Kill James Bond! - S3E21.5: The Birdcage [PREVIEW]

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

This week, it's the RARE COMBO of Just Abi and Devon! We've just noticed that its Pride, so for this first of three gay ass movies, we're talking about Abi's pick- The Birdcage! Robin Williams and Nathan Lane star as a queer couple who have to pretend to be normal for one night when their son's girlfriend's republican parents come round for dinner. It rules ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. For the past few months I've been talking to a family trapped in Gaza, working to hit their gofundme for passage out of Rafah whenever the crossing reopens. Their names are Ahmed and Layla, and their 4 kids Jana, Malik, Lana and Amir. While the crossing might be closed, the situation is changing by the day and being able to afford passage out when a crossing reopens is an immense comfort. Please don't donate money as your sole intersection with palestine organising. You have to do other things now. https://www.gofundme.com/f/a8jzz-help-me-and-my-family-get-out-of-the-gaza-strip https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate ----- Consider supporting us on our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by Alice Caldwell-Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com

They love the ones where I do accent work. Hello and welcome to yet another episode of Kill James Bond. My name is Devon and I tragically alone. I'm heartbroken. My friend and I can't keep that one going. My friend and co-conspirator November has sadly gone away to get consensually kicked the shit out of or be an essay hell, one or the other. It's 50-50 pretty much.

But I am still here with dear friend of the show, one-on-one, inside the actor's studio with Abigail Thorne, star of Stage and Screen. My love, welcome. Hi, it's so nice to be here. We're doing like the kind of Masters, Masters acting, but it's Masters podcasting. It's like Devin and Abby. It's a Double Dragon episode listeners. It's Double Dragon.

But really it's the three of us listening, cause you're here to... That's right. ...silently watching. You're a key part of this. You're the podcast cuck listener. We're both podcasting and we're having fun, but you can't take part. No. You just have to listen. And what

are we talking about today, Abigail? I believe it was your pick. It was, it was. So we decided for Pride Month to choose to be gay, to choose to embrace a homosexual ideology. And so I chose a film that is a classic, but it's something I was only introduced to very recently by the wonderful Valentina V, who's the director of Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend. Oh, nice. And she showed me this 1996 film called The Birdcage, which stars Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, based on a French play, which is... I really fucking enjoy this film.

It's such fun with this. It's in some ways, like, maybe a little dated and perhaps even a little nostalgic in the way that it depicts a kind of queerness that is maybe like passing into history now. I mean there's still gay people obviously but like- Yeah, because this is uh, based around two owners of a drag club in South Beach. Mm-hmm. Florida. Yeah. This made me very nostalgic for a certain tier of like British drag.

Right. Yeah. Because used to be time being like a good couple of years ago, you could just have like drag queens as personalities. There would be on things like they'd be on like Jonathan Ross. They just like they'd come and hang out on things. You had like Dame Edna. You had Lily Savage. Yeah.

And we've sort of lost that. Like, Drag Race is more popular, but it feels like the whole drag has been siloed off to just that. Yeah, yeah. In a way, it's kind of, it's gone more mainstream, but has gone to the place that like, mainstream quote unquote queer representation goes, where it's like, as you say, it's like it's in its own little pen.

Yes. It's like in its own pen over to the side of the entertainment industry and like it all goes in there and now if you say, oh it's drag, people go like drag race? And sometimes you have to go, no, not like that. You're like not a ton like drag race, no. No, actually. There is actually a fascinating line later on that we get to about the kind of like gay or trans thing, but anyway, we open up, we get like a performance of We Are Family, this queer nightclub in

Miami called The Bird Cage, which is run by Robin Williams. It's on the beach, so it's like very, we got rolling over the ocean, it's a wonderful opening shot. And the headline act we see on the sign outside is Starina. So Robin Williams is like on the club floor. He's like making sure the patrons happy. Somebody mentions that the Kennedys are in the club and he's like, oh cool. So it's like really popular. And there's these, I think six people on the stage who are performing. There is a moment that's a shame though. They're all like dressed as women and then they perform We Are Family and then

they run off stage to do a quick change. Yes, we're shown the quick change. Yeah. In full view of the camera, one of them like strips off the clothes and in particular shows us that there's like a massive bulge. Yes. So we get this like assertion of there being a presentation and there being what the movie would have you believe is like the truth of these people's bodies. I think what the movie is trying to tell us is that these people are men, even though that may in fact, real life not be accurate. Yes. So yeah, that's the one thing that's one of the things in this moment. Oh man, right.

It's one of those things. It's a real shame. Yeah, it is. Starina is not coming down because she's experiencing mental health. It's fine. It's reasonable. She's supposed to be on stage in four to five minutes, but she is in bed under the covers going, I'm hideous, I'm a monster. She is, she is. And she's being attended to by Hank Azaria. Hank Azaria in the booty shorts. Hank Azaria in this film is so good. Every performance in this film is amazing, but Hank Azaria is this like very OTT,

like lisping gay man. Yeah. Who is very funnyTT, like, lisping gay man. Yeah. Who is, like, very funny and very charming, because they're trying to help Starina put the stockings on and everything else. Mm-hmm. It's called Agador. Agador, yeah. When the covers come down, we see that Starina is Nathan Lane.

Nathan Lane. Mm-hmm. None other. Beautiful. Who is also Robin Williams's partner. And Robin Williams is very upset that Nathan Lane is late to stage, and he actually does kick down the bathroom door as they're hiding in there. And they're also a couple. And Nathan's performance in this is fucking incredible, as this like histrionic, like so over the top.

It's so good. Startled by everything, just like, WAAAAAAA! Like, like my old French teacher genuinely, like, phenomenal. There's so many times where you hear him just go, OOHOOHOO! In the distance, it's sort of like a way to establish what he's in the scene. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's, it's wonderful. And Nathan said like, You don't care about me anymore. They're having this like, couples bickering. You don't care about me anymore. You don't love me anymore. It's like, says like, you don't care about me anymore. They're having this like couples bickering. You don't care about me anymore. You don't love me anymore. He's like, come on, you're on stage in like, five minutes. And so Nathan Lane says, oh, I have to do everything you say because you're a man and

I'm a woman. And Robin Hoodie just goes, you're not a woman. Just goes, ah! It's so wonderful. Yeah. And it's like, not entirely clear, like is... I don't think Nathan is meant to be trans in it. I think the character is like he-him.

Yes, I believe so. I think it's just like a very effeminate gay man. Like I still know gay people who do this who will like call each other she. Yes. This like very, very effeminate thing. Yeah, this is one of those things where this is over time where drag and being transgender, these sort of ideas hadn't fully separated in the way that they are nowadays. Like there's a lot of overlap here.

You alright? Yeah, I just went to take a drink of my tea and realized I forgot to put the tea bag in. So this is just hot water and milk. Oh, it can't be good. That's disgusting. But this is of an era, so the language may not be au fait with how you understand queerness at the moment, but this is something that we'll come across a lot. Yeah, definitely.

I think in Kill Dream Spawn's Pride season. Indeed. Nathan Lane is experiencing what I guess we would now call twink death. Yes. Because like, oh, I was beautiful once, but now look at me. Look at what you've turned me into. Now I'm this short, fat, hideous, ugly thing and rubberless. Because I made you short? Like, no!

They have such good chemistry. Like as a couple, you really, really do believe it. Yeah, it's a yeah! Like eventually he's like, fine, fine. I'll send out someone else to do the piece. And like immediately, obviously. She's like, what? Obviously I'll do it.

My public need me. Like, yeah, it's like they've come to see Starina and Starina will not disappoint them. And we also see that the Hanker's area is giving him Pirin tablets, like tablets. Like I must have a Pirin tablet. Like, and then Robin's like, what the fuck are you giving him? What's Pirin? He's like, it's aspirin with the A and the S scraped off. Yeah, don't worry.

He's like, you're genius, you're genius. It's part of the fucking like, yeah, right. It's getting into character, but like, there's a little accusation of this thrown out by Nathan Lane's character, who I guess we should probably name at a certain point. Albert. Albert. We're talking Robin Williams is Armand, Nathan Lane is Albert, Hank Ziria is

Agador, there's a lot of A's to take stock off. But he's going, well I know that you're like trying to get away from me to meet someone because you've got wine in the fridge and it's white wine and I don't drink white wine and neither do you. And Robin is like no no no of course not I would never never do anything like this. And we're sort of left to stick with that for a minute. But we see the transformation, Starina on stage. Fantastic. Like if you've ever seen a proper drag show, just wonderful. Comedy, just, just, yeah, just fantastic.

Yeah, and she starts her first number and Robin Williams does in fact, sneak away. He does. Sneaks upstairs to the apartment, finds Hank Azaria dancing in a wig and a bra and talks to him in a very sort of nasty way. Yes. Robin Williams is kind of an asshole in this film. He is. I have a lot of complaints about the way Robin Williams treats his friends and loved ones

in this movie. Yeah. He's a fucking twat in this because Hank Azaria says, when are you going to let me audition for you? And Robin Williams goes, when you have talent. And like, there's a certain degree of like cattiness, okay, fair enough. But then it's not really cattie. He plays it quite like brutally. And then he says, well, you know, you should let me audition for you. Let me audition or I'm going to tell Nathan Lane that you're meeting somebody when he's on the stage. And he goes, I have two words for you, green card. He fucking threatens him with deportation. Yeah. He's a nasty man.

Yeah, he is. He's a fucking dickhead in this film. All right. I'm going to have to stop you there. That is quite enough of that. If you want to hear the rest of this, you're going to have to head on over to our Patreon, patreon.com slash kill James Bond. All one word. Sign up today for as little as £5 a month. £5? That's nothing. That's one cup of coffee nowadays. It used to be two when we started making this podcast, but it's one now. That is not fucked up. And yet, KillJamesBond remains the same price. Beautiful.