Hit Me with Your Best Shot: Angels in America
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It’s Angels in America Day here at The Tomas Experience! This mini-series is one of the best adaptations of a stage play ever. The acting headlined by Al Pacino and Meryl Streep is fantastic, the script is ever so quotable, and the direction sharp. The only problem have with this movie (and the play) is its treatment of the Joe Pitt character. But with such a moving subject, I am willing to overlook him and focus on the beauty of this work.
I decided to highlight a few of my favorite shots with some quotes.
Roy Cohn: I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand.
Roy Cohn: [under the impression that Belize is the Angel of Death] Can I ask you something, sir?
Belize: [going along with it] “Sir”?
Roy Cohn: What’s it like? After?
Belize: After…?
Roy Cohn: This misery ends?
Belize: Hell or heaven?
Roy Cohn: …heh…
Belize: Like San Francisco.
Roy Cohn: A city! Good! I was worried… it’d be a garden. I hate that shit.
Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.
Roy Cohn: Isaiah.
Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths. And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain’t there.
Roy Cohn: And Heaven?
Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.
Roy Cohn: The fuck it was!
Belize: [going along with it] “Sir”?
Roy Cohn: What’s it like? After?
Belize: After…?
Roy Cohn: This misery ends?
Belize: Hell or heaven?
Roy Cohn: …heh…
Belize: Like San Francisco.
Roy Cohn: A city! Good! I was worried… it’d be a garden. I hate that shit.
Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.
Roy Cohn: Isaiah.
Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths. And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain’t there.
Roy Cohn: And Heaven?
Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.
Roy Cohn: The fuck it was!
The best part of the ensemble: Jeffrey Wright as Belize
Belize: I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. Nothing but a bunch of big ideas and stories and people dying, and then people like you. The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word free to a note so high nobody could reach it. That was deliberate.
Harper Pitt: I burned dinner.
Joe Pitt: I’m sorry.
Harper Pitt: Not my dinner, my dinner was fine. Your dinner. I put it back in the oven and turned everything up as high as it could go and I watched ’til it burned black. It’s still hot, very hot, want it?
Joe Pitt: You didn’t have to do that.
Harper Pitt: I know, it just seemed like the kinda thing a mentally-deranged sex-starved pill-popping housewife would do.
Joe Pitt: I’m sorry.
Harper Pitt: Not my dinner, my dinner was fine. Your dinner. I put it back in the oven and turned everything up as high as it could go and I watched ’til it burned black. It’s still hot, very hot, want it?
Joe Pitt: You didn’t have to do that.
Harper Pitt: I know, it just seemed like the kinda thing a mentally-deranged sex-starved pill-popping housewife would do.
Louis and Ethel praying over Roy…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q4eaiTRilk (skip to around the 6 minute mark for this scene)
Extras!
The beautiful final scene:
Every time I see this picture I envision a pipe organ playing the strains of Phantom of the Opera lol.
Al and Meryl sharing a moment in character
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*big smile* I never actually saw the miniseries but I always admired HBO for taking it on. I wish I could see the play!!