Happy Saturday! So excited to share The Birdcage with you!!!! I am sure you will love it as much as I do. Well, you will love it some, even if not quite as much as I do.
The Birdcage is available for rent on Prime, googleplay, and youtube (youtube link below). I know, I am asking you to spend a little money, but it is SO WORTH IT.
At 7:30am Chicago time, I will put up an “and PLAY” comment and we will comment along from there!
dontcallitbollywood 
Here!
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And PLAY!
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I rewatched this with my parents last night, and I have two warnings. First, it’s dated in that there are a lot of jokes about Bob Dole and that sort of 90s TV news scandal setting.
Second, the son is the biggest brat in the history of the world!
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You love the film enough to watch it twice in 24 hours!?!
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YES! Also, my parents and I were super grumpy last ngiht and needed something happy.
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Jazzy music to start the day with. It was playing on the streets of NYC after the last presidential election.
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The 90s were so brightly colored! I am so glad we are out of that weird early 2000s period when everthing was simple black dresses.
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That line there, “have you eaten”, that’s when I realise Nathan Lane is playing my Grandma! Dramatic, emotional, but also super super caregiver.
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In S.F. the transvestite bars became bachelorette hangouts, much to the distress of some transvestites.
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In Chicago it’s swung back around again. I don’t know where the bacherlorette’s are going now, maybe Korean Kareoke places? But the drag shows are all cool people. And me, to see how the costume I made for my friend looks on stage.
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Robin Williams and Nathan Lane are both so short!
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I love it! This movie uses it over and over again as a sight gag!
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I love the pirin tablets gag!!!!!
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What are pirin tablets?
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They explain it real quick, Robin Williams asks and her dresser says “it’s aspirin, with the a and the s scrapped off”
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I am so glad they cast a real Broadway star in this role! I can buy that he is the headliner for the club for years.
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Yes!
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They sure are making Robin Williams unlikable at the start.
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It comes around big time! Starting in about 3 minutes.
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He’s only 20, he can’t even legally drink that wine!
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YES! The perfect age for his parents to legitimately not want him to get married, but to be dumb enough to think he can.
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And here’s where Robin Williams comes around! Takes him about 2 minutes to switch from judgement to blind supportive father. Such a sweet family.
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I thought he was just acting when he was being all tough.
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Oh, look at the landlines. So quaint.
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Love Nathan Lane’s outfit.
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Love Nathan Lane’s morning! Of course he is sincerely fond of all the shopkeepers and knows them all by name.
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Are they in Florida?
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Yep, South Beach. Which apparently is a gay haven?
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Sunny trip through town stormy skies out the window. The weather won’t cooperate with the filmers.
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HA! I never noticed.
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Their kitchen is so cozy and lived in! With the exercise bike and ironing board and all of that.
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I didn’t even notice. I’ll have to look harder. I think I get lazy when there aren’t subtitles.
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I have the advantage of having seen this movie at least a dozen times! It’s a family favorite.
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Their breakfast is so much more boring than the Florida breakfast.
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Rich people are often boring.
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Speaking of, aren’t Dianne Weist’s costumes perfect? All pearls and cardigans.
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Meet the Press – the most wonderful show on Television, the perfect platform, with people just screaming at eachother. So hard to not laugh out loud and wake the family.
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YES! Oh, I was worried that all the jokes about the conservatives would be too dated.
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Growing up politics was often the topic of conversation around the dinner table. I get ALL the jokes.
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I love the candy thing. It humanizes him.
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Who is the mom? I kinda like her – Not hard to get the Pope’s blessing.
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Dianne WEist! She’s been in everything and is always genius.
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Any kid who decides to get married at 20, before finishing school, is going to be stubborn, and maybe, just maybe a bit immature. The idea that you can’t wait 2 years is well, youthful.
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Yes, but he WAY crosses the line here!
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I love Robin Williams sweat circles!
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Kids can be so casually hurtful. Just a shot to the heart without even thinking about it.
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GO ROBIN WILLIAMS! Don’t give in to your brat son!!!!
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He spent 20 years becoming who he is – How old is he?
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It’s mentioned later, 50.
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Homosexuality was much less accepted in the 90s. I don’t know about in Florida, but even in the Bay Area, being open about having two dads would raise the eyebrows of most people in the room. And the kid is so desperate to fit in he wants to get married at 20. I understand where both of the characters are coming from. The dad DID tell the kid to lie in PRESCHOOL!
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But to tell your Dad “I don’t want you to be who you are”? That’s so hurtful!
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Guests Yassir Arrofat & Kate Moss!!! I love the throw-away lines!
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YES! The script is by Elaine May, of Nichols and May. Also wrote Tootsie, and The Graduate, and script-doctored anonymously a bunch of stuff.
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Robin Williams sadness at the prospect of pretending to be someone else is beautiful.
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Yes! And he does it for his son. This movie is such a lovely combination of showing what a horrible sacrifice he is making, and also how much love a parent has to be willing to make the sacrifice.
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I love that all the club performers are pitching in to help. And unsurprisingly, brat Val has no sense of how grateful he should be to all of them.
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Have I loved the sun in a hat and under an umbrella!
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YES!!!!! With complete clothing covering them both up!
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Great box & lemon boobies prop!
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Oooh Ouch, so sad for Nathan Lane now.
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I love how the scenes like this are played for laughs, but also real feelings. This is so HORRIBLE.
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The palimony papers running thing is so dated, in such a good way. Today, they would just be married. There wouldn’t be this awkwardness about hitting each legal step as it becomes available to them.
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Robin Williams and Nathan Lane have such amazing chemistry. Usually Robin Williams feels like he is doing stand up, if that makes sense. He is just doing his own riff and being his own over the top thing. But in this movie, he and Nathan Lane are equally perfect and play off each other perfect.
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The John Wayne walk is SO AMAZING. I like to think Nathan Lane just showed them he could do it and they had to put it in the film.
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That restaurant conversation would have been so interesting to overhear.
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I very much enjoy the older woman watching them.
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Again, SO SHORT!
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Christine Baranski! Who apparently doesn’t age? She is playing around 40 in this, she plays slightly over 40 in The Good Wife, and I find it believable in both.
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So Albert (Nathan Lane) is not his Dad. He doesn’t have a strong relationship with him?
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Robin Williams is his bio Dad. But Albert has been raising him since he was a baby. He’s just being a little snot because all of a sudden he finds having unconditional love embarrassing.
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Has Albert been there since he was a baby?
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Yep, there was that tossed off comment just now of her asking if he was still wit Albert. And we know he hasn’t seen her since Val was born. So it sounds like he was with Albert already, cheated on him with her, and then Albert forgave him and raised the baby.
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The kid’s relationship with Albert is strange given that info.
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I see it as him going through a phase of being super disrespectful, and his Dad allowing him to get away with it. Again, it’s my Grandma! When you are little, she’s the one you run to to be petted and spoiled and loved, and then you grow up and suddenly you want to be an Adult with the other parent.
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Oh, and there was also the comment in Val’s first scene, he said something about being ready for marriage because he had such a great role model, the only guy in his fraternity not from a broken home.
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Not exactly maternal visual bottle as penis gag was PERFECT!
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YES!
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It’s my favorite scene!!!!! Prepare to get all teary and touched.
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The set up with the boat and the colors and the fishing family walking behind them. Beautiful.
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50! He only starting being who he was at 30!
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And now his stupid son is trying to take that away from him!
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They’ve never even been divorced!
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Robin Williams looks older in a suit.
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Robin Williams looks miserable in a suit. He does such a good job showing how trapped and dead he feels.
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bare feet on tile – OUCH!
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Yes, but shoes? In the florida heat?
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planters fasciitis
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Car phones!
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To be abandoned by your mother, is traumatic. The actor playing Val is not doing a good job expressing the complexity of the emotions involved. And the writers confuse me with the relationship they have given him and Albert.
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Yeah, we get that little scene at the beginning of Albert sneaking in to take his clothes which is classic parental love. But then we are thrown right into this hectic time and we don’t get to see him and Albert have normal interactions.
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Nancy Drew books!
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Such a great call back to them getting random old books from the junk shop!
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