Slightly more than a year before he took his own life in August , Robin Williams reported to a Nashville movie set to play a closeted gay husband battling, among other things, severe depression and a lifetime of self-deceit. Newcomer Roberto Aguire, 27, plays a runaway-prostitute who sparks long-suppressed urges. How do you say goodbye to the love of your life? Robin, I think, responded to that, to the humanity of the story, the simple emotional undertow. He appeared thinner and more introverted than usual.

By Brian Brooks. Starz will open the film in a slow traditional rollout this summer. The film is the first feature-length project shot entirely on an iPhone. It will open in limited release, followed by other markets well into August.

It's hard to resist the flamboyant opening of The Birdcage. As the camera swoops into a gaudy Miami nightclub and focuses on a collection of drag queens performing to the iconic Sister Sledge song We Are Family, it becomes clear that Mike Nichols' film is both a queer sanctuary and a comedic haven. Released 25 years ago this week, Nichols' film, a remake of the French film La Cage aux Folles, about a gay couple hosting an ill-fated dinner party, remains remarkably relevant in its comedic sensibilities. As Dr Matthew Jones, Reader in Cinema Audiences and Reception at De Montfort University, puts it: "It helped an audience traumatised by a decade of living day-to-day with the threat of disease and death to laugh again. The film centres on a gay couple, Armand Robin Williams and Albert Nathan Lane , hosting an ill-fated diner party for their son's future in-laws Credit: Alamy.

By Seth Abramovitch. Senior Writer. Nathan Lane is opening up about the difficult path to coming out as gay, something he did in the late s after achieving worldwide fame in the blockbuster hit The Birdcage. And certainly everyone in [the] New York [theater scene] knew.