Angels in America
directed by Mike Nichols and written by Tony Kushner, based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning play
“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.”
It was 20 years ago today: Thomas Newman’s soundtrack to Angels in America was released on Nonesuch. Newman's romantic, epic-scale orchestral score to the Mike Nichols–directed HBO film version of Tony Kushner's play "seems divinely inspired," says the San Francisco Chronicle, and proves "rewarding in its own right from beginning to end ... Newman has risen gloriously to the greatness of Angels." You can hear it again here.
Starring Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Mary-Louise Parker, Justin Kirk, Jeffrey Wright, Ben Shenkman, and Patrick Wilson, the six-hour epic features a screenplay Kushner adapted from his 1991 Tony Award–winning play.