Before playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner made his way onto the movie scene, he was an award-winning playwright. He was born in New York City, moved away for his childhood, then made his way back to get a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia and an MFA from NYU. Then, in 1993, he found his big break when he wrote Angels in America. A two-party play that could run for seven hours, it landed him a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A Broadway revival of the musical starring Andrew Garfield continued its legacy further, winning even more awards. Kushner continued work in theater after that, but, in the early-2000s, began to pivot towards writing for movies.
His first screenwriting credit came with Steve Spielberg’s Munich, which he co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth. Most of Kushner’s screenwriting credits would later come from collaborating with Spielberg, and the only non-Spielberg film that Kushner worked on would be Fences. He most recently could be seen working with The Fabelmans, Spielberg’s newest release.
Kushner would become a celebrated writer not only in the world of theater and drama but in screenwriting as well. Several of his screenplays went on to win awards at some of the highest levels, a testament to the strength of his dramatic writing. These are his best movies ranked.
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5 Munich
Universal Pictures
Munich marked Kushner’s first endeavor into the world of screenplays and was the first time he worked with director Steven Spielberg. Munich would ultimately become Spielberg’s lowest-rated film so far, but it still garnered quite a few Oscar nominations when it came out. The movie is set in 1972 and deals with the historical events that happened at the Munich Summer Olympics. 11 members of the Israeli team are murdered, and the protagonist is ordered to kill 11 Palestinians supposedly involved with the plot. The film tracks the events that ensue during the operation to get one form of justice for the victims’ government. Munich was both praised and criticized for its topic and authenticity.
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4 Fences
Bron Creative
Originally a play by August Wilson, Fences is considered partially Kushner’s work because he helped add more to a draft before Wilson’s death. He is not technically listed as a screenwriter due to it and an agreed decision to keep Wilson’s name the star of it. This movie is an adaptation of Wilson’s play of the same name. In 1950s Pittsburgh, a man live with his wife and son. Once a runaway boy who fled home at fourteen, he had a dream of playing in Major League Baseball, but was denied the opportunity because he was Black. Now, many years later, his son has the chance to become a professional football player and have a career, but he is dismissive of it due to his personal experiences in athletics.
3 Lincoln
Amblin Entertainment
2012’s Lincoln was directed by Spielberg, marking the second collaboration between him and Kushner. Daniel Day-Lewis commands the screen as the American President Abraham Lincoln during his days as the nation’s leader. It begins in media res, during the year 1865, right before Lincoln gives the Emancipation Proclamation and frees all slaves in the country. There is a definite worry that his plan and proclamation will be taken to court, thus leading him on a search for political allies to change the tide of fate. Kushner was hired to do the script after Spielberg noted dissatisfaction with the original screenwriter, ultimately making the movie a commercial and award-winning success.
2 The Fabelmans
Universal Pictures
The Fabelmans is Spielberg’s most recent movie to grace screens all across the world, and, despite a poor performance at the box office, is one of his most tender movies to date. It is autobiographical to the life of Spielberg, and Kushner co-wrote the screenplay alongside him. The movie was in the works for years, but Spielberg was afraid of the consequences of putting his family story onto the screen and accidentally hurting his parents with the depictions of their lives and characters. The Fabelmans follows the life of a family’s son, Sammy, after his parents take him to the movies for the first time. He becomes obsessed with cinema and filmmaking, and when he grows up, he decides to pursue his passion, even if it is not what his parents want for him.
1 West Side Story
When West Side Story originally came out in the 1950s for theater, it put people like Stephen Sondheim on the map. The original movie adaptation made waves and became an iconic movie for an entire generation, but the 2021 adaptation seeks to make it a movie for the newest generations while also updating it. Kushner is the sole writer of the screenplay of this adaptation. West Side Story rifts on the traditional themes established by William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet except transplanted in 1950s New York City. As a neighborhood faces gentrification and a Puerto Rican and white gang square off, an interracial love sparks after Tony, a white New Yorker, and Maria, a young Puerto Rican woman, fall in love with each other.
