Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies".
I'm your host, Glenn Holland.
Tonight's movie is "The Birdcage", released by United Artists in 1996.
It was directed by Mike Nichols from a screenplay by his one-time comedy partner Elaine May, based on the 1978 Franco-Italian film "La Cage aux Folles".
"The Birdcage" stars Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane, and Diane Wiest, with support from Dan Futterman, Calista Flockhart, and Hank Azaria.
Armand Goldman is the owner and impresario of The Birdcage, a drag club in Miami's South Beach district.
The chief attraction at The Birdcage is Starina, the drag persona of Armand's longtime partner, Albert.
The couple live in an apartment above the club with their housekeeper, Agador, a flamboyantly gay Guatemalan who aspires to become a drag performer at the club.
Despite his popularity as Starina, Albert is insecure now that he's reached middle age and is prone to elaborate scenes of self pity, which Armand and Agador do their best to remedy with reassurances and pampering.
Their lives are suddenly disrupted when Val, Armand's son from a one night stand with a woman some 20 years before, comes home to announce that he is engaged to marry Barbara, a young woman he's met at college.
Despite some misgivings, Armand gives his approval to the marriage.
But there is a problem.
Barbara is the daughter of a conservative Republican senator from Ohio, Kevin Keeley, who is also co-founder of a right-wing organization called The Coalition for Moral Order.
Unfortunately for Senator Keeley, the other co-founder, a fellow senator, has just been found dead in the bed of an underaged prostitute.
Senator Keeley and his wife Louise agree that the best antidote to this scandal would be a family wedding between Barbara and Val, who they're convinced comes from a traditional, respectable family.
But first, they want to meet Val's parents.
This leaves Val, Armand, and Albert with the question of how best to present their own untraditional but loving family in a way that will meet with the senator's approval.
Director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May first met in Chicago in 1950.
In 1955, they both became members of the city's improvisational theater group The Compass Players, whose alumni include Alan Alda, Ed Asner, Valerie Harper, Barbara Harris, and Jerry Stiller.
Nichols and May were asked to leave the group in 1957 because they were so talented that it became difficult for the other members to work with them.
Nichols and May began appearing as an improvisational standup comedy duo after auditioning for Jack Rollins, who later became Woody Allen's manager.
Rollins later said, "Their work was so startling, so new, as fresh as could be.
I was stunned by how really good they were, actually as impressed by their acting technique as by their comedy.
They were totally adventurous and totally innocent.
I thought, 'My god, there are two people writing hilarious comedy on their feet.'"
They were also very successful.
After four years of performing together, including appearing on Broadway in "An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May", and releasing three classic comedy albums, they ended their collaboration to pursue other projects.
Nichols became a successful stage and film director, while May became known as a playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor.
"The Birdcage" was their first collaboration as director and screenwriter, followed two years later by the political satire "Primary Colors" in 1998.
Elaine May's screenplay for "The Birdcage" was based on the 1978 film "La Cage aux Folles", or "Cage of the Mad Women", directed by Edouard Molinaro and starring Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault.
Tognazzi and Serrault were also the leads in the 1973 play by Jean Poiret, also titled "La Cage aux Folles", that ran for almost 1,800 performances.
The movie based on the play was a major commercial success in France, Germany, and the United States and was later the basis for a hit Broadway musical in 1983.
When Elaine May reconceived the story for a movie remake aimed at American audiences, her primary contribution was to heighten the comic complications and the level of wit.
Janet Maslin said in a review in "The New York Times", "To an astonishing degree, 'The Birdcage' amounts to a line-by-line copy of the French film, though Miss May often takes the original punchline and adds significantly more punch."
"The Bird Cage," despite its late 20th century setting and sensibilities, is in many ways a classic farce.
The word derived from the French word for stuffing originally referred to humorous improvisations by actors performing medieval religious dramas, what we might call comic relief.
The earliest surviving farces, all French, date from the mid 15th to the mid 16th century.
As befits the origins of this comedy genre farces feature exaggerated, ridiculous or absurd characters and situations in an improbable but just possibly realistic storyline.
Farces typically include broad physical comedy, fast pacing, and deceit and impersonations that often depend on split second timing and slamming doors in the single setting in which they unfold.
Peter Bogdanovich's 1992 film, "Noises Off," based on Michael Frayn's 1982 stage play, provides a classic example.
Another is Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy film, "Some Like it Hot," in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon have to dress in drag and join an all-girl orchestra to escape gangsters, after witnessing the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Before "Some Like it Hot," probably the best known farce involving extensive use of drag was "Charley's Aunt."
A three-act British comedy first performed in February 1892.
The plot revolves around a group of Oxford undergraduates whose romantic prospects depend on the imminent arrival of the aunt of Charley Wyckham.
When she fails to appear on time, Charley's friends prevail on him to pose as his aunt and, as they say, hilarity ensues.
The play was both a critical and a popular success.
It has been revived countless times and made into motion pictures in Great Britain and elsewhere, including silent versions in 1915 and 1925, and Hollywood versions in 1930, starring Charlie Ruggles, and again in 1941, starring Jack Benny.
In "Charley's Aunt," as in "Some Like it Hot," the heroes' resort to drag was the result of a pressing necessity, either to save a romance or to save a life.
Similar but less dire straits lead to Dustin Hoffman assuming a drag persona in 1982's "Tootsie" and Robin Williams putting on a wig in 1993's "Mrs.
Doubtfire."
In these films, and most other comedies involving men in drag, it's made abundantly clear that the heroes are in fact decidedly heterosexual, and much of the humor arises from the unwanted attentions of an older man or the frustrating presence of a desirable woman.
Refreshingly, this is not the case in "The Bird Cage."
Armand and Albert as a gay couple both make their comfortable living from The Bird Cage, a nightclub whose primary draw is drag performance.
Albert appears as Starina, not because he is somehow forced by circumstances to do so but because he's an artist and drag performance is his art.
In that context, Albert posing as Val's biological mother is not an act of desperation but a ruse based on his very real talents as a drag artist.
It's only when he gets intoxicated, and, Katharine Archer, Val's real mother shows up that things come undone.
One of the key elements of farce is exaggerated or ridiculous characters, and some critics believed Armand, and especially Albert, recalled common gay stereotypes.
Desson Thomson said in a review in "The Washington Post," "As can be expected, the comedy comes from Albert's exaggerated tics and Armand and Val's despairing attempts to mask them."
But the movie was largely applauded by gay organizations.
"There is a fine line between having an offensive stereotypical character and one that is represented fairly," said Tamara King, GLAD's then entertainment media director in a press conference when the film came out.
"In 'The Bird Cage,'" she added "we go beyond the stereotypes to see the character's depth and humanity."
Robin Williams agreed and believed the realistic grounding for the movie's farcical comedy was its main character's humanity.
He said, "Armand and Albert don't live in a separate world.
They're a couple and they have the same dynamics as any couple.
It may not go with what was initially thought of as a nuclear family, but there are a lot of families like this and they all share the same kinds of problems trying to get through life."
Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."
I'm Glenn Holland.
Goodnight.
