Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner

Birth : 1956-07-16, New York City, New York, USA

History

Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage he's most known for his seminal work Angels in America which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. At the turn of the 21st Century he became known for his numerous film collaborations with Steven Spielberg. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner made his Broadway debut in 1993 with both Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Angels in America: Perestroika. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. He then adapted it into a 2003 miniseries directed by Mike Nichols for which Kushner received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series or Movie. In 2003 he wrote the lyrics and book to the musical Caroline, or Change which earned Kushner Tony Award nominations for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score. The 2021 Broadway revival of Caroline, or Change earned Kushner a nomination for the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, making Kushner among the few playwrights in history nominated for all four major American entertainment awards: the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards. He has collaborated with director Steven Spielberg on the films Munich (2005), Lincoln (2012), West Side Story (2021), and The Fabelmans (2022), the former two earning him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Description above from the Wikipedia article Tony Kushner, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Profile

Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner
Tony Kushner

Movies

The Fabelmans
Writer
Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.
The Fabelmans
Producer
Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.
The Stories of West Side Story
Self
Rejoice in the astonishing all-new footage of Spielberg at work in documentary filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau’s revealing The Stories of West Side Story. Composed of Opening, Prologue, Sharks & Jets, Dance at the Gym, The Romance, America, Gee, Officer Krupke, Cool, From Quintet to the Rumble, I Feel Pretty, Somewhere, Finale, and Tribute.
West Side Story
Executive Producer
Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.
West Side Story
Screenplay
Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.
Something's Coming: West Side Story
Self
Incredible video behind-the-scenes with the stars, Steven Spielberg, and see one of the last interviews with the legendary Stephen Sondheim.
Angels in America
Writer
Earning a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award in 1993, subsequently adapted for television and opera, "Angels in America" stages American society of the Reagan years, mixing intimate stories and political events, realism and the fantastical while following the dark narrative thread of the AIDS epidemic. This was the disease that, in 1986, ended the life of Roy Cohn, an unscrupulous lawyer who was a disciple of McCarthy, a homophobe, racist, “bully, coward and victim” as described on the Washington Memorial Quilt. Kushner makes him one of the twenty-three characters – played by eight actors – of his Gay Fantasia on National Themes divided into two parts: "Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika". The setting is New York between 1985 and 1990. The Republicans are in power, the Chernobyl catastrophe is imminent, the collapse of the Berlin Wall is about to overturn cold war politics and HIV, still synonymous with certain death, is reduced to the definition of homosexual cancer.
The Great Work Begins: Scenes from Angels in America
Writer
An all-star livestream benefit performance of scenes from Angels in America in support of amfAR’s Fund to Fight COVID-19.
Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn
Self
Legendary and controversial attorney Roy Cohn was a power broker in the rough and tumble world of New York City business and politics. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s top counsel during investigations into Communist activities in the 1950s, Cohn is also known for being Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, fixer and mentor. Focusing on key periods of his life, and drawing on extensive, newly unearthed archival material, a new documentary on Cohn’s life will debut on HBO in 2019.
Arthur Miller: Writer
Self
One of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century, Arthur Miller created such celebrated works as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, which continue to move audiences around the world today. He also made headlines for being targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the McCarthy Era and entering into a tumultuous marriage with Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe. Told from the unique perspective of his daughter, filmmaker Rebecca Miller, Arthur Miller: Writer is an illuminating portrait that combines interviews spanning decades and a wealth of personal archival material, and provides new insights into Miller’s life as an artist and exploring his character in all its complexity.
Spielberg
Self
A documentary on the life and career of one of the most influential film directors of all time, Steven Spielberg.
National Theatre Live: Angels In America — Part Two: Perestroika
Theatre Play
America in the mid-1980s. In the midst of the AIDS crisis and a conservative Reagan administration, New Yorkers grapple with life and death, love and sex, heaven and hell. This new staging of Tony Kushner's multi-award winning two-part play, Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia On National Themes, is directed by Olivier and Tony award winning director Marianne Elliott.
National Theatre Live: Angels In America — Part One: Millennium Approaches
Theatre Play
The National Theatre's live theatrical production of Tony Kushner's two-part play 'Angels In America' about New Yorkers grappling with the AIDS crisis during the mid-1980s.
Mike Nichols: An American Master
With charm and wit, Nichols discusses his life and 50-year career as a performer and director.
The Royal Road
(archive sound)
A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, The Royal Road simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defense of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty. If you give yourself over to it, it will crack you wide open.
Still Alice
Thanks
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she receives a devastating diagnosis, Alice and her family find their bonds tested.
Lincoln: An American Journey
Self
Documentary on the making of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" (2012).
Lincoln
Screenplay
The revealing story of the 16th US President's tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come.
Outrage
Self
An indictment of closeted politicians who lobby for anti-gay legislation in the US.
Theater of War
Self
A behind-the-scenes look at The Public Theater's production of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage" that examines the playwright's life and ideas.
Eugene O’Neill: A Documentary Film
Self
Eugene O'Neill tells the haunting story of the life and work of America's greatest and only Nobel Prize-winning playwright -- set within the context of the harrowing family dramas and personal upheavals that shaped him, and that he in turn struggled all his life to give form to in his art.
Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner
Self
Filmmaker Freida Lee Mock explores the life and work of playwright Tony Kushner. Starting in 2001, when Kushner was mounting the production of his play Homebody/Kabul and running through 2004, as he worked on John Kerry's presidential campaign, got married to Mark Harris, worked with Maurice Sendak, and opened the Broadway musical Caroline, or Change.
Munich
Screenplay
During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.
Live to Tell: The First Gay and Lesbian Prom in America
Self - Playwright, "Angels in America"
Documentary about the first gay prom in America, that took place in West Hollywood, promoted by students of the EAGLES center, an alternative high school.
In the Wings: Angels in America On Broadway
Backstage documentary chronicling the Original Broadway Production of “Angels in America.”
Ultra
Executive Producer
Feature adaptation of ‘Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra’ podcast.
The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
Writer
The story of a young Jewish boy in Bologna, Italy in 1858 who, having been secretly baptized, is forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents' struggle to free their son becomes part of a larger political battle that pits the Papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification.
He Wanted the Moon
Writer
In the 1920s, Dr. Perry Baird, who was born in Texas and educated at Harvard, begins his career ascent in the field of medicine.