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I n college I studied comedy, because the dying breaths of liberal arts education allows one to do such a thing, and those who study comedy well—eat their vegetables, drink their milk, and so on—study Elaine May and Mike Nichols. May and Nichols met at the University of Chicago, and subsequently took their relationship to an off-campus improvisational group known as The Compass Players, where they performed until, as the legend goes, they were kicked out for being too good or left of their own accord.

Nichols and May. Or for the sake of this issueMay and Nichols. Their talent and ambition led them, as it williams for many who pass through the Chicago improv scene, to New York City where in no gay, in some time—they robin on Broadway. The show was non-narrative: a owner of unrelated, mostly improvisational scenes.

In class, we watched a whole slew of them. There are a handful to be found on YouTube, their quality lacking but their substance fulfilling. The first scene we watched was between a mother and son—May and Nichols, respectively. Not just any son, but a Jewish son, the son of a Jewish mother, and one who has forgotten to call one too many times.

Do you remember me? Nichols told May about the line right afterwards, and the two of them took it from there. What follows is a rapid-fire dance of scolding and excuses. It does not matter that the son is a rocket scientist, that he is club. It matters only that he did not call.

And May, whom I loved—her face angular, her brows arched, her eyes squinting and ever-recalculating—digs so fully into Nichols, his face open, doughy, accepting to a fault. The pair, at the height of their fame, separated. No big blowup, no scandal. They walked night from each other to pursue other projects and passions.

The Birdcage at 25: a gay comedy that broke boundaries

The Birdcage reunited May and Nichols, not in front of the camera, but behind it. The Birdcage is a classic tale of 20th century culture clash: A gay couple and a straight couple, ideologically opposed, forced to sit down at a table across from one another out of the shared love of their respective children.

This felt quietly revolutionary in the late s—sympathetic, let alone funny, portrayals of gay couples were largely unseen at this point in time—and it still felt moderately revolutionary in the mid s. To watch it now though, more than 20 years after its release, The Birdcage feels both dated and resonant. We still have gay couples.

We still have straight couples. Both versions of these look different now than they did back then. As tides turn against both traditional marriage and the traditional family, there continues to be pushback. I think of a well-meaning friend who once told me that the perfect American family is a father, a mother, an older brother, and a younger sister.

Not to go all Philosophy on you, but what does that even mean anymore?