Now, that said, I watched it knowing that others didn't like it so well. But I knew it was originally a stage play, and I watched it thinking about what my reaction would have been had I seen it on stage and regretting that I was such an idiot that I missed it when it was in the theatres (particularly because I skipped it on the theory that if it was that popular, it couldn't be that good). I think that Kushner writes for the stage and not the big screen, and I think this would not have worked in a movie theatre, so it was a good choice for HBO.

I've been trying to articulate the difference between writing for movies and writing for the stage recently, because of this, and I've found it very very difficult.

I think one thing is that the audience for a stage play is much more comfortable with the willful suspension of disbelief. We have conventions in movies that, if violated, will make a moviegoer say, oh no, that's not real. But that doesn't really happen on stage. And so Kushner's incredible writing sounds right to me on stage and in this film of the stage play (obviously not a film of a play but as far as I can tell, the script was totally unaltered -- the only real difference was the sets), but I doubt that he could write for movies.

Contra, David Mamet, whose writing seems to work in both mediums. It seems strange to me that this should be so; perhaps it's because Mamet is in fact the more surreal writer in the respect that when you look at the dialogue he writes it's nonsense and it only takes on meaning when you hear it chattered really fast? I don't know.

Have you seen Caroline or Change? That was seriously one of the five best theatrical experiences of. my. life.



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It is painful in the extreme to live with questions rather than with answers, but that is the only honorable intellectual course. (c) Norman Mailer