''The Birdcage'''s success

Robin Williams was unobtrusively settling into his seat in a San Francisco movie theater a few months ago when suddenly he heard a horrifying noise. As the trailer for his new cross-dressing comedy, The Birdcage, unspooled on the screen, the audience began to hiss. ''It was an early teaser and it was kind of bad,'' Williams recalls. ''I wanted to get up and shout, 'Stop the projector! It's a good movie, I swear to God! Give it a chance! Pleeease!'''

This month, much of America did give Birdcage a chance. The picture earned $18 million over its March 8 debut weekend and $16 million more the weekend after that — making it the largest opening so far this year. And while not everyone has stopped hissing — some critics have sniped at what they see as the film's offensive gay stereotypes — it does seem that a breakthrough of sorts has been achieved: The drag queen movie has finally sashayed into the mainstream in a big way.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the film's cast is headed by one of the most bankable comic stars in Hollywood: After 1993's Mrs. Doubtfire and last December's Jumanji, it's beginning to look like Williams can do no wrong (''But I'm still the same man who made Being Human,'' he points out). Veteran producer-director Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Working Girl) knows his way around the mainstream as well, even if he has taken a few bizarre turns in recent years (Wolf, Regarding Henry). And that Birdcage isn't an entirely unknown quantity — it's a remake of the French farce La Cage aux Folles, a 1978 arthouse hit — has probably helped too.

Still, a mainstream movie about a happily settled gay couple? It's a tricky pitch, particularly in these neoconservative times. That MGM/UA has been able to pull it off is a major triumph for the long-suffering studio — and one that couldn't have been more astutely timed. Last week, as Birdcage was drawing crowds around the country, MGM/UA went up for sale. For the past four years, the studio has been owned by Credit Lyonnais, a French bank that, by U.S. law, must find a buyer for it by mid-1997. If Birdcage had flopped, it wouldn't exactly have helped the search. Its success, on the other hand, may have just added a few more digits to the studio's price tag.

''Two billion dollars?'' Williams asks, stunned. ''That's what they're saying the studio is worth now? Well, hell, what are 18 zeros between friends?''

Last spring, Nathan Lane was trying on his drag costumes for the first time at a fitting in L.A. As he swept into the room looking like Margaret Dumont with a five-o'clock shadow, the tailor almost swallowed his pins.

''I've worked all my life for this,'' the Broadway actor grandly pronounced. ''To stand in front of a bunch of Teamsters in a dress.''

As most of America knows by now, Lane and Williams play Albert and Armand, longtime companions who share an apartment on that pastel-drenched strip of neon known as Miami's South Beach. Like the original La Cage, Birdcage is part bedroom farce, part political satire — a sort of Guess Who's Wearing Panty Hose to Dinner. When Armand's son (Dan Futterman), conceived during a youthful indiscretion, announces that he's getting married, Albert and Armand play it straight for their in-laws-to-be (Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest), a U.S. senator and his wife so right-wing they think Billy Graham is too liberal.