the end result is simply awe-inspiring. It’s easily one of the best scores of his entire career and, had it been written for a cinema movie, would have been a shoo-in for Oscars.



https://moviemusicuk.us/2003/12/07/angels-in-america-thomas-newman/

MOVIE MUSIC UK
Film Score Reviews by Jonathan Broxton since 1997
ANGELS IN AMERICA
Score by Thomas Newman
By Jonathan Broxton   December 7, 2003



The quality of original television music in recent years has improved immeasurably. Long gone are the days when all a TV-movie could hope for was a rising star or ageing has-been hiring a small orchestra or, worse still, mocking it all up on synths at home. Now, with recent excellent works like Brian Tyler’s Children of Dune, Laura Karpman’s Taken  and Michael Kamen’s Band of Brothers, the upper echelons of television scoring is equaling – and occasionally surpassing – that of the cinema. One of these scores which surpasses almost everything written for the cinema is Thomas Newman’s Angels in America, by far one of the best scores written for any medium in 2003.

The film is directed by Mike Nichols, and is based on the award-winning stage play by Tony Kushner about the onset of HIV during the 1980s. It is based around the lives of several gay men – Prior Walter (Justin Kirk), his lover Louis Ironson (Ben Shankman), deeply religious Mormon Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), and harsh right-wing political advisor Roy Cohn (Al Pacino), who refuses to acknowledge his homosexuality for fear of damaging his career – let alone that he (and the others) are dying of AIDS. As the lives of these men intersect, with the specter of Reaganite politics looming in the background, Prior is unexpectedly visited by an angel (Emma Thompson) on his death bed, and given a prophecy from God which will change his life – and the lives of everyone around him – forever. Nominated multiple times for every television award possible (including seven Golden Globes), Angels in America has been heralded as a high watermark in television production, and looked destined to be remembered as one of cable channel HBO’s most fruitful ventures.

Although he has contributed themes for TV series such as Six Feet Under  and Boston Public  lately, Thomas Newman has not written for television since his 1992 score for Citizen Cohn, a biopic of Roy Cohn, who ironically features prominently in Angels in America. He’s one of the few really high-profile composers to tackle a TV project of this scale, and although this is Newman’s first collaboration with Nichols, the end result is simply awe-inspiring. It’s easily one of the best scores of his entire career and, had it been written for a cinema movie, would have been a shoo-in for Oscars.

Imagine the percussive vibe of American Beauty, the pastoral beauty of The Shawshank Redemption, the angry action of The Green Mile, the theme-driven brilliance of Meet Joe Black, the offbeat orchestrations of virtually his entire career – plus a choir – and you have something close to what Newman achieves in Angels in America. For such a dramatic, heart-rending story, Newman had to wring every last drop of emotion from his orchestra; to my mind, he does not do this nearly as often as he should, because when Newman lets his passions and his thematic brilliance fly, as he has shown in the aforementioned scores, as well as the likes of Little Women, he can be one of the most effective composers at moving a listener – or a viewer – to tears.

Tracks such as ‘Angels in America’, ‘Ellis Island’, ‘Bayeux Tapestry’, the hypnotic ‘Mauve Antarctica’, the fiddle-led ‘The Mormons’, ‘More Life’, ‘Garden of the Soul’ and ‘Bethesda Fountain’, are veiled in true beauty, filled with stunningly realized woodwind solos, a multitude of chimes and bells, and shimmering orchestral washes, resulting in some of the most engaging cues Newman has written for a while. The familiar Newman echo, which makes the music sound as though it was recorded in a vast cathedral, is again very much in evidence, giving the score a sense of scale and grandeur. Whereas Newman’s other 2003 score, Finding Nemo, was enjoyable but disjointed, this score flows beautifully from one cue to the next, creating a mood of contemplation and introspection, but infused with a sense of hope.

On the other hand, there is some defiantly different, and occasionally quite dissonant music there too. Cues such as ‘Spotty Monster’ are vibrant interludes, almost middle-eastern in style with rattling percussion and lively bells. ‘Quartet’ takes ambient sound design to new levels during it’s 6-minute duration; ‘Her Fabulous Incipience’ explodes into a fury of electric guitars and percussion; ‘Submit!’ covers the same ground, but the added majesty of an enormous choir; and the frenzied ‘Black Angel’ is quite awe-inspiring, reverberating with a potent savagery one does not normally associate with Newman’s work.

Inevitably, the choral writing – which is virtually ever-present in the second half of the album – is superb, and is something that Newman does not attempt as often as he should. ‘The Infinite Descent’ could have been written by Handel; ‘Broom of Truth’ recapitulates the motif heard in the opening cue, and could have been written by Georges Delerue; ‘Heaven’ is slightly more abstract, and could have been written by James Horner in the 1980s; the solo performance in ‘Tropopause’ is gorgeous; while ‘Plasma Orgasmata’ could have been written by his father – and in that, I am bestowing upon Thomas the highest praise I can. The end credits cue, ‘The Great Work Begins’, could well be the best single cue Newman has written since the finale of Meet Joe Black, five years ago. It more than matches, and in some ways surpasses, the magnificence of that score.

It is perhaps too much to hope that Newman will dispel with the dispiriting style of scoring he employed on White Oleander, The Salton Sea, In the Bedroom, and far too many other scores of late and concentrate on doing what, in my opinion, he does best – this kind of powerful orchestral writing. Alas, I feel that Newman gains more satisfaction from his sound design ensembles than he does from this kind of project and instead I will have to be satisfied with hearing him write this kind of excellence only occasionally. As it is, I cannot recommend Angels in America  highly enough. It is easily one of the best scores of the year.

Rating: *****

Buy the Angels in America soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store and
https://www.amazon.com/Angels-America/dp/B011PYT56Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539569389&sr=8-1&keywords=Angels+in+America+soundtrack


Track Listing:

Threshold of Revelation (0:56)
Angels in America (2:17)
Lesionnaire (0:40)
Ellis Island (2:05)
Acolyte of the Flux (1:15)
Umdankbar Kind (1:24)
The Ramble (1:07)
Ozone (0:58)
Pill Poppers (1:17)
Quartet (6:43)
Solitude (written by Eddie De Lange, Duke Ellington and Irving Mills, performed by Duke Ellington) (3:10)
Bayeux Tapestry (1:49)
Spotty Monster (0:48)
Mauve Antarctica (4:47)
Her Fabulous Incipience (1:06)
The Infinite Descent (0:54)
A Closer Walk With Thee (traditional, performed by George Lewis and his Ragtime Band) (2:54)
Broom of Truth (2:50)
Submit! (1:15)
Plasma Orgasmata (2:57)
Delicate Particle Logic (1:57)
The Mormons (1:51)
Prophet Birds (2:42)
More Life (2:10)
Black Angel (4:10)
Garden of the Soul (4:03)
Heaven (2:00)
Bethesda Fountain (1:17)
The Great Work Begins (3:57)
Tropopause (2:55)
I’m His Child (traditional, performed by Zella Jackson-Price) (3:36)

Running Time: 71 minutes 44 seconds

Nonesuch 79837-2 (2003)

Music composed and conducted by Thomas Newman. Orchestrations by Thomas Pasatieri. Featured musical soloists George Doering, Michael Fisher, Steve Tavaglione, George Budd, Rick Cox, Steve Kujala, Leslie Reed, Sid Page, Oliver Schroer, John Beasley, Bill Bernstein and Thomas Newman. Special vocal performances by Elin Carlson, Dwayne Condon, Chris Ibenhard, Susan Stevens Logan, Susan Montgomery, Bobbi Page and Sally Stevens. Recorded and mixed by Armin Steiner. Edited by Bill Bernstein. Mastered by Joe Gastwirt. Album produced by Thomas Newman and Bill Bernstein.

I love the animated opening credits
that span the country from coast to coast
ending with the Angel in Bethesda Fountain
in Central Park--with an angelic score by
Thomas Newman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Newman

[youtube=1024,768]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27YF4D-HbPg[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27YF4D-HbPg

Angels in America HBO FILMS (2003)

Jesus Gonzalez
Published on Apr 3, 2008

"Main titles" de la BSO de Angels In America, serie de tv con un reparto espectacular y una banda sonora increible del genio Thomas Newman. He utilizado los propios creditos iniciales de la serie, en los que aparecía el tema principal. espero que os guste.
"Main titles" of the HBO of Angels In America, TV series with a spectacular cast and an incredible soundtrack of the genius Thomas Newman. I used the initial credits of the series, in which the main theme appeared. I hope you like it.



https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/12/08/america-lost-and-found


But the camera has its own advantages, and the opening credits of “Angels” offer an astonishing effect, which beautifully sets the stage, as it were, for the movie. The camera moves across the entire United States, high above the clouds and sometimes right through them, and you feel that you’re flying with it as it passes over the Golden Gate Bridge, up and over the Arch in St. Louis, past the Sears Tower in Chicago, past the Empire State Building, finally descending into Central Park and stopping at the statue of the angel in Bethesda Fountain, whose face, to your surprise, comes alive, lifting its blank, grave eyes to stare into your own. “Yes, you,” the eyes seem to say. “This is about you, too.” With this swooping introduction, Nichols has tied the thematic bigness of “Angels” together with the specificity of its story line.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Threshold of Revelation--

[youtube=1200,690]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n-fi15Pjzk[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n-fi15Pjzk

Angels in America HBO FILMS (2003)
PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES ACT 1, SCENE 7
Threshold of Revelation (The Shared Dream)

directed by  Mike Nichols


Frankie Fiddle
Published on Feb 11, 2018

In a fevered dream, Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) is imaginarily doing drag and trying to cheer himself up with makeup, but his depression over his health (he has AIDS) overwhelms him.

Suddenly, Harper Pitt (Mary-Louise Parker) appears, bewildered that Prior (whom she has never previously met) has appeared in what seems to be her  Vallium haze/hallucination; Prior replies that, rather, it is his dream. In the revelatory atmosphere of the shared dream/hallucination, Harper immediately recognizes that Prior is very sick; Prior, in turn, tells her that her husband Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson)--again, another person he has never previously met--is gay.

Harper denies it, but then in an instant of bonding, she understands that it is true. (Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, in the real, waking world, Harper's husband Joe is accidentally meeting Prior's soon to be ex-boyfriend, Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman) at work and Joe and Louis will soon become lovers.)

Within the hallucination/shared dream, Harper leaves, shattered. As Prior smears the makeup off his face, a gray feather falls from above, and a mysterious voice calls to him to "prepare the way."




Available on Amazon Video instant streaming, free with Prime:
https://www.amazon.com/Angels-America-Part-Chapter/dp/B00D6PP9LQ/ref=sr_1_1

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

"I'm leaving--"

[youtube=1200,690]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrEOEh-xJpo[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrEOEh-xJpo

Angels in America HBO FILMS (2003)
PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES ACT 2, SCENE 9
Quartet (A Simultaneous Shared Reality)

directed by  Mike Nichols


slackerati
Published on Nov 18, 2011

Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman) confronts sick boyfriend Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) in Prior's hospital room, announcing he is leaving him as, simultaneously, Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson) confronts his wife Harper Pitt (Mary-Louise Parker) in their apartment, confirming that he is gay, that he has no sexual feelings for her and never did.

Louis flees the hospital room and Harper apparently flees her apartment via the open refrigerator door, with the help of her imaginary friend/accomplice Mr. Lies (Jeffrey Wright).

The underlying soundtrack/score segment by composer Thomas Newman is called "Quartet"

Aside from length, the greatest difficulty in adapting “Angels in America” for the screen—the small screen, at that—is capturing its theatricality. In the theatre, there are times when two scenes are played simultaneously, and when a character from one scene walks into another on the other side of the stage. This presents Nichols with a kind of physics problem; what was represented in space now has to be represented in time, with one scene following another. Nichols wisely avoids using a split screen; what he does is move back and forth between scenes, and to a great extent this technique works--

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/12/08/america-lost-and-found

Available on Amazon Video instant streaming, free with Prime:
https://www.amazon.com/Angels-America-Part-Chapter/dp/B00D6PP9LQ/ref=sr_1_1

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

"Miss Thing!"

[youtube=1200,674]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEoXP-Wp9g[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEoXP-Wp9g

Angels in America HBO FILMS (2003)
PART ONE: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES ACT 2, SCENE 5
Magic Goop: "I'm a health professional, I know what I'm doing--"


directed by  Mike Nichols


Mark Conn
Published on Apr 2, 2010

Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) is visited in his hospital room by Belize (Jeffrey Wright), a black ex-drag queen and registered nurse who is also his former lover and dear friend. Prior wants boyfriend Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman) by his side, but he is nowhere to be found. When he calms down, he tells Belize he has been hearing voices--or rather, a  voice--but begs Belize not to tell the doctor since he also finds it sexually arousing and does not want a different medication that would silence the voice. Belize tells Prior that no matter what, he will be by his side. As soon as Belize leaves, Prior resumes an interrupted conversation with the voice; it tells him that it is not a herald of death but a messenger sent to prepare him to perform a great work.




Available on Amazon Video instant streaming, free with Prime:
https://www.amazon.com/Angels-America-Part-Chapter/dp/B00D6PP9LQ/ref=sr_1_1

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

"Consider it solidarity, one faggot to another."

[youtube=1200,674]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_UIzATWrU8[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_UIzATWrU8

Angels in America HBO FILMS (2003)
PART TWO: PERESTROIKA ACT 1, SCENE 6
That fancy WASP doctor? "Persuade him or he'll kill you."


directed by  Mike Nichols


folby
Published on Nov 14, 2010

Nurse Belize (Jeffrey Wright) unwillingly attends hospitalized Roy Cohn (Al Pacino), who looks very sick. Roy insults him and makes racist remarks; Belize threatens to mishandle Roy's IV and leave him in terrible pain unless he quiets down. Roy does so, partly because he notices Belize's proficient, almost painless insertion of the IV, but then boasts that he is immune to pain, that he can make anyone do anything he wants. Belize turns to leave in quiet disgust, but, with sudden sincerity, Roy begs not to leave him alone. A brutal realist, Roy asks Belize if he will die soon. Belize tells him he probably will, and Roy, surprisingly, thanks him for his candor. Because of this candor, Belize surprises himself and suddenly advises Roy two things: not to let his doctor perform tomorrow's radiation treatment for the KS lesions because it will kill him outright, and not to let the hospital give him placebo drugs for 'doubleblind' testing purposes, which will also kill him. Roy asks why he is helping him even though he hates him. Belize, with a very uncomic eye wink, replies he is doing it out of 'faggot solidarity', implying Roy is a fellow homosexual. Shouting, Roy scorns him, but he takes his advice and blackmails Martin Heller (Brian Markinson) into providing a private stash of AZT.




Available on Amazon Video instant streaming, free with Prime:
https://www.amazon.com/Angels-America-Part-Chapter/dp/B00D6PP9LQ/ref=sr_1_1