Climax and Resolution (109-113 min.)
- The media on the tail of the senator prevent them from leaving
after the discovery above, however. To escape, the conservative senator
goes in drag. His reputation is intact, and the wedding goes on as planned.
Notes
The Birdcage succeeds in exaggerating cultural realities to
humorous effect. Many comic twists fill the story: the death of the
senator's colleague and co-founder of the Coalition for Moral Order in
the bed of an underage, black prostitute (25 min.); the media circus
that follows the senator as a result (27 min. on), trailing him and his
family all the way to the visit of Armand and Albert; Albert's flighty
and emotional personality, over-reacting to any imagined transgression by
Armand; the immediate warmth between the conservative senator and the
drag mother Albert; the senator's wrong interpretation of everything to fit
his exaggerated and bigotted view of the world.
This script also is a good one to study for efficient scene design. Transitions
can be immediate and visual: when Armand, trying to teach Albert to be manly,
challenges a hunk and gets clobbered, the cut is from the challenge directly
to Armand with an ice pack, without a single punch shown to the audience
(54 min.). The fight itself is irrelevant to the comedy. And again,
when Albert storms off in the car after misinterpreting romance between
Armand and Val's mother, the cut is directly to Armand arriving home after taking
the bus (62 min.), the time in between being irrelevant to the movement
of the story. Beginning writers seldom make scene transitions with such
efficiency.
MODULE 4:
SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting
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