The Brady Bunch 1 & 2 (1995/96)

THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE (1995) and A VERY BRADY SEQUEL (1996) had some key gay writers working behind the scenes.

THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIES

1995/1996. USA.

 Director: Arlene Sanford

Screenwriters:

Film 1: Laurice Elehwany, Rick Copp, Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, James Berg & Stan Zimmerman

Film 2: James Berg, Stan Zimmerman, Harry Elfont & Deborah Kaplan

Starring: Shelley Long, Gary Cole, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Christine Taylor, Paul Sutera, Jennifer Elise Cox, Jesse Lee, Olivia Hack, Henriette Mantel and RuPaul

These adaptations of the classic television series have grown to become cult classics. They’re camp, they’re fun, and have subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) touches of queerness throughout (especially the first one). It’s not surprising that they would especially resonate with queer audiences, and interestingly there were two key writers working behind the scenes to help add a gay sensibility.

Uncredited script doctors Stan Zimmerman and James Berg were brought on to rework the screenplay for THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE, and then brought back as the main writers for the sequel.

In a 2021 cast/crew interview with VICE, Zimmerman stated, “We had to be in the closet when we were writing on THE GOLDEN GIRLS. We were some of the first writers to come out as gay, so then getting something like THE BRADY BUNCH, it was like, oh my God. We just wanted—not to push a gay agenda—but we could talk about anything. I think that’s another reason why we kind of blossomed in that environment because, for the first time, we were just who we were.”

Berg continued, “So much of gay humor is subversive. It was a natural conduit to gay people reading between the lines because that's what we had to do in comedy.”

Hollywood wasn’t exactly bending over backwards to include positive queer representation in their films in the 1990s but, with a little help from Zimmerman and Berg, Marsha got a lesbian best friend, the Brady’s lived next door to an interracial gay couple, and a drag queen became a high school guidance counsellor.

You can find both films for rent/purchase through Amazon & AppleTV, and also available on DVD.