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" There's a way in which 'The Illusion' is a play about the theater. "
Tony Kushner
Play
Which
Theater
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" The act of thinking and interpreting is so central to Judaism that it makes more sense that we've become people like Woody Allen - thinkers and talkers and drafters of law. "
Tony Kushner
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" God knows I've had productions where there were actors in my plays who were making more money per week than I was. "
Tony Kushner
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Who
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" The way that same-sex marriage should reach the federal level is that it absolutely should be decided by the Supreme Court as quickly as possible. It's a 14th Amendment issue. There's no argument about it. "
Tony Kushner
Reach
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" There's a kind of a fundamental irresponsibility in playwriting, and the strength of playwriting comes from that irresponsibility. "
Tony Kushner
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Kind
" In a way, film and television are in the same sort of traumatic trance that print journalism is. The technology has outpaced our comprehension of its implications. "
Tony Kushner
Technology
Journalism
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" The kind of theater that I do is sort of 'narrative realism,' which I think in the broadest sense is legitimate to say is mainstream. I mean, in a certain sense, Suzan-Lori's plays have had mainstream levels of success. But Suzan-Lori is in some ways not a narrative realist. "
Tony Kushner
Kind
Mean
Say
" So I think I'll say the obvious thing: theater is ephemeral. When a production is done, it's gone forever. You can take pictures of it. You can make a film of it. But it's not the production. It's not the same thing. "
Tony Kushner
Done
You
Say
" You don't go to the movies to do historical research, unless it's historical research about the movies. "
Tony Kushner
Research
Movies
You
" Gay TV has been immensely important in transforming American culture in a more gay-positive direction. "
Tony Kushner
More
Gay
Direction
" A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.' "
Tony Kushner
Impact
Uncle
History
" But I think what made me go into theater was seeing my mother onstage. The first thing she did was Mrs. Frank in 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' The second thing she did was a play about Freud called 'The Far Country.' She played a paralyzed woman in Vienna who goes to see Freud. "
Tony Kushner
Play
Me
Mother
" Theater really gets damaged when there is a paucity of good criticism around. "
Tony Kushner
Gets
Good
Criticism
" You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of. "
Tony Kushner
Think
Hope
Guilty
" Making movies is a very different experience in a lot of ways. It's difficult when you're used to owning the copyright and having a landlord's possessory rights - I rent my plays to the companies that do them and, if I'm upset, I can pull the play. But the only two directors I've worked with are pretty great. "
Tony Kushner
Play
Movies
Great
" The general consensus among historians, among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is, in fact, historical fiction, is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that, beyond that, we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original. "
Tony Kushner
History
Thinking
Line
" I tend to be sort of quiet and shy and awkward in social situations. "
Tony Kushner
Social
Awkward
Quiet
" I'm going to start work on developing a series for HBO, because I'm naturally given to episodic stories of considerable length. And I won't have to listen to complaints about how wordy and long my work is if you can watch it on your telephone on the subway: You can make it conform to your day as if it were a book. "
Tony Kushner
Day
Book
You
" If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult, at best, and all but unlivable at worst, or possibly even unlivable, do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility, then it's a lie. "
Tony Kushner
Life
Hope
Know
" I feel there's a power in theatre, but it's an indirect power. It's like the relationship of the sleeper to the unconscious. You discover things you can't afford to countenance in waking life. You can forget them, remember them a day later or not have any idea what they are about. "
Tony Kushner
Relationship
Power
Day
" Unions are susceptible to the same ills that befall all human societies. "
Tony Kushner
Same
Befall
Human
" The big influence on me was Robert Altman, who, especially in 'Nashville,' transformed my sense of dramatic structure and showed how you could handle overlapping stories. "
Tony Kushner
Influence
Nashville
Me
" As much as I hate his movies, Oliver Stone has an aspiration I admire, and that is that he wants his art to be part of what makes and changes public policy and cultural practice. "
Tony Kushner
Changes
Hate
Movies
" One of the things I learned in 'Slavs!' is that it's much easier to talk about being gay than it is to talk about being a socialist. People are afraid of socialism, and plays that deal with economics are scarier to them. "
Tony Kushner
Economics
People
Gay
" I'm happy that I feel a little less out of place in filmmaking than I once was - but it's almost impossible for a playwright in the U.S. to make a living. You can have a play, like I did with 'Angels,' and it still generates income for me, but it's not enough for me to live on and have health insurance. "
Tony Kushner
Happy
Health
Me
" I'm a sort of political person, and I feel that there's a kind of ineradicably political dimension to theater, to all theater, whether it's overtly political or not. "
Tony Kushner
Feel
I Feel
Kind
" You could argue that Barack Obama faced in '08 a situation as bad as any president since the Great Depression. What Obama inherited from the Bush administration, we all remember, was just an absolute global catastrophe. "
Tony Kushner
Bad
Depression
You
" I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities. "
Tony Kushner
Writing
You
Failure
" I go into any movie that's historical fiction thinking, 'OK, I'm here to watch a work of art, something delivering a series of opinions, and if it's a good work of art, these opinions become so deeply embedded in complexity and richness that I won't even be bothered by the opinions. I'll make my own mind up.' "
Tony Kushner
Good
Thinking
Art
" I think I have a great deal of self-hatred, a profound feeling of fraudulence, of being detestable and evil. It's only a part of me, but it's there, and it's active. "
Tony Kushner
Feeling
Think
Me
" I'm fairly certain when I die that the obituary will say, 'Author of 'Angels in America' dies.' Unless I'm completely forgotten, and then it won't say anything at all. "
Tony Kushner
Angels
Die
Then