The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance*, (or, There's Something About Actors)

"We Do Not Rent To Theatricals"**
- Old Rooming House Sign

(SPOILER ALERT - While discussing  the film Birdman, I will try not to give away too much of the plot, and definitely not the ending. That said, it's hard to write this post without discussing what happens in the movie, and that can certainly sometimes harm the experience. If you haven't seen the movie and would like to - you have been warned.)

Do not fear. I have no intention of deviating from the course of this blog, which is the insanity of a career on the production side of low-budget independent film, to indie film criticism. Many folks do it just fine right now, and, on the other end of the spectrum, many more people already do it badly, and I have no intention of competing with either crowd.

This is similar to my early forays in the world of the arts, which was as a writer and actor, a profession that had a similar spectrum. That side of my career when I came to a not-so-different decision that the world did not need one more mediocre actor, which I imagined was the extent of my talent.

My viewing of a matinee of Birdman  came on the heels of  finally finishing my series on Town Diary. Thank you, holiday time in New York, for providing an elder production person with ample free time to go to matinees.

It was only two short posts ago that I mentioned that my original plan for that script was not unlike this one, about the insanity of the backstage life in the theater. Of course, this is a path with deep tread marks in film, going back to the very early days, from the "I've got a barn. You've got the costumes. Let's put on a show" musicals to backstage back-stabbing in movies like All About Eve, to neurosis of the characters in Tootsie, which, while it covers soap operas, is filled with earnest, honest, true ac-tors from the theater world. Both Birdman and Tootsie are filled with characters determined to stay true to their pure art and eschew the crass and commercial (soap operas in the case of Tootsie, and the deluge of comic-book movies in Birdman.)

In fact, many of the characters in Birdman have sympatico companions in Tootsie. Ed Norton's insistence on the truth, and nothing but the truth, has echoes of Bill Murray's playwright ("I don't want my plays done at the Uris Theater. I only want my plays done in a little theater in the Village where the only people who see them are people who come in out of the rain")*** and of course, Hoffman's vain actor ("Nobody does vegetables like me!"). Teri Garr's neurotic actress would be right at home with this group. Where Garr's character famously tells Hoffman of the role he eventually takes, "I can't play her - she's, she's - she's a woman", one actress in Birdman comforts another in this scene.

Lesley: "I wish I had more self-respect?"
Laura: "You're an actress."

Indeed, Birdman is the movie that every film person who comes out of the theater world wants to write and/or direct. When done right - and this film is, for the most part - it offers a world where people are at the same time funny caricatures and real people who demand that you care about them. I got the same belly-laughs out of this that I got out of films like Tootsie and Noises Off and, on the film side, Tropic Thunder, The Player, and, of course, the inspiration of this blog's title, Living in Oblivion.

We are, after all, like family. We will defend our frailties, eccentricities and foibles to the death to the outside world, but among ourselves, we love nothing more than to pick at those same oddities. Undeniably, there is also the shadenfreude of watching others suffer as we have suffered.

Birdman does a very good job with the genre. Still, as I pondered it on the way home (yes, having all this free time leaves me time to not only see matinees, but ponder about them), the question that always troubles me about these films comes back. Sure, we love them but do "civilians" love them as much as we do?

To some degree, this can be said of any profession. If I search the internet, I'm sure there is a blog post of airplane pilots wondering this about Airplane. As with Tootsie, if they are broad enough, of course any audience will enjoy them just as much.

That is a problem with an "indie" film like Birdman. It spends so much time dismissing the crass commercialism of blockbusters that it would be an abject failure if it was broad enough for that audience, where as a film like Tropic Thunder can wear over-the-top blockbuster like a badge of honor.

Here, I started to think that Jack was right; that if we had done, this, it would have had limited appeal. We both loved Waiting for Guffman, but if we were going to be an even more obscure version of that film, there wasn't much chance of success. OK, so in the end we did not have any commercial success with Town Diary, and only limited critical success (Jack and I shared a screenwriting award from a very small L.A. festival).

I have a hunch that a lot of the critical acclaim and love for this film in the indie world comes exactly from this familiarity, and for many festival voters and indie film critics rooting exactly for this type of film and a character like Michael Keaton's Riggan Thomson. Keaton is an easy guy to root for and the parallels to his actual career (walking away from a third Batman the way his character, Thomson, walked away from "Birdman 4") make this a natural for him. The cinematography helps as well, accentuating every line and crease of his face, his receding hair line, the bags under his eyes, his sagging physique (though I would take it - he doesn't look that out of shape).We feel his pain.

Don't get me wrong. I really enjoyed this movie, and I'm fine if he and this movie gets awards. It entertained me. What more can I ask? If this was a review, it would get both of my thumbs pumped high in the air like celebratory fists***.

The more I thought about it, it was better than the outline I wrote for that comedy, so maybe, on this point, Jack was right. Maybe the world didn't need another one of these films either. In the end, though the fruit was sweet, it was of the low-hanging variety.

NB - Keaton won a Golden Globe, as did the screenplay






*This is the subtitle for the Birdman, in case you didn't know. Does a movie title really need a subtitle?

** I used to have one of these signs, and I remember them being popular in the homes of my theater buddies. I have never done the historical research necessary to say whether they were authentic or just another self-depricating reference. If anyone out there knows for sure, please leave a comment below.

***Some of the Tootsie quotes are from memory - I love those lines, but some were not on IMDB quotes and I don't have the script. If they are off by a word or two, don't shoot me.

****If you are too young to remember, this is a reference to the old Siskel and Ebert review show, which became a template for so many of those shows to follow. As you might imagine, this show, which began on PBS, had much more insightful criticism than most TV review shows today, yet it was incredibly entertaining. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were reviewers for competing Chicago newspapers, at a time when newspapers still mattered. Neither was very TV savvy in the beginning, and the resulting spontaneity was much more fun than the more scripted shows today. We lost both of them too soon.

The South Beach Job - Part 2 - We're Straight

Jive Lady: Oh, stewardess! I speak jive.

Randy: Oh, good.

Jive Lady: He said that he's in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.

Randy: All right. Would you tell him to just relax and I'll be back as soon as I can with some medicine?

Jive Lady: [to the Second Jive Dude] Jus' hang loose, blood. She gonna catch ya up on da rebound on da med side.

Second Jive Dude: What it is, big mama? My mama no raise no dummies. I dug her rap!

Jive Lady: Cut me some slack, Jack! Chump don' want no help, chump don't GET da help!

     -Airplane and the Jive Lady

We arrived in Miami still looking for a hotel room and a permanent office as well as needing to fill our staff.

We checked into a hotel off the strip, where I proceeded to work out a deal with the manager, promising more rooms rented, as well as renting an office space in the hotel.

Cutting a deal means offering something the other person wants. We would have hip hop celebrities. She (the manager) was not impressed. Miami has a bustling music scene, so they were not impressed with celebrities. I was able to offer a large number of days - it got me a deal, if not a great one. The office would not be available to us immediately.

Until that time, we would work at Lex's office. The first thing one noticed when walking into his office was a large mural that celebrated a very high-profile social and free-speech victory over "the Man." Lex, once part of an iconic hip-hop group, was now a mini-mogul, with his hand in different entertainment enterprises.

Lex was what one might call a straight-up guy, which is a big factor in why we got along. Whether it was sitting on his porch as he described how to jack the cars that passed, or describing a night out at a strip club as he bragged about placing a call to a cell phone in a place where, well, a cell phone was not meant to be, Lex was not only completely comfortable with who he was and his reputation, he loved it.

The script was rather loosely structured, which was fine for what would be one in a series of party movies with a lot of women around a pool shaking their butts for the camera.

Already into my forties and having grown up in NYC, I didn't think of myself as naive. Still, I soon learned many things about hip hop culture which I didn't know previously.

One day at "auditions" for dancers, one of the girls waiting looked at the girl auditioning and made a comment I didn't understand. I soon learned that "natural vs enhanced" did not stop at breasts. There was a drug one could inject into their butt that would make it wiggle more. When I inquired further, the girls waiting were more than happy to explain it in great detail, and how they could tell the difference between a natural shake and one which had been achieved through chemicals.

I also had a limited knowledge of the artists we were looking to cast, and their music. Early on, we reached out to the host of a very popular hip hop and Black music show on MTV (even at this point, the very White network felt more comfortable departmentalizing their music than just having it share the spotlight with music with which they were more comfortable). This host was more than happy to be a part of the movie, mostly because Lex was famous for his parties, and few wanted to miss it.

Lex loved to play, and one way he would tweak me was with a rather attractive - and very young - assistant of his, who was my link to the artists. She turned up in the doorway of my make-shift office at Lex's before we moved into the hotel office and asked if she could be of any help. She showed up wearing what could only be described as hot pants - a fad from the 70s which had long passed, but which still had it's desired effect in terms of outlining the female form.

"Lex really appreciates everything you're doing, and he asked if I could come over here to thank you personally," she said, posing in the doorway with a big smile and a hands-on-hips pose that has been clear since the days of Betty Grable* and needed no translation.

Known for her legs, US servicemen in WWII clearly also appreciated that baby had back.

"Thank Lex for a very tempting offer," I replied to a lady who was easily young enough to be my daughter "but tell him I'm going to have to pass. Do let him know it was a very very nice offer."

In all situations, when turning down a genuinely-offered gift, Miss Manners would clearly insist on being gracious - and, yes, I do love the image of Miss Manners answering this inquiry.

"You sure?" she asked. "I never mix work with pleasure," I responded. "That's so crazy," she exclaimed, as she laughed and went sauntering away, making sure that the outfit and the walk made clear exactly what I was passing on.

Lex was closer to my age (only three years younger) than the age of our director, Jimmy, who insisted on trying to be something he was not. Lex and I got along really well because neither of us tried to get over on each other, which was a nice break from a situation where everyone was trying to get over on someone - the artists on their managers, the managers on the record company, the record company on everyone. Lex knew this terrain well, but, at least with us, when he wanted something, he was clear about it, and we dealt with it from that perspective.

Much as "Done and done" had become the catch-phrase on my last feature, Lex and I had our own short-hand. "We straight?" the question would get the response "we straight!"** That would say everything about where we were on an issue, very often having to do with money and where it was going.

To this day, I have a great deal of respect for a guy who was not just street-smart, but very very bright with a good understanding of human nature. Everything he does that "shocks" is calculated, and he is still a successful businessman who does a lot of giving back, and has helped a lot of other folks up, all the while never forgetting about Number 1.

That's a balance not every artist has.

We definitely got past politically-correct conversation very quickly, and sometimes that was fun.

One of my favorite moments came with this same female assistant. We were going over the artists we were trying to book, and, as previously mentioned past some of the bigger ones, I was not familiar with them many of them or their music,

While Lex, his assistant and I were straight on important matters, when discussing artists I should have known but did not, I felt more like Randy than the Jive Lady in Airplane.**

She laughed when I blanked on about the fourth artists in a row.

"That's what you get for hiring some Cracker*** from New York to produce your movie," I joked.

She went into mock shock expression and said, "Don't you say that JB."

"You're our favorite Cracker from New York!"



Any excuse to show the one. the only, the incomparable James Brown is good by me. (Would love to know the literal translation of the Japanese subtitles for the intro). I do love the "secretary" at the end.





*If you're wondering how a reference to a pin-up that helped boost the moral, among other things, of our fighting heroes during World War II made it's way into a post on a hip-hop artist, welcome to my blog.

**Ironically, the two expressions mean very much the same thing - that all is settled and it's time to move on.

***I chose this definition from the Urban Dictionary, leaving out the rude added commentary. "Slang word used to refer to those of European ancestry. The word is thought to have either derived from the sound of a whip being cracked by slave owners, or because crackers are generally white in color."