Drama king.

Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner * Written and directed by Freida Lee Mock * American Film Foundation

Most artists "bear witness to their time" by accident. To Tony Kushnet, it's always been a calling--an absolute moral imperative. Freida Lee Mock's film captures much of what this imperative means, beginning with Kushner preparing the first stagings of Homebody/Kabul--his play about a middle-class, middle-aged Englishwoman's obsession with Afghanistan--written before 9/11 but premiered very shortly afterward. Typically, Kushner denies any prophetic powers in seeing that this area would become the focus of world attention. "I just looked around," he says. But that's the heart of the matter: It's the duty of the artist to "look around"--and so few ever do.

Kushner's "looks around" have had spectacular results, starting, of course, with Angels in America, which refrained the history of the AIDS epidemic and revitalized American drama. Mock (herself an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker) catches Kushner working on Caroline, or Change, his musical collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori. It's a memory piece about an African-American woman who worked as the Kushners' housekeeper when Tony was a child, documenting his first awareness of injustice and racism--even within the confines era "nice" and "enlightened" middle-class home. Then there's Brundibar, his translation of an opera written for and performed by Jewish children in the Nazi death camps--revived with the help of the great children's book writer and Illustrator Maurice Sendak. We also see Kushner preparing any number of smaller pieces with a variety of creative partners--all going to show his indifference to "topping" Angels in America or making Angels II.

Kushner's "personal life" is just as busy, though Mock touches on it only in glancing fashion. We see him revisit Lake Charles, La., where he was raised, and he's shown attending any number of family occasions--seemingly the classic good Jewish boy. But his father, William, is quite honest in declaring that when he discovered Tony's gayness (on full and obvious view in home movies, where from an early age Kushner is the most ebullient of sissies) he would have been "ashamed to have had Tchaikovsky as a son." Needless to say, Kushner pere is now quite happy that he does indeed have Tchaikovsky as a son--albeit a thoroughly out-of-the-closet Tchaikovsky.

Mock and her cameras are present when Kushner's weds his lover, Mark Harris (I'm happy to report he disdains the term partner). But she doesn't mention the fact that said marriage has no legal standing whatsoever in any state in the union--including Massachusetts, Obviously, Kushner is committed to fighting for the day when it will. Meanwhile he's busy with everyone from George C. Wolfe and Meryl Streep to the severest of all gay rabbis, Larry Kramer. There's a shot of the two of them leaning forward to lovingly bump each other's head that by itself makes Muck's film worthwhile.

But next time, more Mark, please.