December 12, 2007
Tony Kushner documentary on PBS tonight
The reviews of the Tony Kushner documentary showing on PBS tonight all agree on one thing: above all, Kushner is a nice guy.
He may even be a little plain but that’s something we’ll have to see when we check out the film tonight.
Kushner often explores gay, Jewish and political themes in his work. And, while his personal life may be a bit dull, he’s certainly had his share of professional excitement. His plays have been immensely successful and he won the Pulitzer Prize for, “Angels In America
The documentary on PBS, “Wrestling With Angels,” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006. It was directed by Freida Lee Mack and follows the playwright around from 2002 through 2004. Here’s more from yesterday’s L.A. Times review:
Those looking for the more typical gay urban writer back story of, say, Tennessee Williams or Truman Capote — the tortured life, the shining talent pitted by depression, addiction or both — will have to look elsewhere. There are no famous feuds in Kushner’s past, no opening-night tantrums to report, no casting-couch romances. Kush- ner, happily married to Mark Harris, is apparently the sort of man who sends presents to sick friends and elicits boundless praise from actors and directors. Though he walks through the streets of New York, or at least he does in “Wrestling,” wearing a fedora, he still looks and sounds like precisely what he is: a nice Jewish boy from the South.
None of this is particularly helpful to the documentary, at least not in these show-us-the-scandal times. But it is wonderfully beneficial to the heart. Not only does it prove that we have moved beyond a time when being a “gay writer” is drama in itself, but Kushner also provides a model for a new, and spectacularly humane, revolutionary: a man who simply tells the truth about who he is and what he believes. Which, you know, all of us can do, even if we’re not up to winning a Pulitzer Prize.
There may be some gay stereotyping in the but I think the review’s intention is clear: Kushner is not the average thinker nor the average playwright.
I actually won’t be checking this out until later this weekend because my local PBS station here in Atlanta does not list it on their schedule until Saturday night. For those of you who want to see when it will be on in your local market, go to the homepage for PBS’s P.O.V. series and look for the link to the show’s schedule.
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