Ah man, if there was another disappointment from last year it was Michael Keaton not winning for Best Actor. It’s one of those things you just won’t believe years from now – even though Eddie Redmayne was fantastic in The Theory of Everything. But still, Keaton’s work, to me, was the whole movie of Birdman – if you’re going to give that movie Picture and Director, why not give it to the one person who made it so great? Yeah well. Anyway, interesting exchange:
Keaton: They have a luncheon before the awards. When you’re in the room, it’s really something. Everyone in the world is there. You really feel like you’re in the real world for what I do for a living. So I was walking back, kinda walking to my table. There was a gentleman sitting at the table. Really nicely-dressed man. Probably around 70’s. He’s sitting by himself, looks up at me. I look at him. He calls me over. Says “Just wanna tell you… That’s maybe the best performance I’ve ever seen in any movie.” He’s been in the Academy for over 50 years. “Not only did I go back and see the film in theaters 3 times which I never do… Your performance will go down in history…” When he finished, I thought to myself “Pfft… I am a LOCK.”
Letterman: Yeah! I would think so.
Keaton: This guy… He’s been around forever, he knew everyone at the Academy. And I thought “That’s about it. That’s all I need!” So we’re talking and I say “That is very nice of you, sir. Thank you.” And as I get up, he says “Just remember, Michael… When it comes to winning an Academy Award… Illness always wins.” [exaggerated laughter] I know! I know!
[Weak laughter from crowd]
Keaton: And I thought… “I am so fucked right now.” It’s over! I went from “This is a done deal” to “I’m done.”Source: ONTD
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Maybe it’s the empathy factor of the illness/disfiguration/handicap that voters are swayed by. Overcoming all obstacles with an affliction of some sort makes the character more human, I suppose. With that said, Eddie Redmayne still won the Oscar, and he deserved to win the Oscar. Had Michael Keaton played a character with a mere limp, all you Keaton supporters would be on board of his win due to an illness.
Let’s move on, Redmayne won, I called it back in September at TIFF, it is done. So it is. 😉
Doesn’t the taxi guy chasing Riggan for the owed fare right after his flight over the city pretty much rebuke that his powers are real. I mean, it does for me. Otherwise I can’t explain the event; but if “it’s just there to trick us” satisfies you, more power to you. The daughter is a lunatic and the end is a suicide.
Steven Kane, agreed.
I’m simply throwing out there that Birdman was more of a beneficiary of the issues the Academy had with Linklater more than the merits of Inarritu’s film. However, Keaton being left out of the statue parade still makes absolutely no sense with the way the Birdman juggernaut rolled those last few weeks.
Pete, while I don’t believe Whiplash would’ve ruled the night it is the one movie I find myself watching over and over and over again. I feel the thrill each and every time I watch it.
Ryan, you are cracking me up.
Here’s a fun hypothetical to consider. I’m in the camp that some sort of over the top backlash against Linklater/Boyhood led to a disproportionate amount of guild/Oscar love being thrown at Inarritu’s wafer-thin salute to ACTING. If Boyhood wasn’t even in the field last year, is it plausible to consider that Whiplash or some other film would have snaked the prize?
Also, if Wolf of Wall Street had missed its premiere date and waited until last year, would it have been Marty and Leo ruling the night?
There’s just entirely too much to catch up on so I’ll sum it up with this: “visual slut.”
I’m good for most of the day now 🙂
The reason why she looked up was that she first saw her dad dead on the ground below and she looked up and smiled knowing she wouldn’t have to deal with him any longer.
Ryan Adams,
But we absolutely CAN fly!
If Lana Del Rey say so, then it MUST be true:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RqPl5i1Mk4
R. Kelly kinda says the same thing too… if that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.
Ryan,
You pretty much nailed my response in the first half of your last post.
And you are fine; you didn’t let me down. I would have never have thought that analyzing a “respected” film could do that. (I love analyzing films days after I see them. I’m still processing Ultron and the far superior Ex Machina that I saw a day apart and enjoying thinking about the thematic connection between the two.) But after viewing BM, I started peeling back the layers only to reveal more cynicism and contempt by Innaritu on the industry. The more I reflected on what people were saying was amazing, the more fraudulent emptiness I was finding in my analysis. I keep referring to it as nihilistic, and I cannot think of a better word.
What you will find amusing is the one person that snapped me out of my depression was Jeff Wells. Seriously. I remember thinking that if that superficial tasteless douche could champion such a turd of a film—one that I loathe—then I must really have good taste.
And I too don’t begrudge anyone who likes this film either. I don’t even consider it a bad film like I would Paul Blart, Glitter, or Kurt Cameron’s Saving Christmas. There are aspects of this film that are executed well (but in Innaritu’s hands those aspects are just bastardized by his inability to direct effectively).
On a side note, I recently met with one of my collegiate peers who teaches theater and film. I asked her for her opinion about it, and she was polite. When I told her about my reaction, she laughed and then told me that she didn’t like it either. She said it violated one of her main rules for acting/writing—do not make the characters uninteresting. We don’t leave the film wanting to know more about these characters; rather, we want to run from their existence.
It’s been a few months since the Awards. I kinda feel like we have been sitting with Margo Channing at the Sarah Siddens Society Awards watching Eve Harrington win her Award—each of us knowing what a complete fraud she is and yet we throw up our hands and simply let Hollywood deal with its Eve Innaritu. We’ll just move on with those we love and respect right by our side.
UBourgeois, I’ve said enough. Probably too much.
I’m glad you liked Birdman and found ways to derive meaning from it. I would never try to look askance at that.
You can now say anything else you feel inspired to say about Birdman and I will stop pulling quotes and stop trying to dispute what you believe the movie is trying to convey.
You can have all the last words on Birdman on this page. I will read what you have to say with interest but there’s no fun and no point in me continuing to quarrel about it.
I don’t understand a lot of things about the world, so it’s crazy for me to worry about this movie anymore. Maybe it’s just beyond my grasp.
Can’t have it both ways. Birdman either can fly or else he cannot fly.
Well, no, that’s the thing – apparently he can fly. He showed off all these superpowers in private over the course of the film, in ways that could have just been his imagination, but in the last shot he is seen flying by another character, confirming that he does have the powers we (the audience and probably Riggan too) couldn’t be sure he had before.
Look at it this way: Riggan Thompson is a washed-up actor with no serious talent. He’s just won the admiration of critics and fellow artists by nearly killing himself, but even failing at that by just shooting off his nose. He’s being hailed as a visionary by even the toughest critics for his Broadway debut for some real serious capital-A art (but obviously it’s not /really/ that), so his theater endeavor was a success. However, he can’t keep doing that. This kind of sadistic, pseudo-artistic stunt (a shot at the von Triers and Noes of the world?) takes too much out of him (here, literally) so he’s once again visited by Birdman. Having succeeded in what Birdman always referred to as a diversion – showing he has real artistic chops – he once again has a chance to accept the power that Birdman has offered him time and time again throughout the movie. This power is, literally, superpowers, but what it signifies is a move back to vapid blockbuster superhero films that, while they offer fat paychecks and celebrity, are mostly free from critical applause and prestige – a dead-end for the aspiring artist. So, what are his choices? He can keep trying to be the artist that he will never become, performing cheap tricks and playing at profundity, at great cost to his own health (mental health, mostly – the physical damage he sustains is more just example by hyperbole), or he can go back to the superhero hole he crawled out of, giving the public what they want – a position that gives him power, but no glory, something that strengthens him, but leaves him as empty as he was when he started. He can’t win, but he takes the easier road and flies off into the sunset.
oh…? he flies off into the sky? if so, then that’s a really brilliant way to scorn and mock superhero movies… erm… by ending up as a superhero… yay …? 🙂
if Birdman is a movie about a man who can actually fly, then wow, just wow, that means the Academy has chosen the crummiest superhero movie of all time to award with Best Picture.
Can’t have it both ways. Birdman either can fly or else he cannot fly.
If he has a delusion that he can fly, (and he does), then yes, that’s what it is: a delusion.
So the only blurring of reality/delusion is that wet bloody pile of blood and guts where his fall from a 20th-floor ledge left a blurry spot on the sidewalk below.
But grin it up, sick daughter. Grin like you’re delusional too!
Finally, the ending seemed to me to have been an attempt to scrawl an idiotic Happy Face on the topic of suicide. Like, “oh look, he’s having such a serious breakdown that his only escape is to jump out a window to his death” , “Go Birdman!” (*splat!!*) but then his sickening exploitative daughter shows up, grinning like a ghoulish goon at her father’s sudden disappearance from the face of the earth, so I guess we’re supposed to let that be our feel-good coda?
I was /certain/ that this part was supposed to imply that he was flying, like he imagined doing earlier in the film and like his weird telekinetic episodes implied. Kind of the blurring of reality and his superhero delusions.
Rob, I remember you emailing me to see if I wanted to talk with you about Birdman, right after you saw it. But due to a few bad excuses, I was a bad friend and a bad person for not getting back to you.
I had a visceral revulsion at this thing that so many people were praising as a rare treat for grown-ups. Because I found its ‘humor’ to be sophomoric, its level of ‘depth’ to be juvenile, and its understanding of humanity to be a rung below frat-boy cruelty.
I thought it was insulting to actors, simplistic about theater (particularly clueless about New York audiences), and downright brutal in the way it tried make severe mental illness into some sort of thrill-ride joke.
Finally, the ending seemed to me to have been an attempt to scrawl an idiotic Happy Face on the topic of suicide. Like, “oh look, he’s having such a serious breakdown that his only escape is to jump out a window to his death” , “Go Birdman!” (*splat!!*) but then his sickening exploitative daughter shows up, grinning like a ghoulish goon at her father’s sudden disappearance from the face of the earth, so I guess we’re supposed to let that be our feel-good coda?
Visually and intellectually I think Birdman is one of the ugliest movies ever nominated for Best Picture. Scott Tobias called Innaritu a “fraud” in his scathing review and I agree. Birdman was a con-game, so larded up with an ersatz ‘magic realism’ veneer that it seemed somehow profound to people at first glance, (and hell, compared to a morally bereft turd like American Sniper, I suppose it was).
But we had a lot of smart readers on the site whose opinion I read and respect and some of them encouraged me to watch it again. To give it another chance to infect me. So I did. And found even less to like the second time around because a repeat viewing only served to highlight its crude visual and narrative schemes.
I fucking despise this movie, but I mostly held my tongue about it in the middle of Oscar season.. because, well… what’s the point? It was gonna win a lot of awards and nothing I said would have any effect except to alienate a lot of online friends who I admire, good people that I’m glad to have around.
I don’t begrudge anyone for liking Birdman. Not every movie is for everybody and all kinds of movies get made because audiences have all kinds of tastes and predilections.
I do have trouble understanding this argument that a movie with a dominant male protagonist has to win Best Actor if it wins Best Picture and Best Director. Since when? Since never. Tell that to Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Tell it to David Oyelowo in 12 Years a Slave. Tell it to all the actors in The Departed, none of whom were even nominated. Crowe in Gladiator, DiCaprio in Titanic — those movies would have been NOTHING without the unique singular contribution of their male lead actors. All those legendary actors in iconic role went home Oscar-less.
How about let’s just shrug when Nicholson loses for Chinatown and Pacino loses for Godfather II and Hoffman loses for Lenny, all the SAME YEAR that Art fucking Carney wins for Harry and Tonto? “oh boo, you silly Academy!”
Michael Keaton’s constant one-note hysteria in Birdman does not hold a candle to ANY of these actors whose films are masterpiece Oscar magnets — and ALL those actors got ignored on Oscar night. So this is nothing new.
It’s pretty easy for me not to give a shit about Beetlejuice not getting the Oscar he craves when Richard Burton never got one. For me, Keaton’s LOSS on Oscar Night was truly one the HIGHLIGHTS of Oscar Night.
Keaton’s loss makes all the other Birdman wins look ridiculous — because they ARE ridiculous, Blanche, they ARE RIDICULOUS. Was Keaton largely responsible for making Birdman what it was? YES, insofar as he was the most prominent piece of poop swirling around in the toilet.
So anyway, Rob, this is by way of my apology to you for not commiserating with you about how sickened and revolted we both felt when Birdman’s momentum became unstoppable.
I just couldn’t bear to discuss the matter when some of us were all being bewildered in the middle of it. I had burnt myself out on twitter about it over the course of several infuriated days, and none of that rehashing of my despair made me feel a bit better.
So I bailed on you when you needed to talk to someone who felt the same way you did. If I had seen how hard it was hitting you and how low you felt, I would’ve done more to let you know I agreed with you… but truly, I thought you probably already knew that, since you and I give one another a fairly close reading whenever our paths frequently cross on social media.
Apologies to everyone who’s still reading this, if you think I’m bashing a movie you love (or even like), but please know that my feelings have nothing to do with my opinion of you. We can’t all like the same movies, or even stomach some of them… and so what? To each his own. Nobody I know likes The Counselor either, but I hope nobody looks down on me because I do.
“…regardless how you feel about Birdman, it made no sense for it to win picture & director and not actor.”
You’re right. It made no sense for it to win picture or director.
——————————
“But I can’t be the only person who saw Birdman as an ugly slur to the profession of acting, constructed to make a mockery of the unstable insatiable egos of actors and actresses.”
Ryan, I think I liked it less than you. I thought it was a cruel nihilistic joke against humanity. It is nothing more than the “it” crowd kicking someone when he’s down, laughing and making fun of them, and then receive a pat on the back for being brilliantly witty at ridicule. I have never had such a negative film experience as watching that movie.
——————————
“Birdman’s at least funny.”
I have heard that it is a satire. If it is, it is a sad excuse for one, because the only satire is on actors themselves—which is fucked up beyond belief. Hardly funny, this film put me in a depression that lasted a couple days. I didn’t want to interact with other people; I wanted to distance myself from the heralded selfish shallowness of others. In other words, it’s a goddamned laugh riot.
——————————
“That’s a fact Hitchcock himself admits, and he derived a lesson from the failed experiment: “eesh, let’s never try THAT again.” Same lesson Cuaron failed to learn.”
I know you probably meant Innaritu. But, Cuaron did extensive long continuous shots in Children of Men and Gravity. Gravity’s camera work was fluid, smooth, (seemingly) effortless, graceful, and—most importantly—effective. Those shots aided the illusion of zero gravity without orientation. Seeing it on IMAX in 3D it felt like you were floating in space. The whole film could have been done in one continual shot and it would have been spot on. AND! It would have been better edited too.
——————————
I find it quite ironic—not the Alainis Morissette kind either—that Innaritu made a film about actors trying to be recognized for their craft and yet the one person that came out of last year with all the recognition was . . . Innaritu.
… I would think that any luncheon for Academy Members is the OPPOSITE of the real world.
“really nicely-dressed man.”? Excellent credentials!
Did it not occur to Keaton that he’s being summoned by some old guy and Keaton had NO IDEA who he is? Just some guy in his 70s. This person is so NOT famous that Keaton has no way to describe him besides “well-dressed”… but the word of this unknown stranger is enough to convince Keaton that he’s a LOCK?
Pro tip: Academy members who have been in the business for “over 50 years” are mostly the same Academy members who have not a job in the industry for over 20 years.
That being said, Keaton winning for Birdman, over Redmayne, would have had my approval. But despised both films, honestly.
I really don’t give a damn about Keaton losing. The best performance I saw in 2014, wasn’t even nominated, Patrick d’Assumçao’s in “Stranger by the Lake”.
Without the need to yell, cry, scream, go over the top, and showing off his character was subtly being destroyed by depression.
As you well know I’m no saint either in that regard and Jean Renoir sounds like a degenerate.
And I bet you gimmick-loving compadres are excited about this:
for the record, months before I could see it, Sasha was convinced that I would love Birdman, based on her knowing how superficial I usually am, and what a slut for visual flair I can be.
Oh OK.
Film recommendation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_%26_Cat
And I bet you gimmick-loving compadres are excited about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8_PXneHaZU
^
you’re not the one who’s confused, Bryce. Fixed. I’ll slink away now.
Wait are we talking about Alfonso Cuaron or about Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu (both Mexican, granted) because I’m confused and may (or may not) want to interject…depending on…I’m not sure.
Since the “continuous take” aspect was a thing nobody could shut up about for months before it screened in Telluride and for more than a year before I saw Birdman, it’s hard to see how anyone with a passing interest in movie news could have not been primed and actually schooled to be aware of it. That means, for me, speaking for myself, the only surprise was how little Iñarritu had advanced the convoluted style beyond what Hitchcock did 60 years ago with far more grace and elan. My only raised eyebrow was due to how pedestrian such a “groundbreaking” thing turned out to be.
That’s a fact Hitchcock himself admits, and he derived a lesson from the failed experiment: “eesh, let’s never try THAT again.” Same lesson Cuaron failed to learn.
There’s no more pointed explanation of intent than what the filmmakers themselves have chosen to tell us about what they did and why:
Here’s Hitchcock talking to Truffaut: “I was breaking with my own theories on the importance of cutting and montage for the visual narration of the story.”
(so, in effect, Hitchcock was conducting an experiment that proves the importance of editing, and Hitchcock is frank about how the experiment disproves the dubious hypothesis that we can dispense with editing.)
Now here’s Michael Keaton at the Spirit Awards: “This is a game-changer!”
(Keaton was apparently still high as a kite on that “egomania and desperation” you mention) 🙂
Nope. Don’t hold your breath for Birdman’s “revolutionary” style to change the game.
===
whew! thank you for not trying to convince me. That would be exhausting for both of us.
UBourgeois: “LAUGH, damn it. Laugh, you bastard!”
Ryan: ” 🙁 ”
I’ve said before, it’s possible that my sense of humor is damaged or broken.
I’ve said this before, too: maybe John Waters had a genuine friendship with Divine, but which one of them was talked into eating a dog turd and which one them launched a multimillion dollar career?
But then I’ll say this: My sense of humor is so dark, for me nothing in Birdman was as morbidly funny as what happened on Oscar night: watching Michael Keaton confidently pull his acceptance speech out of his pocket while the names of the Best Actor nominees were recited.
That was the ultimate crushing killer punchline to the whole strange spectacle: Director convinces a real life actor to humiliate himself onscreen in service of a movie that wallows in a fictional actor’s hubris and humiliation.
Who survives in the movie? Everybody except the actor.
And who goes home with all the Oscars and real life glory? Everybody except the actor.
So, yes, maybe this Academy member gives us a clue to ONE reason Keaton lost the Oscar (although the “illness trumps everything” theory is wrong as often as it is right.)
But here’s another theory: Maybe NOT EVERY ONE of the actors in the AMPAS saw Birdman as a fable about “heroic” actors. Maybe A LOT of actors saw Birdman the way I saw it: as running joke at the EXPENSE of actors, a movie that showed actors as fatuous clowns. Clowns to be exploited by crass managers and producers and gawked at by pitiless audiences, none of whom have any real concern about the psychological price their greed and voyeurism cost the sensitive people onscreen who choose acting as a path to creative fulfillment.
===
Don’t worry, UBourgeois, almost everybody regards Birdman the same favorable way you do. (I know you’re not worried about that) 🙂
But I can’t be the only person who saw Birdman as an ugly slur to the profession of acting, constructed to make a mockery of the unstable insatiable egos of actors and actresses.
“Birdman pays tribute to tragic heroic actors”? Not the way I see it. I don’t buy into the conventional wisdom that everyone in the actors branch of the Academy would fall for that “fact”.
Want further proof of actors’ mixed feelings about the things Michael Keaton agreed to do in Birdman? Who won the SAG Award for Best Actor? A real actor who didn’t play an fake actor who showed his ass for laffs, that’s who.
I mean, if you didn’t find it funny, you didn’t find it funny, I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole of convincing you that you did. I laughed, the audience I was with laughed, but to each their own. I’m just saying that at least in theory that’s something Birdman has on Rope’s minimum reworking of a dime-a-dozen murder mystery.
I also think it’s rather a stretch to say that the hysterics of the actors on screen reveals the existence of the cuts, as that’s really only an association you’re going to make if you’re aware of and on the lookout for the cuts already. The heightened register of the actors rather fits themail thematic goals of Birdman – underlining the egomania and desperation of its characters. That the film deals in bombast instead of nuance I don’t think is something that necessarily warrants criticism or somehow speaks to nonexistent technical shortcomings. Far more distracting, to me at least, is how the camera in Rope will seek out a chance to cut every five or ten minutes like clockwork – Rope is many things, several of them good, but an example of organic visual storytelling it certainly is not.
Rope is certainly far from Hitch’s best work, but it’s still a very intriguing watch. Although it more or less relies on the same visual conceit as Birdman, it’s definitely not as overt or ostentatious. I remember the first time I watched this (with Sasha) I came into it pretty cold despite being a general Hitch fan and didn’t even notice the lack of editing until she pointed it out.
Watching Birdman, in complete contrast, was like watching a staring contest between two bug-eyed guys with pinkeye, foolishly trying to keep their eyes open. After a minute or so of entertainment, it becomes clear that someone really should blink. The longer they strain, the more painfully distracting it becomes to watch.
I disagree with this entirely. Virtually every shot in Rope where there’s a dark screen is a cut
Of course I know that.
What I’m saying is this: almost all of the momentary dark frames in Rope slip past me without even registering. Watching Rope, I’m never thinking: “aha! I see what you did there! gotcha!”
In Birdman all I’m ever thinking is this: “wow, all those performers on screen sure looks tense as fuck, a constant reminder that everyone is ACK-TING and trying not to screw up an expensive shot.” It was like watching a team of panicked Chinese acrobats riding unicycles and juggling plates.
Birdman’s at least funny.
I never once even cracked a smile. My bad luck, my lot in life: I’m not so easy to amuse.
Tell me one of the funny parts.
For all the talk of Birdman’s supposedly “seamless” and “invisible” edit points, its much easier to spot the splashy transitions in Birdman than it is to notice them in Rope.
I disagree with this entirely. Virtually every shot in Rope where there’s a dark screen is a cut (of course not counting the handful of unmasked cuts – I think there are three of those?). If Birdman’s cuts are easy to find, Rope’s are practically telegraphed. Rope is still around because it’s a neat trick that Alfred Hitchcock pulled off in a time where that trick was especially difficult (not that’s it necessarily easy now, mind). If it didn’t have the Hitchcock name attached, Rope may have been long forgotten by now.
I also really disagree that the action in Rope is any more engaging than in Birdman – altogether, it’s a very standard whodunit, and none of the characters are very fleshed out. This isn’t me being contrarian, either, as far as I can tell the film is far more valued for its technical achievements than its story or characters by most, including Hitchcock himself. You could reasonably claim the same for Birdman, but I think saying that more effort was put into the story content of Rope than Birdman is hard to defend – Birdman’s at least funny.
Rope is to Birdman as orgasm is to money shot. That is like the best effing analogy ever, totally stealing this!
Orgasm: to ripen, le petit mort (“The Little Death”). A zenith of human feeling.
Money shot: a mechanically show release of seminal fluids.
I guess my point about Rope is that it’s still being studied in film school, it’s still being discovered by cinephiles and wannabe filmmakers, and although everyone knows it’s not the “real deal,” there’s an interest to see how Hitchcock pulls it off.
I will say this in defense of Rope.
For all the talk of Birdman’s supposedly “seamless” and “invisible” edit points, its much easier to spot the splashy transitions in Birdman than it is to notice them in Rope. In spite of Rope relying on a relatively simple toolbox of tricks, with no assistance from CGI or other digital magic, I quickly forget that Hitch had to find a way to stitch things together every 12 minutes (the length of a reel of film). I simply stop watching for the tricks because I’m wrapped up in the story.
I give a shit about what’s happening in Rope so I forget to look for the cuts because I’m emotionally involved in the movie. Unlike Birdman, Hitchcock made sure Rope was about something that was more interesting than the technique.
Rope is to Birdman as orgasm is to money shot.
@UBourgeois
I guess my point about Rope is that it’s still being studied in film school, it’s still being discovered by cinephiles and wannabe filmmakers, and although everyone knows it’s not the “real deal,” there’s an interest to see how Hitchcock pulls it off.
I suppose only time will tell, but I don’t think ‘Birdman’ will be remembered for its narrative and/or characters, and I don’t think the commentary is as intelligent as it thinks. The performances are all fine, but if people return to it at all, it will be for the cinematography, or just to see a film that won Best Picture. And if/when they do return to it, I believe that they will also discover Russian Ark, prefer Russian Ark, study it more, and forget about Birdman and view it as a knock-off. I could and probably will be wrong, because we all know the original never gets the credit.
You’re right though the music in the film is awesome.
The best thing about the film is that it looks like it’s shot in one take, but when it comes to that kind of film, I believe people will turn to Rope and Russian Ark first, and not really pay any mind to Birdman.
Why? Like Russian Ark probably, because as single-shot films go, it’s the only “real deal” that we have so far, and it has a pretty well-secured critical legacy on its own merits, but Rope? Even now, it’s considered pretty firmly third-tier Hitchcock by most, with its almost-one-shot gimmick (and here it is truly a gimmick) being virtually the only notable thing about it (especially since EVERYONE knows where the one cut is). Birdman probably isn’t as good a film as Russian Ark, but it’s better than Rope, for sure, and it’s hard to act like Birdman doesn’t have more going for it. Besides its almost-one-shot, it has a really dynamite cast, a bomb soundtrack, some worthwhile commentary on culture production, and a whole lot of energy. Rope has a perfectly good Jimmy Stewart performance and the almost-one-shot and that’s about it. Jean Renoir said of it: “It isn’t very interesting. It’s a story about homosexuals—and they don’t even show the boys kissing each other!”
I really liked Birdman and thought Keaton was good, but to me it was always more of an Oscar nominated performance than an Oscar winning performance. It wasn’t brilliant enough to really demand the statue.
Last year my pick was Benedict Cumberbatch. He certainly didn’t have an illness!
I truly think this discussion is a bit ridiculous now, because I think we can all agree that this year’s Best Actor race was very close. How close, we’ll never know. I just take solace in the fact that there were so many performances last year by actors that were all great and will be remembered years from now. That should be consolation enough. If I were an actor? Sure, I’d want to win an Oscar. But being nominated for one by your peers has to be truly gratifying.
I don’t think Keaton was talking sour grapes. I thought he put a funny spin on his experience and can look upon it with humor. Good for him. I have a feeling he’ll get another shot some day at the ultimate golden boy.
Sash is spot on- regardless how you feel about Birdman, it made no sense for it to win picture & director and not actor.
Not sure that playing an illness is the thing though, Keaton’s character was not exactly mentally well, it’s just Redmayne’s performance was a lot more showy and baity.
Sorry, but I think Keaton was robbed. He was outstanding in Birdman, as good as anyone else in the film, even Norton. I think Redmayne’s performance was fine, but I found inconsistencies in his appearance and actions. Whether that was a problem with the editing or his performance, I am not quite sure. But Keaton definitely deserved the Oscar.
True story!
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That’s my luck! Now I’ll go back to writing overlong, boring comments, if that’s really what you want!
I suppose Keaton is right on some levels, and let’s face it, the Academy clearly went bananas over Birdman to the point where they gave Inarritu three Oscars. Yet, the actor who plays the lead character who is on screen literally the entire picture gets boatraced by the guilds in favor of a generic disease pic?
I guess this proves again that literally NOTHING made any sense about last year’s Oscar race, apart from Linklater’s presence apparently being one bridge too many for the voters.
That sends the wrong message to actors. Just play a character, fictitious or real life, make it the best you’ve ever done, and you will get an Oscar.
“He was robbed, we all know that.”
Of what? His dignity? Certainly you can’t be talking about a Best Actor Oscar for that vapid self-indulgent movie.
masterbating in public
Keaton may have somewhat of a point, but it’s a little obnoxious and whiny for him to say it. What a baby! Get over it, dude.
After all, if there’s any performance we’ll look back on and wonder why it didn’t win, it’s Oyelowo in Selma, followed by Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.
I appreciate Birdman and admire its ambition, but it’s NOT something we’ll return to in years. The best thing about the film is that it looks like it’s shot in one take, but when it comes to that kind of film, I believe people will turn to Rope and Russian Ark first, and not really pay any mind to Birdman.
Say what you will about Keaton/BIRDMAN — but in the preceding months to this interview, I’ve had to actually looked up on Wikipedia who won Best Actor; both in 2014 & 2015. My last immediately accessible memory of the category is Daniel Day Lewis walking up the stage warmly embracing with Meryl Streep. Let’s hope 2016 reserves the trend because it’s been direly forgettable as of late.
Koles, by no means do I believe that if a part has an illness it’s a guaranteed frontrunner (I happen to feel that way about a biopic…a biopic with a disorder is tough to overlook though) but Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando and Gregory Peck were playing roles WAAAAY to big to ignore. They were either larger than life real figures or insanely popular literary figures. Benigni winning I think was a fluke but then again I didn’t follow the races until 2001 so I don’t know how well Life Is Beautiful was really doing up until the Oscars. I’d say Anthony Hopkins’ role falls under a handicap or disorder as you pointed out, that’s another role that was extremely too big to ignore considering his screen time. I think Russell Crowe would’ve won for A Beautiful Mind but that whole punching a reporter thing at the BAFTAs hurt him. Sean Penn played a larger than life figure but that race with Rourke was probably the closest I’ve ever seen, though smart money was always on Penn. I (sadly, don’t shoot) haven’t seen Amadeus but wasn’t F. Murray’s character insane?
Looking back at the nominees I think I could name a lot more cases AGAINST the “illness always wins” principle.
Denzel Washington “Flight” (alcoholism)
Joaquin Phoenix “Master” (alcoholism, sex addiction, maybe PTSD)
Bradley Cooper “Silver Linings Playbook” (bipolar disorder)
lost to – Daniel Day Lewis “Lincoln”
Mickey Rourke “Wrestler” (serious cardiac problems)
lost to – Sean Penn “Milk”
Sean Penn “I am Sam” (developmental disability)
Russell Crowe “A Beautiful Mind” (paranoid schizophrenia”
lost to – Denzel Washington “Training Day”
Javier Bardem “Before Night Falls” (AIDS)
Ed Harris “Pollock” (alcoholism)
lost to – Russell Crowe “Gladiator”
Richard Farnsworth “A Straight Story” (health demise due to old age)
lost to – Kevin Spacey “American Beauty”
Ian McKellen “Gods and Monsters” (mental illness due to a series of strokes)
Nick Nolte “Affliction” (alcoholism)
lost to – Roberto Benigni “Life is Beautiful”
Robin Williams “The Fisher King” (mental illness)
lost to – Anthony Hopkins “Silence of the Lambs” (I know this is a tricky one, because by all standards Lecter is mentally ill, but this aspect of the whole character does not define him. He’s a perfectly logical, very intelligent and well spoken person. He’s healthy and doesn’t have a personality disorder. He simply likes to eat people.)
Robert De Niro “Awakenings” (Encephalitis lethargica)
lost to – Jeremy Irons “Reversal of Fortune”
Jack Nicholson “Ironweed” (alcoholism)
lost to – Michael Douglas “Wall Street”
Albert Finney “Under the Volcano” (alcoholism)
lost to – F. Murray Abraham “Amadeus”
Jack Lemmon “Tribute” (some leathal illness, don’t remember)
John Hurt “Elephant Man” (Elephantiasis)
lost to – Robert De Niro “Raging Bull”
Peter Sellers “Being There” (developmental disability)
Roy Scheider “All That Jazz” (drug addiction, cardiac problems)
lost to – Dustin Hoffman “Kramer vs. Kramer”
Peter O’Toole “The Ruling Class” (paranoid schizophremia)
lost to – Marlon Brando “The Godfather”
Jack Lemmon “Days of Wine and Roses” (alcoholism)
lost to – Gregory Peck “To Kill a Mockingbird”
… and so on. I bet I could find a couple more of these.
Rob Y, out of the winners you listed the only ones I agree with winning (that I’ve seen) are Firth, Hanks (for Philadelphia, though I should rewatch all nominees of that year), Day-Lewis and Foxx. There were two actors I feel were robbed of nominations playing real characters with handicaps and they are Javier Bardem for The Sea Inside and John Hawkes for The Sessions. Beautiful, beautiful work.
I don’t really understand what’s going on in this comment thread. In my eyes, Redmayne was definitely number 3 in the category, behind Keaton and Cooper. Even if we’re going to say that Keaton was just “playing himself” (a dubious claim on anything beyond a superficial level, but whatever), he still put out definitely the more memorable, commanding performance.
Did Redmayne go in a little harder for his role? Perhaps, but ultimately the result didn’t really push far beyond a very on-point reenactment of ALS. Now, that’s commendable, and I do give Redmayne props for being a bright point of immense talent in a dreadfully boring film, but in the end I can’t really get behind it any more than I could get behind Jamie Foxx in Ray – you did a damn good job imitating this real person, but you didn’t dig any deeper for the role.
Keaton’s performance, even if it’s less of a stretch for him to play, is a force. He’s always firing on all cylinders and it’s easy to stop regarding Riggan Thompson as a performance and just consider him as a character. Every bit of anger, frustration, and desperation flew off the screen, hitting the audience harder than nearly anyone else on a movie screen in 2014. Everyone who says that someone else is the film was better or that it was more of an ensemble effort (though the ensemble is quite top notch themselves) is fooling themselves. Keaton was the anchor and driving force of Birdman, and if any one aspect of that film was worth rewarding, it was his work. You can say that Redmayne had the more difficult role, and maybe you’re right, but the more engaging performance and better actor overall was Keaton.
I wasn’t impressed by Redmayne’s performance at all. He contorted his face and body. Made his speech unintelligible. Not at all comparable to DDL’s memorable My Left Foot performance.
That being said, Keaton’s comment was tacky. And his performance was no great shakes.
The best performances last year weren’t even nominated.
He was robbed, we all know that. Same for Cotillard.
. . . I thought mental disorder, or personality disorder, was also an epitome of (mental) illness . . . .
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“I really hope that someone asks Eddie Redmayne to respond to this interview!”
+1
Relatively speaking, I haven’t seen anything irregular for Redmayne to have garnered the gold guy in the end last year when compared to some other previous ones [Oscar].
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I enjoyed Keaton’s performance in that film but, here, on paper it didn’t sound nice especially when looking from a Redmayne’s perspective.
But then I must have seen a different version of the film. The one I’ve #missed must have been that in which Thomson was perfectly #sane and #mentally normal, not to mention in relatively #good health [thus no illness in any sense whatsoever].
“I really hope that someone asks Eddie Redmayne to respond to this interview!”
Unlike Keaton, I doubt Redmayne has the spare time on his hands to bother with the whole thing. That’t the difference between an great actor and a movie star 🙂
Once you get past the nominee omission issues, Oscar got that category correct last year.
It’s kind of sad how a man in his sixties so desperately wanted a gold statue for validation.
I loved Birdman. I loved Keaton’s performance. However I do think the women were criminally under appreciated during awards season. Sure, Emma Stone got in, but not one word on the brilliant performances Naomi Watts, Amy Ryan, Lindsay Duncan, Andrea Riseborough delivered. I wouldn’t have been shocked if one of them had pulled off a surprise nomination, they were that good. But it was all about Keaton. And he WAS great…but I do believe Norton and the glorious actress quintet did steal A LOT of the scenes they shared with him. I remember Stone’s rage rant. I remember Watts’s “am I there yet”. I remember Ryan providing touching, gentle comfort to her ex. I remember Duncan giving a masterclass in acting in her one big scene/monologue. And I remember pretty much every scene Norton was in. Of course I also remember Keaton. But this was a film with one of the most glorious ensembles of recent memory and somehow it was handled as a one-man show. Huge mistake. I was very happy to see Keaton make a comeback but to be honest, I never gave in to his “I am a veteran actor so give me my fucking Oscar because my son is my best friend” narrative. Clearly I don’t blame him for playing the game, they all did that, Cooper had experience (that shameless SLP campaign) and Redmayne opted for the “aren’t I just an adorable British gent who will shake every single hand in town to get this” .
Still, I don’t think Keaton would have deserved it not only because I don’t think he gave the best performance (subjective, clearly), but also because I REALLY his body of work was anything to write home about. A few good films in the 80s and 90s, nothing worth mentioning in the following 20+ years up until Birdman yet we were supposed to see him as someone overdue. O’Toole he was not.
I also do believe Redmayne was better. Not just showier. Better. The concept for Keaton was to play a heightened, fictional version of himself (90s superhero hasbeen). The concept for Redmayne was to play a scientist icon who was ravaged, disfigured and paralysed by illness. Yes, illness. But illness didn’t win. The more difficult role and the more committed performance did.
You know everything, JJ. Amy Ryan was the best performer in that movie.
Even for an actor in Hollywood, Michael Keaton talks about himself more than anyone else I’ve ever known. Not only that, his usual topic of conversation is how great he is. Check above. The guy’s a dickhead. Glad he didn’t win shit tbh. Imagine the speech. Imagine the excruciation.
I don’t know – I feel like the right actor won. Keaton will have another chance to shine. Besides, he seemed like he was struggling to keep up with Norton. And the whole meta riffing on his persona didn’t help in the “degree of difficulty” category.
But what do I know. I thought Amy Ryan should have been nominated.
I really hope that someone asks Eddie Redmayne to respond to this interview!
Eddie Redmayne was brilliant and deserving of the Oscar. If a better actor like Sean Penn for instance played the part of Birdman then who knows? Michael Keaton only achieved in making me see how good Edward Norton is.
Illness always wins because it is the showiest—the LOOK-AT-ME–I’m–going–for–an–Oscar factor.
In a number of cases all the bells and whistles that call attention to the craft and yet are really superficial are all one needs to win. Innaritu proves empty bells and whistles can win in direction.
But then there are performances that are really THAT good. Redmayne is one. Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot is another.
What’s interesting is that there really aren’t many that fall into the “flashier” Illnesses category winning for Best Actor with a less than substantial role. McConaughey, Pacino, and Hoffman are some of the weaker wins (in my opinion).
Just going through the Best Actor winners I see:
Redmayne – ALS
McConaughey – HIV
Firth -Stuttering
Foxx – Blindness
Nicholson – Mental Illness
Cage – Alcholism
Hanks – Gumpism
Hanks – HIV
Pacino – Blindness
Day-Lewis – Cerebral Palsy
Hoffman – Savant
Nicholson – Mental Illness
Robertson – Mentally Disabled
Marvin – Alcoholism
Coleman – Mental Illness
Milland – Alcoholism
Barrymore – Alcoholism
(I may be missing some)
Many of these are questionable to be described as an illness role. Firth’s speech impediment is pushing it. What about alcoholism? I consider it an illness. But it doesn’t seem to fit into the generally perceived illness category; I don’t remember hearing the illness charge against Cage.
Now, Nicholson’s two wins are for roles in which he played individuals wrestling with mental disorders. If we consider them as illnesses (especially for MacMurphy’s descent into madness), then Keaton’s role as Riggan losing touch with reality would also be one.