City Of Angels

What does that do to the play? What's changed for you?

Kushner: Well, I mean, of course, the world has changed enormously since the play was written, and thank God. But I was scared about that in terms of the film. I thought, "Is it just going to be very old hat?" But the way Mike has made it, it doesn't insist that you go back into the period by shoving it at you. "This was back then, when things were like this." It simply uses the basic tool of drama, which is empathy and compassion, and says, "This kind of suffering was the consequence of this kind of oppression." After all, you can immediately sympathize with what Nora is going through in "A Doll's House." You don't need to be in a pre-feminist era. You get it because the play makes you get it.

And obviously CBS just learned--the hard way--that people still care passionately about the Reagan era. How do you feel about the flap over the mini-series?

Kushner: I don't know, because we don't really know what happened. But it does sound to me like CBS put the kibosh on this because of pressure, and I think that's appalling. I was struck by a line in The New York Times editorial today that warned, "While the former president is suffering from Alzheimer's..." Of course, anybody who's a human being feels sorry for anyone who's suffering from Alzheimer's, and for any spouse who has to take care of them. But I don't think that a president of the United States can be safely exempt from public criticism, in art as well as in other forms, because of present-day debility. I wish his suffering were eased, and I don't have any desire to see her suffer. But they ran the country for eight years, and, in my opinion, did great damage.

Do you think CBS's decision will have a chilling effect on political art?

Kushner: I think it's going to boost the ratings for the thing through the roof when it turns up on Showtime.