Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushneris an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. He co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film Munich, and he wrote the screenplay for the 2012 film Lincoln, both critically acclaimed movies, for which received Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay. For his work, he received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth16 July 1956
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
What astonishes me about the response to 'Munich' is this angry rejection of the idea that it makes any difference to know what motivates people to do bad things, that you don't need to know why. It is like saying that real men shoot first and ask questions later like in 'Dirty Harry' movies.
The attack on 'Munich' was not coordinated but it amounted to a real campaign to have a lot of people not see the film and it got mixed up with Oscar issues.
Here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this.
Here's another piece of advice, only date people who have read a different set of books than you have read, it will save you lots of time in the library.
What makes the voice pathetic is that it doesn't know what kind of people it's reaching. Us. No one hears it, except us. This Age wanted heroes. It got us instead: carefully constructed, but immobile. Subtle but, unfit to take up the burden of the times. It happens. A whole generation of washouts. History says stand up, and we totter and collapse, weeping, moved, but not sufficient.
I grew up in a small Southern town, and there were white people and black people. Coming to New York to go to Columbia, every time I went into the subway I was absolutely astounded because you see people from all over the world who actually live here - who aren't just here as tourists.
The theater requires an essential gullibility that you can't get through life without having. If all you can feel is skepticism-well , you meet people like this. Run away from them. They're not good people.
The way you give love is the most profoundly human part of you. When people say it's ugly or a perversion or an abomination, they're attacking the center of your being.
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.
When I'm writing a new play, there's a period where I know I shouldn't be out in public much. I imagine most people who create go through something like this. You willfully loosen some of the inner straps that hold your core together.
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.
The fear of a work becoming dated is one of the most effective tools for keeping people from writing political work.
Broadway remains the closest thing we have to a national theatre, the place where the greatest number of people can potentially see new work. For an American playwright to say it doesn't matter is simply to capitulate to the current situation.
Don't be afraid; people are so afraid; don't be afraid to live in the raw wind, naked, alone...Learn at least this: What you are capable of. Let nothing stand in your way.