48 Fun Facts About Birdman Movie

Riggan Thomson is first seen in Birdman meditating in his underwear while showing which apparent superpower?

Levitation. The director said the whole film grew from that one image of a man floating cross-legged in mid-air, and it never changed between first idea and final cut.

Birdman's star was Oscar-nominated for playing Riggan Thomson, but which actor beat him to Best Actor?

Eddie Redmayne. He won for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, so Birdman took Best Picture without any of its three nominated actors winning.

What is Birdman's parenthetical subtitle?

The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance. The phrase turns up late in the film as the headline of a newspaper review, and the director said the subtitle was added to the title afterwards.

Which author's short story is Riggan adapting for Broadway in Birdman?

Raymond Carver. The director feared the author's widow, Tess Gallagher, would refuse the rights, but she loved the script and said Carver would be laughing about it.

Riggan last played Birdman in 1992, the same year Birdman's star made his second film as which superhero?

Batman. Batman Returns came out in 1992, and the director said he wanted Michael Keaton for Riggan partly because, like the character, he had worn a cape.

Who plays Mike Shiner, the volatile method actor, in Birdman?

Edward Norton. He read the script in one sitting at 3 am, laughing so hard he woke people up, and asked to meet the director the very next day.

In Birdman, what injures the actor Ralph, opening up the role that Mike takes?

A falling stage light. It knocks Ralph cold in mid-rehearsal, and Riggan, who thought him a terrible actor, tells his producer it was no accident: he made it happen.

Who plays Sam, Riggan's daughter and assistant, in Birdman?

Emma Stone. As the recovering addict she flattens her father in one furious speech, telling him he doesn't matter, and the performance earned her an Oscar nomination.

Who plays Jake, Riggan's lawyer and producer, in Birdman?

Zach Galifianakis. The director called casting the comedian as the play's anxious straight man 'a bet', made on instinct because he found him so sensitive.

Why does Mike break character during the first preview in Birdman?

His gin has been replaced with water. He hurls the glass at the wall and rants that he is supposed to be drunk, while a delighted audience films him on their phones.

In Birdman, what does Mike steal from Riggan in a newspaper interview, starting their backstage brawl?

His reason for doing the play. Riggan had shown him the note that made him an actor, scribbled by the author on a cocktail napkin, and Mike tells the paper the story as his own.

In Birdman, how does Riggan end up crossing Times Square in his underwear?

A door locks shut on his robe. He has slipped out for a cigarette during the final preview, so he abandons the robe, pushes through the crowds and re-enters through the audience.

Which British stage veteran plays the critic Tabitha Dickinson in Birdman?

Lindsay Duncan. She took the part for the writing, which she called 'delicious', and admitted some sympathy for a critic who despises modern film culture.

In Birdman, what does Riggan confess to his ex-wife Sylvia on opening night?

He once tried to drown himself. He walked into the ocean the night she caught him cheating, and he tells her so with a strange calm, minutes before picking up a real gun.

In Birdman, what injury does Riggan suffer when he fires a real gun on stage?

He blows off his nose. The audience takes the shot for the play's climax and rises in a standing ovation, and he wakes in hospital with a surgically rebuilt nose.

In Birdman, how does the critic Tabitha respond to Riggan's play after he shoots himself on stage?

A glowing rave. She takes his suicide attempt for technique and credits him with unwittingly inventing a new form of theatre, one in which real blood is spilled.

What does Sam do in Birdman's last shot, finding Riggan's hospital room empty?

Looks up at the sky and smiles. She first scans the ground below the open window and finds nothing, and the film cuts to black on her smile without showing what she sees.

Why did Birdman's director want the film to look like one unbroken shot?

Life has no editing. 'We live our lives with no editing,' he said, so he wanted the audience shut inside Riggan's desperate days with no cut to let them out.

What was cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's first reaction to reading Birdman's script?

He did not want the job. It was a studio-bound comedy in very long takes, three things he had hoped to avoid, and only more talks with the director changed his mind.

How did Birdman's four screenwriters mostly collaborate?

Over Skype calls and emails from three cities. One of the four said the film's best moments came from 2 am Skype sessions in which two of them cracked each other up.

Which star, then four films into his own blockbuster series, was to appear in Birdman's abandoned original ending?

Johnny Depp. He was to sit in Riggan's dressing room pulling on the same wig while a Pirates of the Caribbean poster spoke to him, a joke about endless sequels the director came to find embarrassing.

What did Michael Keaton first ask Iñárritu about the lead role in Birdman?

Whether he was making fun of him. 'Not at all,' the director said over dinner, warning that the part would leave him naked in every sense, and Keaton signed on as they walked to their cars.

The director gave each Birdman actor a photo of which high-wire walker, telling them 'We are doing that'?

Philippe Petit. The photo showed him on the wire between the Twin Towers: with no cuts, the director warned, he could hide neither a weak performance nor his own mistakes.

Why did Josh Brolin lose his part in Birdman?

Scheduling conflicts. One of the film's financiers said that when they came aboard they switched out a couple of actors, and Brolin's Mike Shiner was one of them.

Which Broadway house plays itself in Birdman's stage scenes?

St. James Theatre. Its stage, lobby and exterior are the real thing, but the cramped backstage corridors and dressing rooms were a set built at a film studio in Queens.

Which Birdman plot point did several real reviewers call unbelievable?

A critic vowing to pan a play unseen. The New Yorker's Anthony Lane wrote that critics, though often mean, are not mean in advance, and anyone who behaved like Tabitha would not last long in the job.

What lights most of Birdman's backstage scenes?

Lamps visible on set. Low ceilings and tight walls left nowhere to hide film equipment, and the cinematographer found lighting the film harder than moving the camera through it.

How did Birdman's crew stop Times Square tourists staring at its star?

A band. It struck up on cue on a busy Friday night, the tourists turned to watch, and the actor crossed among the film's own extras in just two takes.

Which mishap by the actress playing Sam ruined a six-minute take of Birdman?

Walking around a corner too quickly. Every move was timed to the camera, so the smallest slip scrapped a whole take, and some scenes needed about twenty of them.

Birdman was a first for director Alejandro González Iñárritu in which way?

His first comedy. After a run of bleak dramas, he said that turning 50 made him want to face his own troubles in another way than tragically.

Why was Birdman's drum score ruled ineligible for the Best Original Score Oscar?

Too much classical music alongside it. The Academy counted over half an hour of it in pivotal scenes, and though the director disputed the sum in a formal appeal, the ruling stood.

Which festival did Birdman open in late August 2014?

Venice. Birdman opened the festival but left without a single prize from its main jury, then won the Oscar for Best Picture the following February.

Birdman won which of these Oscars?

Original Screenplay. It went to all four writers, who had to do the film's editing on the page: with no cuts to come, no scene could be moved or dropped afterwards.

Which film tied Birdman for the most nominations and the most wins at the 2015 Oscars?

The Grand Budapest Hotel. Wes Anderson's comedy matched Birdman's nine nominations and four wins, yet won only for its score, costumes, make-up and sets while Birdman took the top prizes.

Riggan's mirror card in Birdman reads 'A thing is a thing, not...' what?

'A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.' The line, attributed to Susan Sontag, is a quiet rebuke to criticism in a film that pits an actor against a theatre critic.

Birdman was the first Best Picture winner since 1980's Ordinary People with no nomination in which category?

Best Film Editing. A film disguised as one unbroken shot went unrecognised for the cutting its editors had hidden inside pans across walls and actors' bodies.

Iñárritu's Best Director Oscar for Birdman made him the second Mexican winner in a row, after whom?

Alfonso Cuarón. He had been the first Mexican ever to win the award, and when Iñárritu won again a year later it had stayed in Mexican hands for three ceremonies running.

Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography Oscar for Birdman was his second in a row, after his win for which film?

Gravity. It ended a run of five nominations without a win and began one of three straight Oscars, completed a year after Birdman by The Revenant.

Why was a film editor on Birdman's set every day of the shoot?

Takes could not be recut later. With no cuts to fall back on, the editors began work on the table reads and rehearsals, and one showed the director results daily so problems were fixed on the spot.

Birdman won two Golden Globes; which of these was one of them?

Best Actor – Musical or Comedy. It was the first Golden Globe of Michael Keaton's career, but six weeks later the Oscar for the same performance went to another actor.

Which Greek mythological figure did the New York Times review of Birdman compare Riggan to?

Icarus. The critic wrote that the name doesn't come up in the film, 'at least not that I remember', but it does: Riggan tells reporters 'Birdman, like Icarus...' before one cuts him off.

How did Antonio Sánchez create most of Birdman's drum score?

Improvising to cues. His first, carefully written themes were rejected as the opposite of what was wanted, so he played on the spot while the director talked him through each scene.

Who plays Laura, Riggan's girlfriend and co-star in the play, in Birdman?

Andrea Riseborough. The role took the director a long time to cast, and she won it after telling him over tea on a street corner that she would crawl across hot coals to work with him.

Birdman cost under $20 million; roughly what did it gross worldwide?

$103 million. About three-fifths of it came from outside North America, a long reach for a backstage comedy that had opened in only a handful of American cinemas.

Birdman opened in just four cinemas, in New York and which other city?

Los Angeles. The four cinemas averaged over $100,000 each that weekend, at the time one of the best figures for a live-action film, and within a month it was playing in 857.

How were the crew kept out of Birdman's many mirror shots?

Erased digitally. With the camera circling actors at their dressing-room mirrors, the effects team replaced what each mirror showed with a digital painting, keeping only the actors.

Who plays Lesley, the actress making her long-awaited Broadway debut in Riggan's play in Birdman?

Naomi Watts. Lesley begs her boyfriend Mike not to ruin her first night on Broadway, having put him forward for the part herself when the play lost an actor.

Birdman only looks like one shot, but which earlier film really was made in a single unbroken take?

Russian Ark. With only about four hours of winter daylight in the Hermitage, its first attempts broke down within minutes, and the take that became the film was shot as the light ran out.