NYFF Report: Michael Keaton Talks About Taking Flight Again in 'Birdman'
Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in ‘Birdman’
It’s been more than two decades since Michael Keaton last donned superhero attire. And while the actor has no plans to return to the comic book world (unless his Batman buddy Tim Burton is directing), he did strap on wings and a cowl to play a costumed avenger in the new film Birdman, which closed the 52nd New York Film Festival on Saturday. After the screening, Keaton was on hand for a press conference with costars Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Ryan, Andrea Riseborough, and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu.
The movie offers a phantasmagoric peek inside the mind of fallen movie star Riggan Thomson (Keaton), who is attempting to re-launch his career as a stage actor after shooting to fame decades ago in a superhero franchise. Though Gotham’s former Dark Knight doesn’t make a habit of watching the latest in comic book cinema (including the Christopher Nolan-directed Batman movies), one of his favorite scenes in Birdman is a sequence where Thomson’s winged alter ego takes flight in a lavishly produced send-up of superhero mayhem. “I wasn’t ready for this, but that moment in the movie when Birdman makes his appearance onscreen and all these awesome F/X come in out of nowhere, it’s so much fun,” Keaton remarked at the press conference. “I totally dig it. It’s a little treat — a little [taste of a] megaplex superhero movie.” (The actor passed on the opportunity to take the costume home with him after shooting wrapped. “How stupid am I not to keep one?” he joked. “But I’m now thinking of a way to get one.”)
Aside from that scene though, Birdman is nothing like a megaplex superhero movie. It’s something that Keaton and his co-star — and fellow comic book movie refugee — Edward Norton joked about when they made a recent appearance at the New York Comic Con. “Before we went onstage, I said to Michael, ‘Do you think this is the ultimate bait-and-switch that has ever been pulled on the Comic Con audience?’" said Norton, who plays a prickly Method actor that clashes with Thomson behind-the-scenes. ”Can you imagine going to Birdman actually thinking it’s a superhero movie?”
Instead of turning to comic books for inspiration, Keaton and Norton both say that they modeled their characters after Birdman's director, the Mexican-born Iñárritu, whose previous films include Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel. The filmmaker said that he based the movie on his own experience of turning 50. “In the creative process, my ego has always been a huge tyrant who is very rude and sometimes very misleading,” Iñárritu said. “Sometimes, when I’m doing something, I say, ‘This is great, this is fantastic, you’re a genius!’ And then 20 minutes later, I feel like a dead jellyfish.” Keaton understood that his task was to perform those sentiments onscreen, to the point where he said, “[My] character is Alejandro.” Norton added, “I’m wearing his scarf and jacket in the movie, and everything I say are things I’ve heard him say or know that he wants to say. My entire performance constituted dropping the Mexican accent, and that was it.”
Making the movie was a heroic effort in and of itself as the cast and crew executed complex choreography to realize Iñárritu’s vision of a film that looked as though it was unfolding in one single, continuous shot. That process required intensive amounts of rehearsal and absolutely no improvising. “All the creative decisions had to be made before we started shooting,” said the director, who teamed up with Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the man who designed similarly long takes for movies like Children of Men and Gravity, both of which were directed by Iñárritu’s friend, Alfonso Cuarón. “All the camerawork and all the blocking had to be pre-designed months in advance. There were no film lights, everything was shot with practical lights, and sometimes it was 360 degrees in these tiny corridors with guys with microphones. Every beat, every line, every joke had to be performed exactly the same; any hesitation would ruin that take.”
Keaton called the experience of making Birdman, “one of the most difficult things I’ve done. But I like difficult most of the time.” Naomi Watts, who has a supporting role as a self-esteem challenged actress, said that the shooting style actually helped give the cast a taste of being a theater company. “The speed and the high stakes with which the film was made…all of those things created this level of intensity and pressure that’s sort emblematic of how it feels [to act] onstage,” she said. “Back in the days when I was studying acting and doing plays, a lot of my nightmares revolved around being on the stage and forgetting my lines or having the wrong clothes on or having no clothes on at all.” Ever the quipster, Keaton promptly chimed in: “I’ve had the same dream that Naomi has about seeing her onstage naked. It’s not a nightmare, believe me.”
Watch a trailer for Birdman below. The movie hits theaters on Oct. 17.
Photo credt: AP Photo/Fox Searchlight Pictures
