SOCIAL-JUSTICE ADVOCATE. Wrestling with Angels follows Pulitzer
and Tony-Award-winning playwright Tony Kushner as he searches for the great
American play in the years following the September 11 attacks. Pictured are
Tony Kushner (right) and director Freida Lee Mock. (Photo/Gary Leonard,
courtesy of P.O.V.)
From The Asian Reporter, V17, #49 (December 4, 2007), page 12.
Wrestling with crazy and cool coincidence
Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
Directed by Freida Lee Mock
Produced for P.O.V. by the American Film Foundation
and Sanders & Mock Productions
By Ronault L.S. Catalani
The November 12 national broadcast of Wrestling with Angels
concludes the 20th year of the walls-of-awards-winning Public Broadcasting
Service (PBS) program, P.O.V.
Producers of the documentary series chose to anchor their second decade
with Chinese-American filmmaker Freida Lee Mock’s portrait of extraordinary
Jewish playwright and solid American citizen Tony Kushner. This guy is
nonstop.
Tony Kushner has earned an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, and a Pulitzer
for Angels in America, his epic Broadway production subsequently
tailored into a hit TV miniseries, starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep,
among other Hollywood luminaries. But before and after and beyond all that,
Mr. Kushner is all over the place. He’s a tireless writer and director, a
talker to kids and community groups, a lecturer before white shirts and
black ties. And all that’s about social justice.
Social justice, or more to the point: how Mr. Kushner gets us there,
urges us there, is his genius. His enormous physical and ethical energies
aside, he seems to have mastered mustering into drama a coincidence of
playful and dead serious elements — gay Republican Mormons on American main
streets (Angels in America); a middle-class Englishwoman in shorts
and Walkman in Taliban Afghanistan (Homebody/Kabul); Jewish children
earnestly acting their parts in a Nazi propaganda play a few weeks short of
their extermination (the musical Brundibar). Audiences struggle
between laughing and crying over his odd juxtapositions, between loathing
and identifying with Mr. Kushner’s bad guys.
Big portrait, big painter
Director Freida Lee Mock snares these unsure moments, this remarkable
blend of Mr. Kushner’s intelligence about our aching planet and his boyish
openness over what just might happen next. He appears utterly immersed in
every next instant, whether he’s focused on a smart kid or nodding along
with a learned rabbi. His focus is frightening, his love is unavoidable.
In making Wrestling with Angels, Ms. Mock’s camera shadowed Tony
Kushner from the September 11 disasters until the 2004 elections. Three
years of film footage edited into a tight and frenetic portrait of an
extraordinary human being. A big job. Other bigger-than-life people have
preceded Mr. Kushner in films directed by Ms. Mock. Her 1994 documentary
Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision won the director an Oscar for Best
Documentary, Features. Throughout her filmmaking career, Ms. Mock has
received five Academy Award nominations, among them: Rose Kennedy: A Life
to Remember (1990) and Never Give Up: The Twentieth Century Odyssey
of Herbert Zipper (1993). She has also won two prime-time TV Emmy Awards
and three Emmy nominations.
"I essentially stalked him all over the country," Ms. Mock said about
filming Tony Kushner doing what he does. These times were "immensely active
for Kushner, with the production of new plays, books, master classes, and
community work." According to the director, "these activities are the
building blocks" by which Tony Kushner not only engages people in his
creative process and his artist’s mission, but are also a bold demonstration
of how one dedicated individual can inspire "us to engage the moral and
political issues of our times."
Since P.O.V. (a film industry abbreviation for point of view)
began appearing on the PBS national lineup 20 years ago, the project’s
parent organization, American Documentary, has further distinguished itself
by offering additional educational programs to accompany its films. Today,
P.O.V.’s web-based services include: P.O.V. Interactive, P.O.V. Borders,
Talking Back, and Youth Views. Each stage provides extended coverage and
conversation for schools and communities on the important and difficult
issues often raised by P.O.V. documentary films. To learn more, visit <www.pbs.org/pov>.
Wrestling with Angels airs on Oregon Public Broadcasting Wednesday,
December 12 at 10:00pm, with a repeat December 14 at 3:00am. To verify show
times, call (503) 293-1982 or visit <www.opb.org>.
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