Who the hell is he to express so much anger in the world, espeacially when he runs out on his lover who is dying of AIDS? I'm glad Joe knocked him on his ass. He's just bitter, uncarrying, snobbish, insensitive, selfish and rude.
Joe may have supported characters that we not well liked by society but he was willing to look the other way and see the good in others.
On first viewing I didn't care for Louis. I didn't *hate* him, but I thought he was annoying.
He's grown on me in repeated viewings. AIA is great piece of work, but I didn't fully appreciate all the details and the depth of the characters the first time around. AIA has gotten better overtime with me (although the I still don't like the ending/epilogue- it's too out-of-place).
To anyone is wondering if their dislike of Louis is related to the character or the actor: in all likelihood, it's the character.
Louis is an extraordinarily difficult role to play, because you have to make him likable enough for the audience to understand why Pryor fell in love with him in the first place. And making him likable - at all - is a hell of a challenge.
In most stage productions of Angels in America, Louis comes across as a lot more annoying and despicable than he does in the miniseries. One of the things that I enjoyed the most about the miniseries was that Ben Schenkmann was able to inject enough personality and realistic emotion into the role that it was clear that he loved Pryor, in spite of his actions. He was annoying, for sure, but Schenkmann (to me, anyway) gave off the vibe that there was a good guy underneath the annoying characteristics.
Quite frankly, if Kushner wasn't Jewish, I'd bet that he'd face a lot of criticism for making Louis an anti-Semitic stereotype. He's practically the embodiment of how a typical anti-Semite would view the Jewish people: whiny, always talking, opinionated but cowardly at the same time, physically weak, wishy-washy, self-hating, crippled by perpetual guilt....the list goes on and on.
When you find anti-Semitic sentiments coming from leftists, it's usually something about how Jews talk a big talk about how liberal they are, but deep down they don't really care about poor people, or Palestinians, or racial minorities in general. And what do you know - that basically describes Louis to a tee. He loves to talk about his beliefs, and he claims that nobody cares about the Palestinians as much as he does, and he opposes Reagan and Roy Cohn, but he also ends up saying something offensive about blacks to Belize, and we're supposed to laugh at the notion that he cares about Palestinians.
I'm not going to go so far as to say that Tony Kushner must be a self-hating Jew, but he certainly played up anti-Jewish stereotypes when writing Louis. If there was some literary purpose for that, I'd be curious to know what it is.
[deleted]
Louis was a man-whore.
shareI liked him at first but as soon as he left Prior and got with Joe, I hated him. How selfish do you have to be to leave the one you love and have been with for four years when he's sick and needs to most? such a rotten thing to do. Eventually when he showed that he felt bad and asked for Priors forgiveness he redeemed himself a bit, but I still was annoyed with him for leaving Prior.
Lonely Chicago pie
I think the character was annoying and pretentious and talked way too much, but that's probably how you're supposed to feel about him. Of course he's flawed. You're not supposed to like every character you read about or see on TV/movies. You don't like everyone you meet in real life, right? I believe the actor did a stellar job portraying him as a selfish, stubborn immature person with an constantly running mouth.
shareHe's the only character in the movie I don't like. Maybe we're supposed to hate him but nearly every scene he's in he annoys me no end. The worst scene is the cafe scene with Belize. Belize showed real restraint in not decking the twit.
share[deleted]
As with many viewers, your enthusiasm for the piece and its power as a story has so enthralled you that you have confused the merits of the characters with those of the actors. You are particularly unfair to Ben Shenkman, whom most who know the play and have seen multiple versions of it agree brought nuance, detail and humanity to BY FAR the most difficult role.
Just step back for one second from your understandable identification with the heroic characters (Prior, Belize) to consider what the role of Louis actually demands of an actor compared with say, Belize, to whom Kushner has given only nobility, poetry and superhuman sass and wit. No slight against the gifted Wright, but if you think for example that your response to Belize's delicious shutting down of Louis in the Diner and Bethesda fountain scenes is due solely to Wright's talent, rather than to the writing and the work of both actors, you are in unsophisticated company.
Unfortunately this is why even great actors often are hesitant to take on roles that demand (as Louis does to a remarkable degree) the revealing of deep and universal human weaknesses-- fear, selfishness, ambivalence, self -doubt, self-sabotage, etc.: They guess, correctly sad to say, that many in the audience want to escape wrestling with these elements of their own identities, and not only won't sympathize with the character but will essentially blame the actor, like a soap opera fan slapping an actor for his character's caddish behavior, or like a professional wrestling fan scorning the "loser" of the "match." They will overwhelmingly identify with and prefer idealized characters (like Belize) and will fail to credit (as Shenkman's should be, and has been) the courage and skill required to play a complicated, flawed flesh-and-blood human being instead of a fantasy figure who always has the perfect comeback, or who gets the girl, or who suffers only at others' hands and never at his own.
It sounds like you connected with this piece enough to revisit it, and when you do maybe your disgust with the character of Louis will have subsided enough for you to notice virtues in the performance that you missed this time. In the exchanges with Belize, again for example, consider which actor must really "listen"-- ie. take in and react to unexpected information, adjust in the moment to having his assumptions slapped down, fumble at being confronted with furious moral contempt. Which character's attitude changes from the beginning of the scene to the end, rather than just being reasserted with flair?
More important, when you feel contempt for the character, imagine (if you're able to) how you might feel and behave, or consider behaving, under those circumstances, and why. And maybe the movie/play, which is a genuine piece of literature (as well as being a great soap opera), will be an even deeper and more moving experience for you.
YES! I wanted to slug him in the jaw through the TV screen! Louis was a whiny, spoiled, pedantic clown who was wrapped-up in his ivory-tower Marxism - under which the world WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE, y'know - then his lover gets deathly sick and he pulls a disappearing act on him! Louis was a typical Left-y poser -- "We MUST ALL WORK TOGETHER FOR A BETTER WORLD," but at the 1ST sign of trouble the only person he thinks of is himself. Then at the end, I think we're supposed to view his pedantic socio-economic/political babble as "cute."
PS: I AM NOT a "Left-y"-hating conservative -- but I've known SOME left-y/liberal-types that TALK about "Us all working together for a greater good" but when it actually comes TO DOING SOMETHING FOR SOMEONE OTHER THAN THEMSELVES, they can't be bothered. Would Louis have done what Belize [sp?] did? i doubt it -- Belize DID FOR OTHERS while Louis TALKED ABOUT the great Marxist Struggle Against Counterrevolutionary Forces whilst doing d***.
I fell sort of sorry for Louis until the scene in the coffe shop with Belize. That whole stupid canned speech coming out of his mouth ...
I AM NOT a "Left-y"-hating conservative -- but I've known SOME left-y/liberal-types that TALK about "Us all working together for a greater good" but when it actually comes TO DOING SOMETHING FOR SOMEONE OTHER THAN THEMSELVES, they can't be bothered. Would Louis have done what Belize [sp?] did? i doubt it -- Belize DID FOR OTHERS while Louis TALKED ABOUT the great Marxist Struggle Against Counterrevolutionary Forces whilst doing d***.