Special Edition Podcast
Special Edition – Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Show Notes
Conor Kilpatrick, Mike Romo, and iFanboy co-founder Ron Richards have written, directed, produced, and starred in a little show they like to call What We Talk About When We Talk About Birdman or (The Most Mind-Bendingly-Blowingly Viscerally Raw Movie Experience of 2015)! Caw!
Running Time: 00:43:59
Music:
“Crazy”
Gnarls Barkley
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This movie is next-level good.
I just watched the trailer-this looks fantastic!
I want to see this movie so bad but I’m not sure when or if it will come to my area .
I completely misread this and thought that you’d made a film. I might have to have a lie down.
Can we talk about this movie? I just saw it last night and I think I loved it but cannot understand it. I know that I loved the parts but I’m not sure how I feel about or how to take the sum of those parts.
Can you expand upon that? What causes you to say that you “cannot understand it”?
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
I guess it’s not so much that I don’t understand it’s just that I formulate a theory for meaning of a particular aspect and then there’s something that contradicts it. Case in point:
So his “powers” never happen when he’s interacting with another person. When he’s destroying his dressing room he doesn’t touch anything, then Galafinakis enters the scene and we see Riggan destroying everything with his hands. That plus the taxi that Ron mentions and the fact that he only interacts with the woman hanging up her laundry when he’s safely on the ledge and not flying in the air makes me believe that his “powers” aren’t real at all. Which is fine but then why does he fly at the end and why can Emma Stone ((man, I’m bad with character names)) “see” him fly? A friend of mine posited that it’s her acceptance of him as an artist. So if he’s striving to be seen as an artist it seems to me that Birdman would go away once he found his art? But there he is in the bathroom of the hospital. But then again he removes the “mask” of the bandages that, in a brilliant piece of costuming, look like a bird mask, and looks at his new face which features a much bigger nose or “beak” perhaps? So maybe now he IS Birdman?
My only problem with the film is that it never seemed to me that he was suicidal. So was his shooting himself a quest for artistic realism? To achieve the level of honesty that Ed Norton’s character–a true stage actor–can only achieve on stage? Because it doesn’t seem like he wanted “out” of the life he was in at any point.
Ultimately I come back to that little note that’s on the mirror of Riggan’s dressing room that says something to the effect of “A thing is only that thing and not that which is said about that thing,” and I feel like that is the director telling everyone not to worry about it all and just watch and enjoy what is there, but that may be a cop out on my part or his? I’m also still trying to figure out a way to “read” the film where the overractor guy in the beginning and the drunk on the street outside the bar are projections of Riggan himself, the inverse of bravado and confidence that Riggan feels as Birdman. They both say the same thing, (Was it too much? It was too much. I can see it was too much. I was just trying to give you a range”) the overractor after he gives his line and the drunk guy after the “sound and fury” soliloquy.
Anyway, like I said I want to love this movie and after listening to your podcast I think I do (Hadn’t listened before posting earlier today) but there are still things that I’m conflicted about what they mean. Thanks for reading any or all of this, my wife didn’t like the movie enough to continue talking about it. Haha.
A co-worker and I were discussing the movie and he brought up an interesting theory that I think could address your issues with understanding it.
Before I go into the theory, I think a big part of what makes this movie so great is simply not knowing things like this. Leaving it to interpretation and wondering is a part of what makes it so fantastic. That’s a bit of a disclaimer before I try and “explain” it (albeit via one persons interpretation)
The theory goes like this:
– When he shot himself on stage, he did what he set out to – he killed himself.
– The entire scene in the hospital is a vision inside his head, before he ultimately dies, where he gets everything he wanted:
– His ex-wife is there, concerned about him and caring again
– His producer comes in raving about how great the show did and how successful he is now
– The awful critic gave him a glowing review
– His daughter is telling him how he’s huge on social media now and how proud of him she is
– Birdman no longer is taunting him, rather just sitting there, accepting him as he is
– Then he jumps out the window and flies and when his daughter goes to window, she looks up and sees him and is beaming with pride.
I think this theory could work, as personally, I don’t think he has any powers in reality – that was all in his head. So this could be an extension of that.
Now that’s an interesting interpretation. I like it though am still a bit perplexed by the suicide itself. Not that there are visible symptoms to a suicidal person that should have been exhibited but it still seemed like a left turn for him to make.
Is there any drumming in that final scene at the hospital or for that matter any scene w/o Riggan in it? I’ve been trying to figure out what was up withthe drummer being in the scene sometimes, or if he was in Riggan’s head the whole time like the “powers.”
There’s just so much to dissect in this film and I do agree with you, Ron, that that’s part of what makes it great. I’ll have to sit down and really think about it some more, for at least another 12-18 hours.
This is awesome: an official retro trailer for BIRDMAN RETURNS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vueAC31glPQ
Great show guys. This movie did finally come to my area and I absolutely loved it. It was surprisingly funny and the acting was stellar….I’d like to see Keaton, Norton, and Stone all get Oscar noms for this.
**SPOILER**
They way I viewed this film is that he did not have powers. To go along with the flying/cab scene there is also the scene where he trashes his dressing room using his powers until Zack G’s character walks in and suddenly he’s using his hands to trash the room. Based off of this the way I took the ending is similar to what Ron posted above, except I think the hospital was real up until just about the time his daughter left the room….at this point I think he goes off into dream land again and is flying like he was before….the significance of his daughter looking up is that he now sees that his daughter looks up to him and is proud. Of course ending with that scene leaves it open for interpretation which is great and I’ve seen several different interpretations that I like.