Sugar

 By 1958, Marilyn Monroe was no longer a functioning drug addict.  She had taken two years off from acting as her drug addiction intensified during her marriage to Arthur Miller, but executives at 20th Century Fox enticed Marilyn to return to work regardless to take the role of Sugar in Some Like It Hot by offering her 10% of the film's profits in addition to her salary.  She ultimately agreed when her husband pushed her to take the studio's offer.  The production of Some Like It Hot was difficult for everyone involved due to Marilyn's state of addiction.  She was consistently late to set or missed filming days altogether.  She frequently argued with the director, Billy Wilder, and her co-star Tony Curtis.  She struggled so badly to remember or deliver her lines that she reportedly took 60 takes to get the line "Where's that bourbon?" even with the help of cue cards.  She was clearly unwell and needed help, but she was surrounded by enablers and profiteers.  She was surrounded by men who took advantage of her to get what they wanted.  

That last sentence is, of course, the segue into the plot of Some Like It Hot.  The plot is this.  Set in 1920s Chicago, two out of work musicians witness some gangsters murder a rival and they then go on the run to avoid being murdered into themselves.  They decide to dress in drag in order to pass as women so that they can join an all-female band heading for Florida.  In addition to hiding from the mob, the two men take advantage of the opportunity to trick the other women into letting down their guard so that they can begin romantic and sexual relationships with them.  One of the men, Joe, played by Tony Curtis, successfully pursues the character played by Marilyn Monroe by further pretending to be a very wealthy oil business owner.  The other man, Jerry, played by Jack Lemmon, inadvertently draws the romantic and sexual attention of an actually wealthy man named Osgood.  Jerry, realizing that there is a potential for a financial windfall in continuing to deceive Osgood by pretending to be a woman and pursuing a relationship, becomes receptive to Osgood's advances.  Osgood, as it turns out, is either gay or what we would today know as a "chaser" and is a masterful transvestigator, having known all along that Jerry was not a cis woman.  "Well, nobody's perfect," Osgood says as he smiles blissfully to close the film.  In the end, Joe and Jerry were just men, taking advantage of people to get what they wanted.  

For thematic context, the 1950s were an interesting time in the trans history of America.  Christine Jorgensen had become a minor celebrity in 1953 due to her highly publicized transition.  She had travelled to Denmark and Sweden for hormone therapy and ultimately sex reassignment surgery, but wrote a letter home to her parents detailing her treatment.  That letter was given to the New York Daily News who sensationalized the story, and it drew a tremendous amount of interest.  The "freak show" aspect of someone changing genders brought the topic to American dinner tables and suddenly everyday people were confronted with a wild new concept of gender non-conformity.  Of course, there had been an underground of queer people throughout American history, but Christine Jorgensen helped bring them out into the open, whether they wanted the attention or not.  The rest of America struggled to put context to what they were seeing.  Why were men dressing as women?  The easiest reaction was to mock and ridicule.  If it's comedy, and it can be laughed at, then it can't possibly be that threatening.  In addition to laughs, Billy Wilder gave Americans an explanation for why a man would want to dress up like a woman.  They're just con artists, deceivers, and ultimately sexual deviants.  It all made sense, and everyone could enjoy a sigh of relief that the natural order of the world still existed, while simultaneously learning that trans women are only out to trick you into sex and possibly steal your money.  They're just men who take advantage of you to get what they want.  

In the spring of 1996, I sat in a nearly empty movie theater in a small southern town with my best friend.  I had begged my friend to join me on this opening night for a film that grabbed my attention after viewing the trailer on television.  The house lights went out and the opening shot featured a fantastic continuous camera push over the water, across the beach, and into a dazzling night club while LGBT anthem We Are Family by Sister Sledge rose in the theater speakers.  A drag queen review performs the song while the night club owner moves through the tables greeting the patrons.  As the song ends, the performers race backstage to change outfits for the next number, revealing to the movie theater audience that the performers are, in fact, gay men in drag.  At this point in the film, the only other people in the theater, a middle-aged heterosexual couple, got up and left in disgust.  My friend, although visibly uncomfortable at times, stayed by my side for the rest of the movie.  The Birdcage went on to become one of my favorite movies.  It's been my staying-home-sick-today comfort movie for over 20 years.  

The plot of The Birdcage is this.  Armand and Albert, a gay couple who own a nightclub where Albert is the star drag queen performer, are parents to Val, a college student who has proposed to his girlfriend, Barbara.  Barbara's father is an extremely conservative United States senator and her mother is what the internet would now know as a "trad wife."  In an effort to obtain Barbara's parent's blessing for the marriage, Armand and Albert agree to pretend to be heterosexual brothers while Val's birth mother pretends to be Armand's wife while hosting a dinner party for Barbara and her parents.  Barbara's father agrees to the dinner party in order to protect his political career after his close ally is embroiled in a scandal.  The plans go haywire when Val's birth mother gets stuck in traffic and Albert, distraught at the idea of having to pretend to be a straight man, dresses in drag to pretend to be Val's birth mother.  The ruse eventually falls apart, but not after the couples bond over singing show tunes and dancing.  Reporters, hungry for a headline featuring the scandal-adjacent senator, surround the night club hoping for photos of Barbara's father.  Armand and Albert, despite being insulted and rejected by Barbara's parents only moments earlier, agree to help them escape a worsening scandal by dressing them in drag and leading them out of the night club, unnoticed by the reporters.  The senator took advantage of Armand and Albert twice to get what he wanted.   

The LGBT representation in The Birdcage has been criticized in retrospect, with Robin Williams and Hank Azaria playing gay characters Armand and Agador, respectively, despite being heterosexual off-screen.  However, it's really hard to fault their casting because of the way in which they portrayed their characters and the legitimacy they gave the film as beloved, established actors.  More importantly, they were able to direct the jokes and humor from the inside out, instead of the outside in.  At no point is the image of a male character in drag the joke in and of itself.  Even when Agador is dancing to Gloria Estefan's party anthem Conga while doing his chores, the audience is directed to laugh at the fact that he is desperate to perform in Armand's drag show, but he is simply too clumsy and ditzy.  Agador is comfortable in his own skin throughout the film and when he is forced to dress as a heterosexual butler, the joke subverts the audience's expectations by pointing at him and giving permission to laugh at how silly and unnatural he looks in men's clothing.  Similarly, when Albert, played by Nathan Lane, shows up at the dinner party as Val's mom, the joke is never turned on him.  Albert is radiant as Mrs. Coleman, and the humor comes from the tension that builds as Barbara's parents naively accept the chaotic scene that unfolds around them.  Gene Hackman delivers a fantastic performance as Senator Keely, Barbara's father, who is the clueless target of the jokes.  

The story is told from Armand's perspective, as he struggles to balance respectability politics, the desire to see his child happy at the cost of his own dignity, and protecting his relationship with his partner against a world that isn't ready to allow gay couples to the same legal and social acceptance as straight couples.  In the end, he accepts that respectability politics - trying to repackage his homosexual identity in a manner that is palatable and therefore socially acceptable to the heterosexual majority - is too heavy a burden to maintain in balance with the other aspects of his life that are truly important.  Likewise, Albert takes Armand's hand when the charade finally falls apart after the dinner party and stands defiant and smiling against the Keelys, who express their disgust and rejection.  The source material for The Birdcage, La Cage Aux Folles, was originally a stage play, and when it was adapted for Broadway, it featured the song I Am What I Am, an anthem of self-acceptance and pride.  

And so here I am, wondering what kind of movie Some Like It Hot would be if, instead of "nobody's perfect," Osgood proudly declared to the audience, "I am what I am."