March 10, 2015
By Mickey Friedman
Surprise, surprise: It’s a Bird, Man!
Hollywood, maker of dreams, never-ending schemes to fill movie theaters packed with people munching popcorn. One of many millions, I watched Neil Patrick Harris sing and dance his way through Oscar’s bad jokes and tele-prompted chitchat, with the occasional poke at his fellow celebrities, and the halfhearted attempt to acknowledge the extraordinary waste of it all.
Yes, the joke about the swag bag. The Washington Post told us the big category nominees all got gifts worth $168,000. A free Audi for a year, a trip to Italy, and my favorites: a high-end astrology reading valued at twenty grand and “$4,068 worth of non-invasive L.E.D. light therapy for weight loss and body contouring.”
Then the 94% white and 77% male voters of the Academy decided to reward “Birdman” and turn their collective backs on “Selma.” Except to sing the Selma song.
Now I’ve made a few films, written a few plays, and can appreciate a film about a film actor turning short stories into a play. In “Birdman,” it’s a fading Hollywood star who made a boatload playing superhero Bird/Man. Because we all love stars who fly or swim fast or can take out a small army all by themselves before lunch.
Somehow this particularly Birdman has spent all this dough. Then sadly plunged into mid-life crisis. And, rather than squeeze back into that money-making birdsuit once more, he wants more than anything to be taken seriously as an actor. Which in Hollywoodworld makes him a hero of sorts, because that means “The Theatre.” Hollywood knows it’s one thing to turn into someone else before a camera, but quite another thing to do it before real people who’ve paid more than a hundred bucks to see you do it. With the added bonus of getting paid much less than usual, which proves how serious you really are about your craft.
Add the more than obvious irony, that this Birdman is played by the extraordinary Michael Keaton, once a real Batman and a Batman Returned. He, too, took the money and flew.
Don’t get me wrong, the Oscar winning “Birdman” was marked by very good acting and fine cinematography. And because few things are black or white, and the American Dream/Nightmare now belongs to all, it was several talented Latin Americans who made this film about this fictive white superhero. Maybe because they never would have gotten 16 mil to make “QuetzalMan.”
But for me it was a shallow exercise. The dialogue reeked of Hollywood’s almost pathological self-absorption. There wasn’t a character I cared about: Keaton’s Birdman, the alcoholic, petulant, egocentric whiner who, yes, could fly when he needed to. Edward Norton’s brutish, bullying Broadway actor, who told us again and again that it was the stage that counted when it came to acting. Birdman’s two-dimensional rehab-released daughter who sleeps with Norton to make a point that’s been better made in a thousand B movies. Not to mention the stock wicked witch of a theater critic. So much ado about absolutely nothing.
And yet this was the Best Picture for all those who think the pain and suffering of one of their own is a story more compelling than the pain and suffering of millions. The real-life black people of Selma who muster the bravery to face bullets and racist cops to rouse the conscience of a nation.
A story about an actor can be an important story, and films and television about the theater can be powerful. Watch the exceptional Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney in “The Dresser.” Watch the hilarious and biting and moving Canadian series “Slings and Arrows” as they tell the true story of the fictional but oh so real New Burbage Theater Festival.
For me “Birdman” paled in comparison to “The Grand Budapest Hotel” when it came to creating a world of never-ending nuanced magic. In so many ways Budapest flew so much higher than the Birdman.
So we were left with the Hollywood we began with. White and wealthy and male. The white men who directed 95% of the films made last year.
Since 1928, of 328 Oscars for acting, 15 have gone to black actors. As “Selma’s” David Oyelowo put it: “We have been slaves, we have been domestic servants, we have been criminals. We’ve been all those things. But we’ve been leaders, we’ve been kings, we’ve been those who change the world. And those films, where that is the case, are so hard to get made.” Or honored.
But maybe there’s something we can learn about pain and suffering, about adversity minor and major.
Life often sucks. And so naturally the Birdman suffers. But contrast his neuroses with the denial of basic human rights.
And for me “Birdman” paled in comparison to “Selma” when it came to telling a tale of consequence. And sadly the white men won once more. Hollywood’s gain. Our loss.
________________________________________________________________________
For more information:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/21/2015-oscars-terrible-women_n_6727088.html