"Wrestling with Angels": Freida Lee Mock on Tony Kushner, Human Tour de Force

Interview by David Horowitz

Freida Lee Mock, director of Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, spoke with WJFFBlog Editor David Horowitz about her admiration for the playwright's humor, work, and social ideals -- and why Tony can't watch her film about him.

How did you develop the idea for your film, and what fascinated you about Tony Kushner to lead you to do this project?

What fascinated me about Tony were his social, political, and artistic sensibilities. I saw that combination, that he is a great artist and playwright. For me, he is incredibly engaging because he places many of his stories in a social and political context and he is always dealing with big philosophical, moral, and political ideas. He looks at race, class, the AIDS pandemic, terrorism, the Holocaust, genocide - but he sets these issues in small, really human circumstances. For me, that is what makes his work so engaging for audience members. There are a lot of layers of resonance from his work. Besides all of those things, he is very, very funny. His way of reaching out entails many techniques and aspects of his personality, but at his core, he is a very funny person, and that comes out in the dialogue of his characters, and certainly in his public speeches. That's when I first met him, it was not on the page or seeing one of his plays but when I saw him at a graduation, as you see in the film. He is a highly sought-after public speaker. I was struck by how incredibly funny, serious, and astute he was about social and political issues.

Right, I remember the first time I saw Angels in America just how struck I was with what a completely different kind of playwright he was, and how eye-opening and refreshing it was to see politics portrayed so viscerally on the stage. Had you seen any of his plays before you became interested in doing the film?

Exactly, he touches head, heart, and pulse all at once. I had actually not seen any of his plays when I started the film right after 9/11. But I had read a couple of his essays, and I had heard him speak at the Vassar graduation, as you see in the film, and he only was speaking for one minute! He was receiving an honorary doctorate and they gave him only a minute. It was a tour de force of humor, substance, and inspiration. He had the entire audience laughing, and he had to speak really fast.

Right, and with his rapid way of speaking I was surprised to learn that he was from the South, I would have guessed his roots were in New York. Or at least that's the stereotype, that the rapid-speaking Jews of the United States, we all come from the Northeast!

Well, his mother's side is from New York and he does seem very much the New Yorker, but his formative years were definitely in the South. That was insightful for me, and I hope for the audience, to see the influence of those roots, of a fourth-generation, Jewish family from the South who have obviously dealt with issues of race and class, Jewish-Black relations, all of which you can see and can begin to understand in Caroline: or Change. My husband is Jewish, and he is from the South, from Little Rock, Arkansas. This is a generalization, but anecdotally, it has been my experience that Jews are often the most outspoken people on liberal political viewpoints.

In terms of the film's genesis, the tipping point for me was right after 9/11, I read an article in the LA Times about a new play he was rehearsing, Homebody/Kabul, a story set in Afghanistan, and that caught my eye, and made me think this would be a good time to do a film about a playwright and look at issues of art, politics, and creativity. Kushner's experience was especially appealing because he worked simultaneously as both an artist and an activist. Had I not seen him speak, I'm not sure I would have started the film, because an effective documentary needs a subject who is cinematic, or mysterious, or electrifying enough to come across to the audience.

How did he react when you approached him and expressed interest in doing a larger piece on him based on a minute of speaking?

I didn't quite put it to him that way (laughs). I wrote him a letter, saying that I was interested in talking to him about doing a film, similar to the one I had done on [Vietnam Veterans Memorial architect] Maya Lin (Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision). He called me back and he seemed interested, but he didn't ask me why I was interested in him per se. He did say to me that he doesn't do much except sit and write, but I disagreed, saying that he is so much more involved in his community as a citizen, teacher, etc., and that he and his work would provide a compelling subject.

I think had he not been a playwright he would have been a professor. I think he enjoys that academic milieu and working with students. And he takes his speaking engagements seriously. He doesn't want his audience to fall asleep, and he uses the moment carefully. On one level, he became a semi-celebrity because of Angels in America, and he's a little bit shy, and so he's developed a technique of speaking that keeps his audience engaged.

What was his reaction to the film after you showed it to him?

Actually, everybody in his immediate family has seen the film except him. He has not had the desire to see himself yet. What he said to me was that he doesn't really like looking at himself. I can empathize with that, honestly. I think I'd be mortified. His father, and his six-year-old niece, they have all seen it and have given him and me a lot of positive feedback. And it's in theatrical release in some cities right now and is having a successful run, and he's getting feedback from that, and he wrote me to tell me that he's gotten wonderful comments from people. He's happy that this prolific period of his life and work was captured, and I think he was waiting to make sure that it survived the release. After the release of my film about Maya Lin, she said she was "relieved", and (I loved her verb, connoting total exposure in a harsh light) she said, "I'm glad you didn't 'crumb' me."

I think anyone who is the subject of a film like this would be fretful until someone they trusted reassured them it was OK. Tony asked me if (his partner) Mark (Harris) could see the film first. Mark saw it and told me he thought it was very positive, and that was reassuring.

He talked in the film about how he feels like his whole body of work comes down to one person's opinion when he picks up The New York Times and looks at the review. It must be so hard for any artist to put themselves out there and hear the reviews come back.

I was thinking about this today. Ultimately, as an artist you have to please yourself. You depend on everyone else, of course, and it's a vulnerable place to be, but you have to be able to say "I am OK. I have done my best effort." It's a basic human need, for approval - everyone prefers to be liked, rather than not liked. Press tours, speaking as a filmmaker at festivals, these are challenges for all of us.

It's fascinating to me, that he seems shy about critics' reactions. He writes these incredibly thought-provoking plays, he obviously wants to engender a reaction in his audience. That's the point of his writing, isn't it?

Well, I think the difference is that audiences are so different than critics, whose job it is to critique. It's a different kind of reaction, a different kind of analysis. Because of the position they have, critics are such a different kind of audience. One person often really does have the power to kill a play.

In terms of structuring the film, you structured it from 9/11 to the 2004 Presidential election. Did his dialogue and your interactions with him in the making of the film take it in that direction, or had you structured it in advance with a goal?

It was based on all the research I did, and the material that I had observed and read about his work. Things logically fell into these three big thematic ideas. It started sequentially right after 9/11, and his work on these plays ended right after the 2004 election. These works were naturally bookended by these two big national/global events that were reflected in his work directly or indirectly. It fell into place just naturally because of the material, and I was really happy that it ended up being almost like a play -- with a Prologue and Epilogue, Acts, setting, timeframe -- with things organized along those lines.

Things just kind of fell into place along these lines. Tony's partner Mark wrote me, and said it was funny to see their life organized into a logical format like that! He had lived through all these events, and life wasn't exactly organized this way, with themes, as it was happening.

Since you won't be able to attend the WJFF screening, is there anything specific you would like audiences to know about the film?

Hopefully, the audience will be engaged and inspired by what Tony's work and life represents, and that they will feel empowered to do their part. I find that is what his work, and his presence as a speaker does. His last line in the film really stayed with me, "We have an ethical obligation to look for hope, an ethical obligation not to despair." It's a fresh idea, and it's not a grand gesture, but it inspires us all to do our small part to make the world a better place, and it links his ideas to this collective consciousness that comes out of the Jewish legacy. The community is a Whole, and everyone does their part in overcoming injustice.

What question do you get most frequently at festivals?

There are many types of questions, but one question that stands out from Sundance was "Kushner criticizes Laura Bush. Why don't you criticize Kushner politically?" I responded that this was not a cable TV shout-fest, this was a non-fiction story about Kushner's journey. The questioner felt that I needed more political balance when Kushner made a statement criticizing Laura Bush, but I think the audience can figure that out. When I ask myself who would be unhappy with the film, I think it would be homophobes, and the Right wing, generally speaking. The film is a story about a person who happens to be a Progressive. I think people sometimes expect with a documentary film that you're doing a news show, but it's not. All documentaries have a point of view, and there is still a story that is being told.

We're asking all our filmmakers this year, since we're in Our Nation's Capital: if you had the opportunity to have one DC celebrity - political or otherwise - in the audience for your screening, who would it be and why?

I think having Dick Cheney there would be more interesting than W. He has a much more complicated personal life, since he has a daughter who is a lesbian. I think that the film works best if one comes to it with an open mind and an open heart, but if you are not, you're not going to like it, right? Since Mr. Cheney has had to confront some of these issues in his life, it might be interesting to see his reaction to my film.

It's my hope that Tony's story helps to build bridges of understanding and tolerance. It wasn't easy for him to be able to be open about who he is, and to embrace that. He grew up in our very repressive society, too. But had he not gone through that experience -- during the era that he did -- he probably would not have been able to write Angels in America and change the face of American theater. Nor could he have dealt with portraying things like Roy Cohn's hypocrisy with such a stunning sense of empathy! That's what makes Tony's work so powerful, he looks at the flawed, human complexity inside the character.


Visit the filmmaker's Web site for Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner at http://www.wrestlingwithangelsthemovie.com/

Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner screens at 8:45pm at the DCJCC's Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater on Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Interview by David Horowitz