“ Very Steven Spielberg” is a famous line from “ Angels in America,” the two-part, more-than-seven-hour play that established Kushner as one of the leading dramatists of our time. For a moment, I think the silver-haired man with the neatly trimmed beard is one of my in-laws or former editors but, in fact, it’s Steven Spielberg, out on a stroll with his wife, the actress Kate Capshaw, in town from California to celebrate their 30th anniversary. I also go by Tony, so Kushner and I turn our heads in unison to see a distinguished-looking couple approaching, accompanied by an equally distinguished-looking dog. But he’s also, in the spirit of the present time, anticipating some of the criticism that might greet a 65-year-old white man’s attempt to tell a story largely about Latino teenagers.īefore we move on from de Cleyre, we’re interrupted by one of those New York encounters that are the city’s way of mocking the idea of coincidence. On the contrary, he’s intensely proud of the ways he, Spielberg and the rest of the creative team have reimagined a show that’s itself a reimagining of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Citing de Cleyre seems to be his way of acknowledging the risks and contradictions inherent in any ambitious work of art that tackles the thorny American realities of race, class, immigration and identity. Kushner doesn’t mean that he regrets the project.
The screenplay, which revises Arthur Laurents’s original book, is by Kushner, who has been collaborating with Spielberg for nearly 20 years, through “ Munich” (2005), “ Lincoln” (2012) and other unconsummated and upcoming films.
The particular mistake he has in mind is “West Side Story,” a new movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the beloved, problematic 1957 Broadway musical set among the white ethnic and Puerto Rican youth gangs of Manhattan. The sentence in question, it will turn out, may or may not be from de Cleyre, and may or may not be exactly as Kushner cites it - we were on a park bench, after all, not in a library - but whoever said it first, it’s now among my favorite Kushner quotes: “Dare to participate in the great historical mistake of your time.” Kushner is an enthusiastic quoter, citing famous and obscure people from the past as if they were old friends de Cleyre, an associate of the turn-of-the-20th-century American revolutionary Emma Goldman, was a fervent advocate for workers’ rights and sexual equality - exactly the kind of little-known but nonetheless consequential figure that occasionally shows up in Kushner’s writing.
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It’s a warm Tuesday in October, and we’re talking on a bench in a quiet patch of Central Park, right behind John Quincy Adams Ward’s statue of William Shakespeare, which has stood since 1872 at the bottom of the park’s Literary Walk, a popular promenade dedicated to writers. “MY FAVORITE QUOTE,” Tony Kushner says, “is from an American anarchist named Voltairine de Cleyre.”
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