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[Music]
TONY KUSHNER: These are the things that I wrote down as things that I'm excited about.
[Music]
I love Girls because it's incredibly funny, it feels to me like it's a privileged look
into a generation that I—that somewhat removed from mine and brilliantly written and brilliantly
acted and directed and I think that Lena Dunham is astonishing. Breaking Bad because it's
I think almost like a Miltonian exercise in bringing people into a contradiction of the
devil within themselves and it's so unbelievably and beautifully written and fantastically
acted. And I really love Louie because every single episode is a great little independent
film and they're hysterically funny and he's a magnificent character and a magnificent
writer so I love Louie. I've become a devoted fan with Up With Chris Hayes which is a show
now that I want to watch every day because he talks even faster than I do and I love
the pressured speech and I love the ugly shriveled little muffins on the table and I think his
guests are amazing.
I love all Tin Pan Alley songs and I love memorizing them. I know thousands of them
by memory by playing them over and over again in my head so I don't forget them. I don't
want to forget any of them. I want to die even if I can't remember my husband's name,
I want to remember all the lyrics to Begin the Beguine.
I love fountain pens. I write with them so I've mastered learning how to pull them apart
and put them back together. And I think that they're the only thing that anybody should
write with. They help you think better than computers because you're more involved with
the actual material of it and it's slower and there's not a little wheel spinning making
you hurry up and so I think they're wonderful things so I have fountain pens.
I love gardening. I've always been a big gardener. I have a terrace right now. I'm gardening
all the time and I think it's great to stick your hands in the dirt. They're now actually
found that there are antidepressants in soil and that you can get a contact high from sticking
your hands in dirt. And earthworms are incredibly important. You have to spend some time looking
at what earthworms are doing to understand life so I really love gardening.
And my last thing is, uh, as of last summer I started needle pointing. Which except for
the fact that it's giving me tennis elbow, because I do it too much, I don't know why,
but it's hugely calming. It's the only calming thing I've ever—even more than—gardening
is always like exciting in a way. Needle pointing is in a way a zen kind—and then you end
up with pillows you can give people as presents. I really love needle pointing especially needle
pointing poems that I like onto a canvas. So those are my things.
[Music]
I'm Tony Kushner and I'm encouraging all of you to subscribe to THNKR. The content is
extraordinary and exciting and it will actually make you think!