Thursday, October 29, 2009

It's Moving, Amazing, But God Damn Disheartening . . .

. . . to watch Angels in America, written for the stage by Tony Kushner and adapted to the screen in an HBO miniseries a number of years back. I watched all but the final episode when it aired, and now that it's On Demand, I rewatched the whole thing, only this time I was watching more from the perspective of a writer, hence the disheartening. It's just so damn good. I wanted to find a quote from where Pryor was discretely trying to tell Meryl Streep's character how his erections could tip him off of an upcoming visit from the angel, but I couldn't find it. Instead, I'll paste you a section from the only time my two favorite characters meet. Pryor, the one dying of AIDS who believes he is a prophet, and Harper, the pill popping wife of a closeted gay mormon husband. The two meet in a joint hallucination though they have never met . . .

Harper Pitt: I don't understand this. If I didn't ever see you before, and I don't think I did, then I don't think you should be here in this hallucination because in my experience the mind which is where hallucinations come from shouldn't be able to make anything up that wasn't there to start with that didn't enter it from experience from the real world. Imagination can't create anything new can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions. Am I making sense right now?

Prior Walter: Given the circumstances, yes.

Harper Pitt: So when we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable.

5 comments:

JerseySjov said...

i think you should revise your rule about not posting until you have 2 comments.

Jenni said...

Comment number 2.

I couldn't bring myself to watch that series, and I'm kind of glad because it looks VERY confusing.

I'll just stick to drooling over Don Draper on Mad Men.

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater said...

Jov: No! I forge ahead. I will get those 365 posts in as many days. It just seems as if my readers aren't into Angels in America . . .

Jenni: Give it a try while it's still on demand! I promise you won't be confused. It's not all ambiguous like Twin Peaks.

rox said...

I just watched this for the first time recently, and absolutely loved it. Watched the whole dang thing in one sitting. I never do that.

There is one thing that seriously bothers me about that movie ... sorry if it's a spoiler for others, but why does Louis get to remain with the group at the end and Joe is nowhere to be seen? I think what they both did was awful ... Why is Joe the only one that is ostracized?

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater said...

Rox: I think Louis is the tortured soul, confused guy, and Joe is just the straight-up pathetic asshole type, but I'm not sure. I'll have to ask Tony Kushner when I become his intern, somehow.