Angels in America: The HBO special

Cafe Society
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For anyone who’s interested, I watched the first three hours with my paperback reprint of the script in hand. The teleplay follows the published stage script very closely; some of the monologues are trimmed of their middles, and the second half of one scene is cut, but other than that, the TV movie pretty much uses the stage script.

And that’s the thing that I have to question about the adaptation, which is similar to what Chefguy was getting at when he said “tell the goddamn story.” Dialogue that works on stage does not necessarily work in film, particularly in this case. Kushner, in the play’s introduction, requests a stripped-down production, with minimal sets and no long blackouts, to put the focus on the actors and their characters. In this way, the stage space becomes Anyspace; it can be realistic, it can be fantasy, it can be a blend of the two. Heightened dialogue isn’t jarring to our ears because we interpret the space flexibly.

Film, though, is very literal. Put a guy on a park bench on stage, and there’s nothing around him to distract from the heart of the scene. Put a guy on a park bench in a movie, and behind him you have a very real wall and a very real tree next to a very real sidewalk running along a very real street with very real traffic in a very real city under a very real sky. It feels a little strange to have somebody in a naturalistic set saying something like this: “What’s it like to be the child of the Zeitgeist? To have the American Animus as your dad? It’s not really a family, the Reagans, I read People, there aren’t any connections there, no love, they don’t ever even speak to each other except through their agents.” (Act Two, Scene Seven.) It’s great writing, and on stage it’s electric, but in a film: I’m not so sure. It has to be that way, so the fantasy sequences aren’t completely out of place, but the whole thing has a somewhat distracting tone for me.

Even so, I found myself choked up several times, and the final few seconds were tremendously moving, so I’ll reserve total judgment until I see the second half. But I have to wonder if the whole enterprise isn’t conceptually flawed, at root.

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Okay, I decided last week that I’d withhold judgement on this until I’d seen it in its entirety. And now I have.

What a load of pretentious crap.

Insanely stilted, unbelievably poetic dialog espousing adolescent philosophy in irritating, preachy lumps. Characters that were a bewildering combination of shallow and bizarre, veering off in random directions for no apparent reason. They didn’t so much interact with each other as simply coexist noisily.

The fantastical elements were hackneyed and weird, but not weird enough to be more than mildly amusing. The writer seemed to introduce them, and then have no idea what to do with them, and they backed him into a corner he couldn’t write himself out of.

I know that this is a sensitive issue, but I thought the play handled it in as vapid and puerile a fashion as possible. It seemed thoroughly unoriginal, and I found myself examining set design, blocking, and costuming throughout in order to make the six-hour ordeal at all bearable.

Until the end. Which was apparently delayed by several other ends that had queued up in front of it. This movie had more false endings than a villain in a Bruce Willis action flick. And each one felt like a tacked-on moral that had precious little to do with the movie I’d just finished watching.

I’m glad I saw it, so I no longer wonder what it’s like. But I’m bummed that I had to spend six hours of my life to do so.

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is HBO gonna show it all in one run? I was wanting to tape it when it did as something always interfered with taping Part I.

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I think they played a great joke on all of the ultra-conservative, bible belt, Christian housewifes that believe in Angels with every ounce of their being. They probably tuned in expecting something quite different, as implied by “Angels in America”. Instead they got Sodomites and AIDS! I love it.

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But the fact is, they didn’t tune in, devilsknew.

Mr. Visible, the play worked better on stage but, after giving this play every consideration by seeing the stage production, reading it and watching the movie, I have to agree with you.
After six hours, the ultimate revelation we get from Prior is “I want to live.” Well, It’s a Wonderful Life got there first and manages to say the same thing in 1/3 the time in a far more compelling, universal and coherent way (Did Capra’s film influence Kushner? Don’t forget Clarence). Most of the protracted business with the heavenly messenger simply doesn’t work at all and is downright embarassing at times. If these scenes are the fantasies of Prior’s fevered brain, which would at least make sense, than what was the point of having Meryl Streep there to witness the last one, except to have a girl-on-girl moment?
Much, much less here than meets the eye.

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Question for them who watched it. Does Part 2 start off with a recap or scenes from Part 1? I want to tape it but if the run time is 3:15 I can’t fit both parts on one tape unless I can leave off a chunk at the beginning.

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Yeah, I’d say there’s about a five-minute recap.

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Watched part 2 last night (and had just enough tape to get it all including the credits). I liked it much better than part 1 and way better than reading the play. I followed along a bit with my play copy and I think the cuts made worked well. A lot of the mystical angel claptrap got cut and that was a lot of what didn’t work for me the first time I read it. I had also forgotten that there wasn’t really a prophecy, that Prior rejected the prophecy without revealing it. It has been a decade or so since I read the play. Interesting that they chose to separate the two main storylines by cutting scenes like Prior and Harper at the visitor center.

Pacino’s performance worked better for me this time. I realize that Cohn was supposed to be this larger-than-life figure but in part 1 he was just too much. I’ve never been a Streep fan either but I really liked her in this (especially the scene from part 1 where she’s talking to the homeless person). Emma Thompson, I never realized what a striking woman she is. Am I the only one who got a little aroused during her mid-air scene with Streep? Talk about an unexpected reaction…

I hated Prior’s outfit. I realize he’s supposed to be in Prophet drag but when he was stalking Joe all that kept going through my mind was that he looked like a refugee from LOTR.

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RE Emma’s hotness… THE TALL MAN with her, Jeff Goldblum & Rowan Atkinson (title may actually be THE TALL GUY)

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It’s THE TALL GUY. Wonderful movie with a brilliant Andrew Lloyd Webber parody and Rowan in tights (again).

That sex scene was funny and hot. And parodied in DUCKMAN once. Great movie.

Ahem. Anyway, it’s a lot of fun and you get Emma and Jeff nudity, what’s not to like?

I have yet to see the 2nd part of ANGELS, I’m waiting for the Thursday-Sat rerun since I’m out M-W nights. Ah, the holidays. I have read the play, although I didn’t see it when it was on Bway. But I did see Steven Spinella, the original Prior, in TRAVESTIES at Williamstown this summer playing James Joyce. Brilliant and he’s still tall and skinny (as opposed to his costar David Garrison, who’s short and skinny) with his wonderful singing voice strong as ever.

BTW, lots of AiA discussion going on here at this theatre message board.

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I-I-I-I-I liked the first part more.

I’d say I-I-I-I-I liked the build-up (meeting the characters, getting the dilemmas, getting a taste of mystery) more than the pay-off, which amounted to what basically? About 1.5 of Prior and the Angel with the worst disalogue of the screenplay, hammy acting by Emma Thomson, and the epiphany: “god, why do you allow suffering? You should be sued.”

Still, I-I-I-I-I enjoyed it overall. Pacino was good, and I’m usually critical of him. The nurse/travel agent was very good. I-I-I-I-I was just hoping for more of a payoff, or a learning experience.

AsNanook said, “there’s less here than meets the eye.”

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Slightly off-topic, but do the plays end on stage as abruptly as they do on HBO (ie, with no resolution of the storylines)? How long was the break between the premier of Millenium Approaches and Perestroika – were audiences left dangling for years?

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I enjoyed both parts, though I thought the second party was fantabulous. I thought Pacino’s performance was perfect. I’m so used to him being COMPLETELY OVER THE FUCKING TOP that I forgot he could be, well, not over the fucking top. Emma Thompson is hot, and I love um…shit, I can’t remember the character’s name. The Mormon mother. I thought she was probably the best character in the whole play–but then, I enjoyed all the characters.

Who played Harper? What have I seen her in before? Also, did anybody else think Prior was really hot?

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Harper is played by Mary-Louise Parker. You’ve probably seen her in Fried Green Tomatoes, Boys on the Side, and Grand Canyon. She’s done a whole bunch of stage work as well.

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My reaction: Well I walked out in the middle of the second half because I honestly found the whole Prophet thing rather annoying and blah. Just one man’s opinion there, really.

Overall, I enjoyed the secondary characters a lot more. The actor who played Prior was good, but the text itself seemed so stilted and unnatural to listen to. I could read it and be fine, but listening to someone talk it just gave a hollow ring. I liked Belize and Roy Cohn a lot more, because the interactions seemed so much more… human. It resonated a lot more with me in the end than Prior or Joe as characters. On cold medicine I really don’t know how to better phrase it, so I’ll just end things there and give it a C overall. Good acting, somewhat weak script transition to television, rather grating at times in its banging over the head philosophy.

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Thank you. She was also on the West Wing. Now that I remember her, I didn’t like her on the West Wing, but I thought she was great in Angels…

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[quote]
Slightly off-topic, but do the plays end on stage as abruptly as they do on HBO (ie, with no resolution of the storylines)?

[quote]
Which storylines/characters are you referring to? The only person we don’t really know how he ends up is Joe.

Per the Internet Broadway Database, M.A. opened on Broadway May 1993. P opened Nov 1993 at the same theatre. Both plays closed Dec 1994. I remember reading at the time how the two plays were staged but I can’t recall if they were alternated nightly or what. I do seem to remember that the Saturday “matinee” was a run of both plays one after the other.