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.

All In the Family: The Making of Town Diary - The Bad....

"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse"
Bruce Springsteen, "The River"

Karma can be a bitch.

The reality of making low budget films is that there will be concessions. You start with the script and make the film as close as you can to what is on the page, but you know there will be changes and things you just cannot do. This is advice I have handed out to first-time filmmaker after first-time filmmaker as I have guided them through the process.

The important thing, I keep telling them, is that at the end of the day, it has to essentially be the movie you wanted to make.

From the inception of this movie I would be making with my good friends Jack (as director) and JR (as DP and editor), we all made concessions. JR and I liked the idea of a comedy, and one of Jack's original premises was about a theater company trying to put on a play. It was familiar territory given my theater background, and it could make for a good movie. Among successful attempts at this genre were the film version of Noises Off, though it has a great history in film comedy, as many film actors and directors come from the stage.

Jack and I had started discussing those ideas, but Jack had dismissed them finally when he saw Waiting For Guffman, a comedy from Christopher Guest and his usual band of wonderful character actors. I didn't think our movie would be anything like that one, but Jack had made up his mind.

Among other things, Jack taught film history in Chicago. There was hardly a scene or a word in a classic film he didn't know, so when I started the film with the a train bringing the character of Brian from New York to his childhood town in Long Island, Jack immediately remembered the imagery from the beginning of Bad Day At Black Rock.*

Bad Day was a favorite of mine, and a favorite of Jack's. The opening sequence has this train carrying Spencer Tracy stopping in a town that is used to seeing the train just pass on by. The arrival of the stranger who upsets the secrets and lies of a small town is another film standard, and we both liked it.

On Page One of the script, I went into great detail to show how we might shoot this scene, with an emphasis not on the exterior of the train, but Brian's POV looking out the window, almost like watching frames of movie.

Admittedly, the mental image was easier to capture than a good screen image. Jack and I rode the train, and the images outside the window were less interesting than the ones I had in mind. Still, the two of us, and JR, spent some time working out what the opening could look like.

When we started shooting, we agreed to just pick up the scene at the train station where David looks for a taxi, and is met by Jimmy Ryan, the hopeless younger brother of his good friend, Frank Ryan. Jimmy drove a taxi, and he grills Brian about being a "Hollywood producer," something the documentary filmmaker Brian certainly is not.

The thought was that we would get the rest of the opening later, but once it was in the can, Jack pretty much decided that we didn't need the train opening at all, and went for something different. Admittedly, whether my opening or his would have been better is subjective, but it was the first in a series of incidents where I felt that we were making compromises before at least trying to do something more creative.

While we were all great friends, the fact that each of us saw filming a different way became apparent before long. While JR and I had worked together on features, Jack and I had only worked together on Dental PSAs, a medium where my concern for the content was minimal. This was different.

Film directors approach directing actors in many different ways. Jack's approach was mostly to trust the actor to bring something, but, when they didn't, he would offer line readings or offer "just do this." It goes back to why he wanted to hire actors who were already close to the part.

I often felt that this method was less than effective, or that he was accepting an okay performance where they might be a better one. I tried to take him aside privately and discuss these issues as often as possible, but when the producer and director are talking, all eyes are on them and little is private.

Eventually,  I let go of this, but not before Chris, my AD, rightfully took me aside and said if I was going to keep doing this, he would prefer I not be on set. Chris correctly felt that questioning Jack, even if I pulled him away to do so, was undermining his authority, and it made it harder for him to keep control on set.

It is not easy to admit that he was right, and I found myself spending less time on set during filming and more dealing with producing elements. This was made easier by the fact that most of the actors we hired were wonderful and brought strong performances without much coaching.

Then, there was our lead actor, David in the role of Brian. As I have said previously, David decided early on that he knew more about acting than Jack did (well, as Jack was not an actor, that was true) and he would ignore Jack when he could, and confront him if Jack pressed him. Now, Jack did not envision the Brian character as a version of himself, and while I had used some of Jack's manners to give Brian a fuller life, I didn't see it that way, either.

Brian was the lead character, however, and as such, Jack was more invested in his performance than any other. David, as I have mentioned, was an actor who had not often been the lead in a movie, and he was determined to make this part his. This conflict devolved to the point where David would pretty obviously challenge Jack on set. These were the worst days, and David made it worse by being passive-aggressive when I tried to talk to him privately about it.

There were the usual practical problems as well.

The bane of my existence on other shoots reared its ugly head again - location manager. We went through two ineffective ones before I brought on a third - a woman who had been great on another shoot. The difference now was that she was pregnant, and it meant more time for her on the phone and less time scouting, and worse, an irritable mood that no one appreciated. We had to let her go as well, leading to a total of four location managers in all.

My savior through the bad times was my assistant Christine, who became as much a confidante and voice of reason as an assistant. She was incredibly helpful as I spent more and more time off set, either dealing with production issues or trying to make up for the deficiencies of our location department.

Chris K, as AD, was in the middle of it all, and as time went on, I saw he felt the pressure of balancing seemingly different marching orders from friends. I have been there as a First AD, and it is no fun. That blew up on day in a sign of frustration that also wound up being unintended humor.

Shooting out in New Jersey, one of our weak location managers had printed poor-to flat-out wrong driving directions. As each vehicle was attempting to get there - Chris driving in his own car, we all were calling each other trying to figure out a) where each of us were, and, b) where the heck was the location. I was one with one such call when Chris K tried to call me and got my voicemail. His message would have made NY Jet's coach Rex Ryan** or Joe Pesci (see below) proud. I think you can work your way through my redaction:

Son of a f****ing bitch. This is so f***ed.  We're f**cked. You have f**cking f**cked me....."

It went on like that for about 45 seconds, with Chris K deftly finding uses for his new choice favorite word as verb, adverb, noun, adjective  and just about every other part of speech imaginable.

I put in on speaker, and as concerned as we were about the situation, Christine and I could not stop laughing - something we kid about to this day.

Understand that Chris would use the occasional profanity as any of us might, but was usually well-spoken and not someone of limited vocabulary. This was an exception.

Chris was involved in another unintentional funny moment  that went badly. There is a mock-TV reality cop show sequence that is playing for a few seconds before a scene between Brian and his father. The scene is MOS***, and brief. We needed two actors to be in the car, and we talked through an improved scenario where a boyfriend and girlfriend get into a physical argument in a car.

The girl was an acting student of mine who had bugged me to be in a scene, a stripper who was trying to become a serious actress. The bg car we wanted did not show up, and Chris reluctantly volunteered his car.

When Jack called "action" the improv - or I should say the actress - went insane. She started screaming and kicking and made the character who pulled her out of the car practically drag her. In doing so, she did some serious damage to the front of Chris' car.

When Chris came over and challenged her (I'm being polite) as to what was wrong with her, she looked at him, tears in her eyes, and screamed "Leave me alone - I've just been raped."

Now, there is nothing funny about rape, but never in our description of the improv did Jack, Chris or anyone else suggest that her character was raped. If that worked as "motivation" for her, okay, but there was no reason for the over-the-top performance.

Chris walked over to me and made a suggestion about getting that "psycho bitch friend of (yours)" out of his car. We all agreed we would go with the first take.

Even these funny moments did not reduce the strain, and more and more, at wrap, all of the "friends" went their separate ways without much said.

Good friends. Your script. It should have been a dream, but too often, it was more of a nightmare. When the expectations of what it can be are so high, the disappointment when it is something less is exponentially worse.

The worst moments, and biggest disappointments, were still to come. The last post was the "good." This one is the "bad." You know what the next one will be.











*Bad Day at Black Rock should be on your list of must-see movies if you are in the business, or just a fan of good movies. John Sturges at his best directing, and a cast of great character actors around Tracy, from Robert Ryan to Ernest Borgnine to Lee Marvin and more.

** Both Rex Ryan and Joe Pesci, in different movies, have become known for their colorful language.

*** Without sound, for those not in the business.