City Of Angels

Thompson: We're actors, you know. The point is not to be just like everybody else. One is to give a performance, and that's what's so glorious about this opportunity.

Why did you have actors play multiple parts, as they did on the stage?

Kushner: The first time that Mike and I met, we had lunch to talk about this. And the very first thing he said was, "I want to do the doubling." It never occurred to me that anybody would do that. And I immediately thought, "OK, this is the person that should make this." It's celebrating the artificiality of the event, and it's scary for people in film to do that. You know it's Emma again, in another role. You know it's Meryl as another person.

Nichols: Something happened in America quite a while ago--far less in England--it's the idea that acting is feeling, which is such nonsense and so useless and leads us into a corner of unintelligible people muttering.

It's the ultimate perversion of Lee Strasberg and the Method.

Nichols: That's right. It is a perversion.