Streep Cred
She kissed me. Right after I took this photo, Meryl Freakin’ Streep, the greatest living actress on the planet kissed me. Not that I want to name drop, but the minute it was announced that she would receive the Kennedy Center Honor, I dove into my pile of old photos that I keep like my grandma did. In a shoe box.
Picture it: November 2003 and the Kennedy Center Honors are in full bloom. Running backstage as a volunteer at the Kennedy Center Honors is simultaneously thankful and thankless work. It’s exhausting/exhilarating and to quote Steven Sondheim, “You’re sorry/grateful every time you do it.”
But not nine years ago. It was different. Drop the yings to every one of those yangs. It was only thankful, exhilarating, and grateful. Nothing bitter with the sweet, my friends—and all because of Ms. Streep. Here’s how it happened: I was running around behind Elaine Stritch backstage like a mad woman—which makes two mad women. She was cast as one of many zany ladies who would tribute Carol Burnett. But the Lady Who Lunches can also throw punches and I was lying low. I did what I was told and kept quiet.
On television that very evening, Angels in America was to premier on HBO—and we escorts who had to work had all turned on our TiVos. Meanwhile, you get so engrossed in your own scheduled routine that you forget who’s there on the tributes to the other honorees: and Ms. Streep was there to pay tribute to the legendary director, Mike Nichols. So the show started and I’d run back for something in Ms. Stritch’s dressing room and kaboom! Standing in her doorway was Ms. Streep. Alone. In her fabulous winter white gown, heading upstairs. I never…and I do mean never…intrude on personal space. I gawk like a hawk, but intrude? Never.
But this was beyond exceptional. Angels was premiering on TV, and appearing before me stood…the Devil. In Prada! So I slowed up and softly and politely said, “Ms. Streep, I just wanted to thank you for doing Angels—for all of us.” She gently took my hand, leaned toward me, kissed my cheek very softly, and whispered, “You’re welcome.”
Forgetting Sophie’s Choice, Julia Child, and Miranda Priestly, my head reeled. The Postcards. The Hours. The Bridges. The Deer Hunter. Most importantly, I had just been kissed by our angel in America in the trilogy of Ethel Rosenberg, the Rabbi, and Hannah Pitt on the night it was premiering. The brilliance of Kushner’s work was that the smallest of the voices were also the truest of the voices: whether it’s Belize, the “snap queen”—a giant step up from a mere drag queen—or poor, sickly Prior. We all watched in horror as the loud lying voices—led by a self-loathing, closeted Roy Cohn—drowned out the small true ones and absconded with God.
While the critics and the east coast theater crowd had ravenously devoured the “broadest, deepest, most searching American play of our time”—that’s such a limited audience. It took nearly a decade to bring it to the screen. My sister and I watched it together at Christmas that year, and I was amazed at the deep conversation it evoked. Had it not gone to television, I never would have pondered Hannah’s maternal Mormon instincts with the mother of my three nephews.
Meryl Streep gave us a voice. She and her cohort of other creative geniuses put Angels on the map. (Yes, HBO reaches Utah!) Their credibility as artists vastly widened the viewing of Angels through “Homo Box Office.” Her acceptance of the Emmy Award was priceless, joking that “sometimes even I think I’m overrated. But not tonight.” She should have gotten three Emmys that night. After poking fun at fellow nominees, and thanking Al Pacino and “the boys”—the musical walk off cue began to play and she sang in a singsong voice, “Oh I can sing this if I have to…” Then, she turned to Tony Kushner and said, “The bravest thing in the world is that writer that sits alone in a room and works out his grief, his rage, his imagination, and his deep desire to make people laugh. And then he makes a work of art that transforms the world with the truth. That’s all we want. That’s all we need.”
So they’ll line up to tribute her this year. She’ll sit in her plush velvet red box and be the elegant, gracious, brilliant, funny and authentic Meryl Streep. Kushner gave us the truth, and she gave us the voice.
There’s nothing like Streep cred.
Brent Mundt resides in Washington, DC, but lives in Rehoboth Beach.