 Starring: Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Patrick Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Mary Louise Parker
Director: Mike Nichols
Year Of Release: 2003
Plot: A group of separate but interconnected people deal with the AIDS crisis in the mid-80s. They range from famous lawyer Roy Cohn, who insists that his doctor says he has liver cancer rather than AIDS, to Prior Walter, whose boyfriend Louis can’t deal with his lover’s increasingly horrific illness. However mixed in with the drama is madness, ghosts, angels and a prophecy about the end of the world. |
Angels In America is one of the best pieces of TV in the past decade, but by all traditional measures, it shouldn’t have been made at all. Despite being based on Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer and Tony award winning plays, it’s an immensely complex tale with numerous interlocking characters, some of whom are based on real people and some who aren’t. It initially seems like a straightforward ensemble drama, but then we dip into one character’s fantasies, while another starts having visions of his ancestors and an angel turns up telling the AIDS ravaged Prior Walter he’s a prophet. Are these things real or imagined? It’s not always clear. And with its complex use of language and its ambitious themes, it’s certainly not a simple piece of entertainment.
There’s also the fact that while Angels In America was first performed as two plays – Millennium Approaches and Perestroika – it’s essentially just one long six-hour piece, with the first part having an ending that’s less a conclusion than a heralding (literally) of part two.
All of that would have sent most people running when it comes to bringing it to the screen. As a film the two plays would have had to have been condensed down to one normal length movie, ripping most of meat out of it. With its fantastical elements, it would also have cost a huge amount to make, but traditionally it wouldn’t have been seen as being likely to become a big hit, simply because it’s such a dense piece of work. So that pretty much rules it out as a cinematic movie.
Normal American network TV wouldn’t touch it either. To be honest they’d be unlikely to want to just because its subject matter isn’t mainstream enough for the way they work, but when you add in its sex and rude language, they wouldn’t be allowed to screen anything but an extremely sanitised version. In case you don’t know how American TV works, the major ‘over the air’ networks, such as NBC, Fox, CBS and ABC, are regulated by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), which says what they can and can’t do.
As things stand, the FCC won’t allow anything more than the mildest swear words and only the merest suggestion of sex (violence on the other hand doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem). This is a body that’s so strict they wouldn’t even confirm whether they’d fine stations that aired an uncensored version of Saving Private Ryan, where the soldiers say ‘fuck’, and so many places were too scared to air it – there was even a big investigation into whether Schindler’s List would be classed as indecent if it was aired uncensored.
With the FCC being particularly strict on anything to do with gay issues, it would have ensured there was no way to adapt Angels In America without changing it beyond recognition and making the whole thing pointless.
The next option would be basic cable TV, which isn’t controlled by the FCC. The problem here is that while many of these channels now produce their own shows, few have much money for a lot of quality original programming, and none have the sort of cash to throw at something like Angels In America, which was always going to be expensive. These channels are still dependent on advertising, and it’s highly unlikely any would be able to make the money back they’d spend making such a complex, six-hour piece of effect-filled television.
That leaves premium channels, such as HBO, which are in a pretty unique position in the world of entertainment. Rather than relying on advertisers buying spots for particular programmes, viewers subscribe to the channel as a whole for a monthly fee. This means that even while HBO may have fewer viewers overall, by charging around d $15 dollars a month, it has a huge amount of money to spend on getting the rights to films, which is its main business, as well as to make its own programming.
It also doesn’t have to worry about the FCC toning down its sex and language or pissing off skittish advertisers, and it can therefore make whatever programmes is wants to, and it has the money to make them to a high quality. As a result it’s given life to shows that literally could not be made anywhere else (except maybe fellow premium networks Showtime and Starz, although only the former has had much success with original programming such as Dexter, Weeds and Californication).
Through HBO we’ve had many of the most interesting and boundary pushing pieces of television ever, such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, True Blood, Sex & The City, Deadwood, Band Of Brothers, Rome (which was a co-production with the BBC), and of course Angels In America.
Best of all is that because they only have to worry about quality rather than advertisers and regulators, they can really go hell for leather in creating incredible pieces of entertainment that wouldn’t find life any other way. For example with Angels In America, they didn’t just chuck it together cheaply hoping a few arty farty people would watch it, they got Mike Nichols, Oscar winning director of The Graduate, Silkwood, Closer and Primary Colors to helm it.
For the cast they called on Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson (the latter two playing numerous characters), along with Mary Louise Parker, Jeffrey Wright and Patrick Wilson. HBO spent an estimated $60 million on the series, which is the sort of cash few stations would even think about giving up for six hours of TV, especially for something that was always to have difficulty finding a huge mainstream audience (that said, its first episode was the most watched cable show of 2003, although its 4.2 million viewers was dwarfed by virtually everything on US network TV). You therefore have the odd situation that HBO can afford to spend more on its programmes than most over-the-air networks can, even though they’ll get a much lower audience, simply because its subscription models means it has more cash to spend per episode.
For HBO, productions like Angels In America are almost like massive adverts to get people to sign up for a subscription, with the critical response being almost as important as the viewing figures. With Angels In America it certainly worked, with the mini-series picking up five Golden Globes and 10 Emmys (and another 10 nominations), and consolidating the channel’s reputations as the maker of some of world’s best programming. Its unique position means that while virtually every other channel only thinks of the viewer as a way to attract advertisers, HBO can concentrate on just make great pieces of entertainment, and with Angels In America it made one of the very best.
TIM ISAAC
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