City Of Angels

Kushner: One thing that sort of produced the play in the first place was a feeling of Apocalypse, which is now very much with us.

Streep: I wanted to ask you, Mike: what made you think this could work? I thought the play was amazing and in its time and place it just sort of radiated heat. But it was a theatrical experience I thought could never, ever be achieved in any other medium. It's such an act of bravery and of recklessness--sort of a young man's challenge, you know. Not that you're not young in every sense, in your mind and in your outlook, but I'm in awe of that starting place that says, "Yes, I think I can do that."

Nichols: It's not entirely different from how you feel reading a play or film script for a part. There are instinctive responses. Something in you begins to stir when you read certain portions of things. And then there's the experience I think we all had that brought us so wonderfully together and became the tone of every day's work, which was: "There's too much to understand." You could never, I could never, understand all six-and-a-half hours, you know, in time to shoot it. I mean, I'm not that kind of scholar. And we're still arguing what the play is about. On the way to the premiere last night, my wife [Diane Sawyer] said, "You keep talking about what it's about, but only I know what it's about." I said, "OK, if you're so smart, what is it about?" She said, "Being Jewish."

Kushner: Seeing it last night, I realized --it's completely a film. The language is not in any way naturalistic--it's very large; it's written for the stage. But it's so completely effortless how that trip from a stage play to the film was made.

Streep: It makes me think we're not ambitious enough on film.

Pacino: We're caught in that naturalistic language thing.