The Birdcage

America's occasionally lazy film industry has a dirty little secret. It's called the French film industry. Throughout the 80s and 90s in particular, American filmmakers seemingly mined the French cinema for well-received gems and hastily brought these movies stateside in American reproductions. It works in some cases better than others, but usually the strength of a Hollywood budget and blissfully ignorant American audiences pulls through and delivers a hit.

Anyway, 1978's Les Cage aux Foilles--the French movie upon which The Birdcage was based--was itself based on an eponymous play, so it's a bit of a strangled route to copycat-ism. Following the release of the French movie was an American musical, so it's safe to say the well-tread plot of The Birdcage was fair game by the time the American movie version came out in 1996. It was practically a cornerstone of the public domain.

In the big picture, the actual plot of the movie is practically superfluous. The movie hinges on the strength of the hilarious performances, a credit to the great casting choices for the 1996 film. From the principals to the bit parts, it's no wonder the ensemble was awarded a Screen Actors' guild award for outstanding cast performance. It's totally and unself-consciously campy and over the top, but it's hard to imagine it any other way. I mean, what kind of drag queen is subdued and demure? They'd just be a drag commoner.

The movie, in all its incarnations, treads on delicate territory. In making a comedy that lampoons gay and drag culture, how can you still allow it some dignity and respect? It seems almost like an oxymoron (kind of like "subdued drag queen"). It's a careful balance between making the characters too cartoony or too spoon-gaggingly sentimental. On one hand, you want the audience to like them, but on the other, they need to make them laugh. Preferably with them rather than at them, but for the sake of comedy at times, either will do.



Luckily this movie pokes just as much fun at the straight man, but which I not only mean the heterosexual man but the FOX News-watching, Rush Limbaugh-consuming comedic foils who play a major role in setting up the plot. It's okay to laugh at people if you laugh at both sides. It says, see how both the campy drag-show director and right-wing politician can be ridiculous? And we say, Ah, yes. So we do.

The movie opens on gay cabaret owner Armand Goldman (Robin Williams) and his partner Albert (Nathan Lane). Albert is the club's star drag queen, performing as the diva-like Starina in the musical revues. Albert is something of a drama queen, and the littlest things put him to pieces. The two live with their flamboyant but domestically clueless houseboy Agador Spartacus (a brilliant Hank Azaria), who helps ease Albert's nerves with Pirin pills, which are really nothing more than aspirins with the "as" scratched off.

I love you, Hank Azaria. Especially since you admitted that accent is inspired by your Sephardic Jewish Grandmother

Armand's son Val returns from college with a major surprise: he is planning on getting married. At only 20, it would seem this would be the whole surprise, but Val's choice of mate throws even more of a wrench into the mix: his fiancee Barbara (Calista Flockhart) is the daughter of a prominent conservative senator who co-chairs the Coalition for the Moral Order. If that's not a great movie set-up, I don't know what is.



Barbara's parents are also less than thrilled with the news of their young daughter's impending nuptials, but are quickly swept into scandal when her senator father Kevin Keeley's (Gene Hackman) Coalition for Moral Order cohort is found dead in the bed of an underage black prostitute. This, you can imagine, was not exactly the image of moral order they were going for. "Your money's on the dresser, chocolate" aren't exactly the famous last words they might have hoped for. Kevin's wife Louis (Dianne Wiest) thinks a grand society wedding might be just the thing to put the whole debacle behind them and restore Senator Keeley's wholesome family image.

What the Keeleys may not have bargained for, though, was their daughter's marrying into an unconventional gay Jewish family residing in homosexual hotspot South Beach, which Barbara helpfully describes as "about two minutes from Fisher Island, where Jeb Bush lives". She also manages to slip in that Armand is a cultural attache to Greece, his mate a housewife, and that their last name is the more goyishly-neutral "Coleman". Quite a pickle, indeed.

Val pushes his father to play it straight, but the ever-hysterical Albert makes this a seeming impossibility. They consider having Albert play the role of a visiting uncle, but based on the clip below, his straight man act leaves just a little something to be desired:



The couple scraps their current interior design niche, trading their Florida-friendly pastels and leaf murals for more subtle giant crucifixes. Armand employs Val's real mother, whom Val has never met, to play the role of his wife at their little dinner party charade, but Albert's whining combined with horrible traffic foil the plan. Unaware of the traffic, the gang launches into an Albert-free dinner party complete with a shoe-wearing Agador Spartacus:




Val's mother Katherine still absent, Albert appears in an eerily Margaret Thatcher-esque full drag get-up, playing the role of doting WASPy housewife, much to the horror of all those in on it. Senator Keeley, however, is quite taken with who he believes to be Mrs. Coleman. When Katherine shows up, though, the jig is up, and Albert reveals himself as a man through the art of de-wigging. At this point Senator Keeley launches into some wigging of his own, lamenting the couple's Judaism as much as their same-sex partnership.

Determined to storm out of there, the Keeleys face a setback when they realize the dirty politics-hungry paparazzi has followed them to Armand and Albert's house. After a few touching moments of heartfelt apologies from the kids about launching this insane plot, Albert hatches a brilliant plan to get the Keeleys out of there without being discovered. The whole crew gets dolled up in drag makeup, wigs, and wardrobe and perform in the "Goldman Girls" number "We are Family". It might sound a little hokey, but it's pretty hilarious.




The movie is jam-packed with zingers and hilarious one-liners that you are pretty much contractually obligated to quote after watching. If you're not quoting inane lines like "You know what they say, where there's sand" and "Are you afraid of my Guuuatamalanness?" at least twenty times after a viewing, you're watching it wrong.

The whole thing pretty much makes you want to do an eclectic celebration of the dance. To do Fosse, Fosse, Fosse! Followed by Martha Graham, Martha Graham! With a little Twyla, Twyla, Twyla! Or maybe a little Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd. And a little Madonna, Madonna! But you keep it all inside. Albert and Armond, though, they'll draw it out of you, and before you know it you'll be wanting to join the gang onstage for a little "We are Fa-mi-ly" action whether or not you've seen a drag act a day in your life.*



*By the way, if you have no idea what I'm talking about in this closing paragraph, I recommend you go watch the movie, stat. At least watch the above trailer. It'll do you good.

Misunderstood TV: Great (and Sort of Great) Shows that Lasted Only One Season

It's a tale as old as television time. Someone comes up with a fantastic idea for a show, it premieres to rave reviews and critical praise, it seems poised on the brink of success...and no one watches it. There's no real formula to these things. No matter how strong a show, there's no way of knowing whether it will become a runaway hit or fizzle out into obscurity. With all the terrible shows that have been on the air for ages, it's clear you just can't count on the viewing public.

Thankfully, the internet hosts more than its fair share of elitists and snobs who are more than willing to show us all the error of our television watching ways. Really, just look at anyone who comments on the Onion's AV club. These types quick to tell us all what heathens we are for holding mainstream television viewing habits. To these TV snobs, popularity amongst the masses is the kiss of death. Everyone knows the only way to determine quality is if everyone hates something. Aside from a select chosen few who have the unique wisdom and intelligence to understand it, of course.

Luckily for you, I'm only sort of like that. I wouldn't consider myself an elitist. I just think I'm smarter than everyone else. What? I'm kidding. Only most people.

Joking aside (and for the record, I am joking), it's not about snobbery. It's just pure luck, plain and simple. Some shows make it, and others fly under the radar and face cancellation. Thanks to the almighty power of DVD, though, not to mention all sorts of online clips, there's hope for you yet on some of these:

Freaks and Geeks



This is one of those classic examples, the show everyone brings up in praise of underrated media everywhere. While nowadays some people are sick of the ever-growing Judd Apatow empire and its monopoly on the comedy market, back then he was a fledgling producer pushing a little show about high school misfits. He assembled a team of talented young comic actors and gave them a great script, but audiences just weren't biting. Apatow was loyal to his cast picks, though, and featured them all heavily in future projects. It's safe to say that even if you never saw an episode of Freaks and Geeks a day in your life, you'd recognize most of the ensemble today.

The show was set in the 1980s in small-town Michigan and focused on the daily lives of two groups of social outcasts: the "freaks" and the "geeks". It's a winding story of adolescent self-discovery and tribulations, and the show treated its characters with respect. Despite its disparaging title, the show's characters were more than the stereotypical nerds. They were multifaceted enough that we could relate to them in a distinctly human way. It's no wonder the show's become a cult classic: with the extensively detailed and commentated DVD release, it's every elitist nerd's dream.

Unfortunately, audiences responded similarly tepidly to Apatow's sophomore sitcom effort, college comedy Undeclared which lasted a single season from 2001-2002. You've got to admire his stick-to-it-ness though. He certainly got his due.



The Ben Stiller Show



Creating a sketch comedy show requires a delicate balance. Over the years, the marketplace has been flooded with them, some funny and some falling flat. It's always something of a crapshoot. This Ben Stiller's foray into sketch comedy came early in his career, preceding his ascendancy into movie stardom. And, surprise, surprise, Judd Apatow wrote for this one too. Was there any TV pot in which he had no hand? Any unpopular ones, I mean.

This show was 90s incarnate. With supporting stars like the then-unknown Janeane Garafalo and Andy Dick, this show oozed Gen X-iness from every frame. It began with a short run on MTV and was later picked up by FOX, impressed with the debut. The show mainly parodied popular media, but it was just a tad too witty and wicked for its own good. It overstepped that boundary of middle America by giving us multi-layered creative jokes that don't test well with wide audiences. TV snobs, yes, but regular people, no. That equation, however, usually equals good DVD sales over a decade later from die-hard fans, so it wasn't a total loss.


The Critic



Okay, okay, you got me. There were technically two seasons of The Critic, though each had a very limited number of episodes and showed on two different networks. In The Critic, Jon Lovitz stars as Jay Sherman, "New York's third-most popular early-morning cable TV-film critic". The show parodied popular movies and Jay offered his critiques, set against the backdrop of plots based on Jay's everyday life. In an ironic twist of fat, the Jay character has an aversion to popular taste and is generally contemptuous of well-liked media. No wonder elitists like this show so much. Jay is them. He is the epitome of the snobby intellectual New Yorker on which all intellectual poseurs base their TV show preferences. A near-perfect fit.

A full season of the show was produced, but ABC canceled The Critic after thirteen episodes. As other episodes were already moving through production, FOX jumped on the bandwagon and picked up the rest of the season, only to drop it once the remaining ten had aired. The now-defunct UPN was in talks to air some more episodes, but the deal fell through. Webisodes premiered in 2000, but it just wasn't the same. You'd think a show with Simpsons crossovers would be able to garner some interest, but it just never took off.


My So-Called Life



No, your eyes do not deceive you. I posted the entire first episode above, in hopes that you'll watch it and be pulled into the angsty goodness that was the underrated My So-Called Life. This is one of those other quintessential examples of a show that died too young. I may never recover from the shock of learning I'd never find out the answer to the season finale's cliffhanger. It plagues me still. Brian or Jordan? If you have any insights, do share. I'm still considering the possibilities.

On the other hand, this show was pretty heavy-handed with the issue-tackling. It squeezed so much into its 19 hour-long episodes, it's almost hard to imagine a continuation. In one episode, Angela muses, "When someone dies young, it's like they stay that way forever, like a vampire." Such is the case of My So-Called Life. In its existing canon, it's nearly perfect. It never took that ratings-seeking risk that could have tainted its goodness. It gets to stay that way forever, as it should. Like a vampire, only with less bloodsucking and sparkling in the sunshine.



The Dana Carvey Show



Like I said, sketch comedy shows are shaky ground, creatively speaking. Not everything that succeeds as a smaller part of a larger show will fare well when released into the wild unshielded by the popularity of its parent show. Dana Carvey was very popular on Saturday Night Live, and had a loyal following ABC hoped to to bring on board to his self-titled debut. The show was a little risque, especially considering it aired right after the family comedy Home Improvement. The sponsors were none too pleased with the iffy content, which combined with the plummeting ratings spelled imminent early cancellation.

We did get one good thing out of it: The Ambiguously Gay Duo, which later re-premiered on SNL. Thanks, Stephen Colbert and Robert Smigel. You guys did us proud.


Of course, there were many other shows that didn't get their due, but that's all we've got time for today, folks. Now they really didn't get their due, considering I wouldn't even pay tribute to them here. So, I'm sorry, Eerie, Indiana, Twin Peaks, and all you others. You've been doubly screwed. Luckily, there will always be a vocal contingency of TV elitists to keep singing your praises, canceled TV shows. There's hope for you yet. You know, on DVD--the TV snob's medium of choice.

90s TV Spinoffs

With all the movie remakes currently in the works, it's not a stretch to wonder if we've just plain run out of ideas. The Karate Kid and The Never-Ending Story are just a few decades young and already they're being treated like golden oldies in need of revamping for the new millennium. To dismiss this generation of hangers-on as a new fleeting phenomenon would be dishonest, though. Our coming-of-age era entertainment was equally if not more guilty of the same abhorrent offenses. We didn't call them rip-offs back then, though. We called them spin-offs.

A spin-off is an admittedly lazy creative process of launching a new program. Relying on the popularity of an already successful show, spin-off creators simply take existing characters and separate them from their natural habitat in an established program. The moment audiences respond remotely positively to a secondary character, producers often jumped on the spin-off bandwagon. The theory was, you liked seeing them on this show for five minutes, why not thirty? It seemed a logical leap, and certainly easier than coming up with an original idea.

In reality, some spin-offs work better than others. There's a fragile balance to keep: true enough to the original characters to ride the wave of the established show's popularity, but original enough not to appear a complete facsimile of the first show. Most of the successful spinoffs relied on repackaging standby semi-major characters, though some managed to coast on showcasing minor or one-time guests. The best of them went on to outstrip the fame of the show from which they were spawned. The worst faded into obscurity as poorly thought-out network schemes to milk a show's popularity for all it was worth.

There were many, many spin-offs in the 90s, but let's take a look at a few of the most-watched:

Cheers-->Frasier



Here's an incidence of a seriously popular spin-off. It ran eleven seasons, the same as its predecessor, Cheers. The show followed regular Cheers patron Dr. Frasier Crane as he hosts a pop psychology call-in radio show. His brother is also a psychiatrist, and a very neurotic one at that. Frasier takes in his aging father and his full-time character, and hilarious, toned-down subdued antics ensue. The show was witty and didn't talk down to its audience, which was always a refreshing notion for a sitcom. Though it wavered a bit in its final years, it remains one of the most successful spin-offs to date.



Perfect Strangers-->Family Matters



Perfect Strangers: two wacky mismatched cousin roommates with differing nationalities. Family Matters: charming middle-class black family. Tough to see the connection, right? Winslow matriarch Hariette Winslow started as a character on Perfect Stranger and was deemed worthy of further exploration. Of course, then they brought in Urkel and everything changed plot focus-wise, but it was a decent staple of the popular TGIF lineup. Not too shabby for a spin-off.



Buffy the Vampire Slayer-->Angel



If you think vampires are the hot new thing, you're probably suffering from acute memory loss. I'd get that checked out if I were you. In the 90s, it was all about Buffy. Her vampires didn't need skin sparkling gimmicks, just her pure ass-kicking finesse. The show spun off Angel in 1999, featuring Buffy regular David Boreanaz as its title character. Angel was a vampire cursed with the restoration of his human soul, thus racking him with guilt and internal struggle. It was a little hokey, but if you're into that kind of thing, it was a pretty for Buffy seconds.




Golden Girls-->Empty Nest-->Nurses + Golden Girls-->The Golden Palace

Talk about a strangled route on this one. The Golden Girls actually split into two separate spin-off tracks, one focusing on a once-featured neighbor couple and the other rebranding the original as a Bea Arthur-less project. None of them assumed the level of popular of Golden Girls, but they did reasonably well for spin-offs.

On track one, we had Empty Nest, a project that had a bumpy road to production. Originally intended to spin from the GG episode Empty Nests about a neighbor couple whose children had all flown the coop. Unluckily for producers, the characters bombed, so they brought in entirely new characters with a different premise altogether: a widower whose post-college aged daughters come back to live with them. They still called it Empty Nest, which of course makes no sense. It was a full nest. The hen was gone, but all the chicks were there. Sounds full to me. Guess they just wanted to spare themselves the embarrassment of admitting they had to can the original concept altogether.



Remarkably, Empty Nest also managed to spurn a spin-off, Nurses. The Nurses in question worked at the same hospital as Dr. Harry Weston of Empty Nest. The show was okay, but the first-season ratings were in a bit of a slump. In response, show writers played all sorts of cheap tricks including like adding new characters and completely changing existing ones. Regardless, the show lasted 3 seasons, so they must have been doing something right.



Meanwhile, on track two we had the McLanahan/White/Getty vehicle, The Golden Palace, in which Don Cheadle gives his second best performance as a hotel manager. Throw in Cheech Marin, and you've got yourself a zany bunch of hotel proprietors. That was the idea, at least. The theme song was a cheesy musakified version of The Golden Girls' "Thank You For Being a Friend". It only lasted one season, partially because of its terrible time slot and partially because it wasn't all that great.





Animaniacs-->Pinky and the Brain



After seeing them on Animaniacs, how could you not give these little lab mice their own half hour to shine? If nothing else, I'm sold on theme song alone. It's so straightforward. One is a genius, the other's insane. So incredibly simple, yet so humorous. Well played, Warner Bros.



Beavis and Butthead-->Daria

This is the first half of the first episode...intrigued? They're all up there. On YouTube. Just don't tell the authorities. They've been uploaded backwards. Ingenius, no? Now go watch them before they're gone.

Here's a case in which the spin-off was entirely different from the series from which it originated. Daria had none of Beavis and Butthead's bonehead humor. It was smart, sarcastic, quick-witted, and hilarious. It was as sharp as B&B was dumb. Our protagonist Daria was something of a social outcast, giving voice to misfits and brains everywhere. The show so perfectly captured the stereotypes of high school, though it treated its subjects with kindness even while mocking them. It had heart, but just when you thought they were going in for the kill on an aww moment, they triggered back with a biting retort.



Party of Five-->Time of Your Life



Another one-seasoner, Time of Your Life was meant to launch Jennifer Love Hewitt's character from Party of Five character into her own series as she tackled New York City. It didn't even make it all the way through its first season before cancellation, if that gives you any hints to the critical reception. It was really pretty terrible.



90210-->Melrose Place-->Models, INC



Melrose Place was intended as an expansion of the 90210 franchise to reach out to the twenty-something demographic. The Jake Hanson character originally appeared on 90210 as a bad-boy biker hired to do some construction for Kelly's family. The two engage in a brief tryst, which was conveniently resolved in time to transfer Jake to the MP apartment complex setting. The show went on to establish its own following and featured much darker storylines than its after-school-special-leaning predecessor.




I'm going to open myself to mockery and admit that as a child, I was a shameless Models, Inc. fan. Really, it was awful, but I was probably among the only disappointed people upon news of the cancellation following the first season. I mean, they ended it with To Be Continued... I heard they eventually aired the continuation on E!, but obviously I missed it. I may never know these answers.


The Tracey Ullman Show-->The Simpsons



You have to give some credit to the longest running sitcom of all time, especially considering it's a cartoon. The Simpsons premiered as animated shorts on the Tracey Ullman Show, featuring a dysfunctional family and their humorous episodic experiences. It may not still be up to its original quick-witted standards, but they do still have their original cast. That's almost as good.


Good Morning Miss Bliss-->Saved By the Bell-->Saved by the Bell: The College Years-->Saved by the Bell: The New Class

How many times can you repackage a franchise? That's the question Saved By the Bell producers must have asked themselves, obviously putting faith in the answer "a whole lot". The original Disney Series centering around junior high students and their teacher played by Hayley Mills was cute enough, but nothing cult fanship worthy. Producers tweaked the shows into the California-based Saved by the Bell and launched a franchise that begot awesome product tie ins like my previously mentioned Zackberry flavored shampoo. The show wasn't really one for continuity, but it made its shaky way to graduation and we assumed they'd all call it a day.

Not so. Featuring a distinctly huskier Zack Morris and some god-awful 90s flannel getups, Saved by the Bell: The College Years, ran one lone season from 1994-1995. It was an effort, sure, but not a particularly valiant one.



Oh, and there was an even worse but far longer-running spin-off, Saved by the Bell: The New Class, retaining only Screech and Mr Belding from the original. And really, I doubt those two were swatting away dozens of projects. They needed the work.

A few of the originals drop by The New Class

Spin-offs can obviously be very hit or miss. Some characters have the potential to carry their own series, while others are better left fading into the background. One thing's for sure, though: if you can grind a franchise into the ground, you might as well give it your best shot. You might get a Frasier, you might get a Time of Your Life, but the odds seem pretty well-stacked in your favor.