Angels in America (2003)
Justin Kirk: Prior Walter, Leatherman in Park
Photos
Quotes
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Prior : I usually say, "Fuck the truth," but mostly, the truth fucks you.
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Harper Pitt : In my church we don't believe in homosexuals.
Prior : In my church we don't believe in Mormons.
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Prior Walter : I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.
Hannah Pitt : Well that's a stupid thing to do.
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Prior : We have reached a verdict, your honor. This man's heart is deficient. He loves, but his love is worth nothing.
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Harper Pitt : What are you doing in my hallucination?
Prior Walter : I'm not in your hallucination, you're in my dream.
Harper Pitt : You're wearing makeup.
Prior Walter : So are you.
Harper Pitt : But you're a man.
Prior Walter : [looks into mirror and screams] My hands and feet give it away.
Harper Pitt : There must be some mistake here. I don't recognize you. Are you my... - some sort of imaginary friend?
Prior Walter : No. Aren't you too old to have imaginary friends?
Harper Pitt : I have emotional problems. I took too many pills. Why are you wearing makeup?
Prior Walter : I was in the process of applying the face, trying to make myself feel better. I swiped the new fall colours at the Clinique counter at Macy's.
Harper Pitt : You stole these?
Prior Walter : I was out of cash. It was an emotional emergency.
Harper Pitt : Joe will be so angry. I promised him no more pills.
Prior Walter : These pills you keep alluding to...
Harper Pitt : Valium, I take Valium. Lots of Valium.
Prior Walter : And you're dancing as fast as you can.
Harper Pitt : I'm not addicted. I don't believe in addiction and I... I never drink and I never take drugs.
Prior Walter : Well, smell you, Nancy Drew.
Harper Pitt : Except for Valium.
Prior Walter : Except Valium in wee fistfuls.
Harper Pitt : It's terrible. Mormons are not supposed to be addicted to anything. I'm a Mormon.
Prior Walter : I'm a homosexual.
Harper Pitt : Oh. In my church, we don't believe in homosexuals.
Prior Walter : In my church, we don't believe in Mormons.
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Harper Pitt : I don't understand this. If I didn't ever see you before, and I don't think I did, then I don't think you should be here in this hallucination because in my experience the mind which is where hallucinations come from shouldn't be able to make anything up that wasn't there to start with that didn't enter it from experience from the real world. Imagination can't create anything new can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions. Am I making sense right now?
Prior Walter : Given the circumstances, yes.
Harper Pitt : So when we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable.
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Harper Pitt : Oh well don't apologize, I can't expect someone who's really sick to entertain me.
Prior : How on earth did you know?
Harper Pitt : Oh that happens. This is the very threshold of revelation. Sometimes you can see things like how sick you are. Do you see anything about me?
Prior : Yes, you are amazingly unhappy
Harper Pitt : Big deal, you meet a valium addict, you figure out she's unhappy -that doesn't count. Of course I - something else? something suprising?
Prior : Something suprising?
Harper Pitt : Yes
Prior : Your husband's a homo.
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Prior Walter : That ludicrous spectacle in there. Just a parody of the funeral of someone who really counted. We don't. Faggots. We're just a bad dream the real world is having. And the real world's waking up.
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Prior Walter : This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all. And the dead will be commemorated, and we'll struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.
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Prior Walter : Look. Garlic. A Mirror. Holy Water. A Crucifix. Fuck off! Get the fuck out of my room! Go!
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Prior : When you cry, Louis, it's nothing. It's just the idea of crying.
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Prior : Are you a ghost, Lou?
Louis Ironson : No. Just spectral. Lost to myself. Sitting all day on cold park benches wishing I could be with you.
[Extends his arm]
Louis Ironson : Dance with me, babe.
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Prior : [Wrestling the Angel] I will not let thee go except thou bless me! I will not let thee go except thou bless me! I will not let thee go except thou bless me!
The Angel : You have prevailed Prophet. The choice is yours. Now release me; I have torn a muscle in my thigh.
Prior : Big deal. My leg's been hurting for months.
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[Prior is talking about his lineage with Ancestor #1]
Prior Walter : I'm the thirty-fourth, I think.
Prior Walter Ancestor #1 : Actually the thirty-second.
Prior Walter : Not according to mother.
Prior Walter Ancestor #1 : Oh, then she's including the two bastards. I say leave them out. I say, no room for bastards. These little things you swallow...
Prior Walter : Pills.
Prior Walter Ancestor #1 : Pills. For the pestilence. I too...
Prior Walter : Pestilence... you too what?
Prior Walter Ancestor #1 : The pestilence in my day was much worse than it is now. Whole villages of empty houses. Look outdoors and you see Death walking in the morning, as plain as I see you now.
Prior Walter : You died of the plague.
Prior Walter Ancestor #1 : The spotty monster. Like you, alone.
Prior Walter : I'm not alone.
Prior Walter Ancestor #1 : You have no wife, no children.
Prior Walter : I'm gay.
Prior Walter Ancestor #1 : Well, be gay, dance in your altogether for all I care, what's that to do with not having children?
Prior Walter : Gay homosexual, not bonny, blithe and... never mind.
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Prior : And you were there and you, and you. And some of it was wonderful and some of it was terrible but all the same I kept saying I want to go home. And they sent me home.
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Joe Pitt : You said something about my friend. Is this about Louis? Is he...?
Prior Walter : [shouting] Is he what? Sad, hot, happy? Talk to him yourself, Bullwinkle! What do I look like, a marriage counselor?
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Prior Walter : You're seeing someone else.
Louis Ironson : What? No.
Prior Walter : You are.
Louis Ironson : I'm not! Well - occasionally, I - he's a... just a pickup...
Prior Walter : Goddamn, ask me how I knew.
Louis Ironson : How?
Prior Walter : Threshold of revelation.
Louis Ironson : What?
Prior Walter : Fuck you! I'm a prophet.
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Prior Walter : I'm a prophet.
Joe Pitt : What?
Prior Walter : Prophet! Prophet! I prophecy, I have sight, I see! What do you do?
Joe Pitt : I'm a clerk.
Prior Walter : Oh, big deal, a clerk? You, what, you file things? You better be keeping a file on the hearts you break. That's all that counts in the end. You'll be having bills to pay in the world to come. You and your friend, the Whore of Babylon. Sorry, wrong room.
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Prior Walter : But still. Still bless me anyway. I want more life. I can't help myself. I do. I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life. And if he comes back, take him to court. He walked out on us, he oughta pay.
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[about how to get the angel to go away]
Hannah Pitt : I don't know. I don't know what to do.
Prior : Come on, what about scriptural precedence!
Hannah Pitt : That was supposed to be more of a metaphor!
Prior : A metaphor, come on, what am I supposed to do?
Hannah Pitt : You have to... wrestle her!
Prior : Say what?
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Prior Walter : [to himself, as Louis approaches] Oh, this is gonna be so much worse than I'd imagined.
Louis Ironson : Hello.
Prior Walter : Fuck you, you little shit bag.
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Prior : Maybe I am a prophet. Not just me, all of us who are dying now. Maybe we've caught the virus of prophecy... Be still, toil no more. Maybe the world has driven God from heaven and incurred the angel's wrath. I believe I've seen the end of things, and having seen I'm going blind as prophets do; it makes a certain sense to me. And if I hate heaven my only resistance is to run.
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Prior : Oh my queen; you know you've hit rock-bottom when even drag is a drag.
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Sir : Whadda you want?
Louis Ironson : I want you to fuck me, hurt me, and make me bleed.
Sir : I want to.
Louis Ironson : Yeah?
Sir : I wanna hurt you.
Louis Ironson : Fuck me.
Sir : Yeah?
Louis Ironson : Hard.
Sir : Yeah? You've been a bad boy?
Louis Ironson : [laughs] Very bad. Very bad.
Sir : You need to be punished, boy?
Louis Ironson : Yes, I do.
Sir : Yes, what?
Louis Ironson : ...Oh, uh...
Sir : Yes, what, boy?
Louis Ironson : Oh! 'Ts- yes, sir.
Sir : I want you to take me to your place, boy.
Louis Ironson : No, I can't do that.
Sir : No, what?
Louis Ironson : No sir, I can't. I don't live alone, sir.
Sir : Your lover know you're out with a man tonight, boy?
Louis Ironson : No sir, he... my lover doesn't know.
Sir : Your lover know you like...
Louis Ironson : Let's change the subject, okay? Can we go to your place?
Sir : ...I live with my parents.
