Choosing Birdman as the closing night film of the 52nd New York Film Festival was a smart move. Premiering in the slot right after it would have been a truly humbling experience for another film. Not that I wish to inflate Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's ego any further.
Iñárritu, Norton, Watts and Amy Ryan at the premiere
In the press conference that immediately followed our screening yesterday he admitted that it's already enormous. "Inquisitor. Tyrant. Dictator" are just three of his names for his own ego and the idea for Birdman was to explore the inner struggle with ego and the creative process. Innaritu says he starts most creative projects thinking "This is great, fantastic, very genius!" and shortly thereafter has a bipolar switcheroo "You're a stupid asshole. This is a piece of shit, no one would care about it!" He thought this creative struggle would be a cool thing to dramatize on film though he didn't mean it to be specifically about the ego of actors. He actually thinks they don't have big egos. "Politicans have bigger egos...even my dentist!" he added spontaneously to much laughter in the room. "He's an asshole. He makes me suffer and I pay him."
Michael Keaton's internal creative struggle takes a slightly different turn "I go through, 'Oh you're the greatest, you're wonderful. And then 20 minutes later... no, you're actually more than that Michael!"
Throughout the conference the actors found ways to keep the mood light and funny. Somehow Naomi Watts became the favorite member of the cast to tease, which was interesting because the actress she plays onscreen is riddled with insecurity. [More...]
Norton & Watts play lovers who are also actors playing lovers within Birdman
After revealing that she has the classic actor's nightmare of showing up on stage not knowing her lines and completely naked, Michael Keaton sounded as if he was about to sympathisize and share a similar story. "I've had the same dream as Naomi, " he began. "...of Naomi naked on stage. It wasn't a nightmare." The good natured ribbing suggested that this was a harmonious and unified set. They had to be, several of tehm explained given the long long takes and the technical difficulties of filming it with "Chivo" (last year's Oscar winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski) and his team swirling about them while they maneuvered around the cameras for their next entrance.
"It was difficult but I like difficult," Michael Keaton admitted when it came to the very long takes and rigid blocking they had to learn to work with the cameras and move through the "giant picture" while surfing multiple emotions. The film is made to appear as if it was all shot in one take (like Hitchcock's Rope or, much more recently, Russian Ark) so most of the time the actors weren't acting in fragments the way film actors are accustomed to. Emma Stone, the only member of the cast about to hit the stage (she's taking over the Sally Bowles role in Cabaret) credits Birdman with helping her prep for her Broadway run. "We had to rely on each other the way a company does. We operated very much as a unit and on a lot of film it's not like that at all."
Because Birdman dives into fragile creative egos and fear of failure, a critic (played by Lindsay Duncan) plays a key role. This naturally brought up questions about film criticism and its place. The actors were careful to either not engage with the question or be non-committal about it. The room went a little awkward. Keaton admits that he only reads reviews if people have told him it's great "I'm willing to make myself feel better." but Riseborough doesn't read them at all. "I love that there's a critical presence in the film. I don't read reviews, not because I don't respect them but because I find them debilitating. The reverence I feel for critics is basically fear."
At the swanky closing night after party at The Leopard later that night, Innaritu and Keaton were surrounded by well wishers and telling stories again. The director speaks in a very circular very longwinded heavily accented way, but he's quite funny. Watching him hold court again while I sipped on some red wine and scanned the room for the actresses (you know how we do here at TFE) I was reminded of Edward Norton's hilarious half-true admission that he wasn't creating his egomaniac difficult actor character so much as just playing Iñárritu - "My entire performance consisted of dropping his accent."
Emma Stone & Andrea Riseborough on the red carpet
As for the ladies, Naomi Watts escaped my eyes though had I seen her I would have surely thanked her for doing a comedy again. As with I Heart Huckabee's her trademark intensity, that on-the-verge terror, is a surprisingly great axis on which to spin comically.
I did briefly chat with both Emma Stone and Andrea Riseborough. Emma seemed relieved that The Amazing Spider-Man was over "I'm done with that!" (or was that me projecting relief since I'm so glad she's free?). But she also thinks that why she and the others (Keaton and Norton) were cast, for the superhero genre connotations, the movie being so meta. Andrea Riseborough, always extremely well-mannered at these things - is it that 'reverential fear'? I'm far from intimidating, I promise! -- was the most inviting for conversation. I had met her once before during her W.E. tour. I promise I said this in the nicest possible way but I told her that it was such a treat to see her in a movie worthy of her gifts rather than in another movie where she was outclassing everything around her. (It wasn't the first time she'd heard this.) We talked briefly about her big moment with Naomi Watts, one of the best scenes in the movie and one which allows it to pass the Bechdel Test. Andrea was also excited about her next film The Silent Storm, a film she leads, which she brought up without prompting. She was headed immediately back to the UK for this other premiere. She's a busy one but no wonder. (I suspect we've barely seen how much she can do onscreen.) May Birdman mark a turning point in her career after which the movies can keep up with her.
Birdman opens in limited release next Friday October 17th and it should be interesting to see the reactions spill in outside the specialized air of film festivals. During the press conference Michael Keaton shared a moviegoing experience from the Eighties. He'd gone to see John Huston's The Dead and there were two guys near him who had obviously come expecting a horror movie. 'What is this shit?' they muttered and he clocked how long they lasted - less than two minutes. "Can you imagine if people go to this [Birdman] expecting a superhero movie?"