As a screenwriter, it’s important to study successful scripts in order to hone your craft. With film, it’s easy to think that watching the movie is research enough, but the truth is that there are so many changes and enhancements to the story through production and editing. The script is the film's blueprint, and you cannot expect to learn how to draw a blueprint by looking at the finished product. So, I encourage writers to read scripts and learn from the writer’s technique and choices. Then, if you’d like, watch the film. Take note of the changes, and see how the blueprint gets interpreted on the screen.
This month I read Birdman. If you’d like to download and read the script as well, it’s available here.
Then watch the movie. At the time of publication, it’s available on HBOMax.
A Lasting Legacy
The film follows Riggan (Michael Keaton), an old superhero actor desperate to stay relevant and be seen as a serious performer. His hunger for a legacy has seemingly ruined his life and relationships, but he’s not the only one vying to be remembered.
Riggan
Riggan is the most direct and literal representation of that drive to leave a mark on the world. He’s consumed with his desire to be taken seriously and be remembered, so much so that he ignores his literal legacy, his daughter Sam (Emma Stone). He’s deeply insecure about his ability to perform in a serious stage play, his only experience being that of an old superhero franchise that he’s constantly surrounded by and reminded of. Literally haunted by the voice of his old character, Birdman.
Despite his success and popularity, Riggan is deeply dissatisfied with his life. He feels he never gets what he truly wants, represented through his vocal disdain for roses, which people continue to gift him. Riggan has put everything he’s got into this play. He wrote it, he’s funding it, and he’s directing it, but nothing seems to be going as planned. The story really kicks off when one of the actors gets injured on set, and they need a last-minute replacement. In comes the film’s antagonist, Mike (Edward Norton).
Mike
Mike seems to have an innate talent for acting, something Riggan feels that he himself lacks. Mike is cocky and sure of himself, even going so far as to direct Riggan’s performance in his introduction. On the surface, Mike seems like the complete opposite of Riggan, the New York to Riggan’s LA. But, as the film progresses, we see they are two sides of the same coin. Mike is also deeply insecure. He boasts about truth and giving “honest” performances but lies about his personal life in interviews. His girlfriend reveals that he’s impudent, unable to get it up for the last six months, but when they’re on stage together in a sex scene, he’s fully erect—causing quite a scene on one of the preview nights. Mike is all about making a spectacle of himself, he has multiple outbursts to draw attention to himself and steal the spotlight from Riggan. In a conversation with Sam, she admires him for not giving a fuck what other people think of him, “that’s cool.” He stammers, unsure, “is it? I don’t know.”
Sam
Riggan’s daughter is quiet and dark. At one point, Lesley (Naomi Watts) says that Sam is always lurking around, creepy. She’s a recovering addict and plays the part of the “fuck up” well, but the truth is, she’s largely this way due to Riggan. He ignored her and was never there for her as a child, but he would prop her up as something special, even though he acted as if she wasn’t important to him. Which he continues to do to this day as he pours all of his attention into this play, even going as far as to put up a home intended for Sam’s future to pay for this act of redemption. Sam clearly is not the legacy Riggan intends to leave behind. She shrinks herself, and hides in corners, even though, as Mike puts it, she is special. “Like a candle burning at both ends. It’s beautiful.”
Lesley
Lesley says she wants someone to tell her she’s finally made it. She’s a broadway actress like she’s always dreamed of. She’s dating Mike and gets him into the show, but she seems lost in his shadow. She’s grateful for this opportunity, scared and hopeful for the future, just at the start of her career. She’s longing for love and connection, unable to get it from Mike, she finds it in Laura (Andrea Riseborough).
Laura
Riggan’s girlfriend gleefully tells him she’s pregnant with his baby. But, just like he is with Sam, Riggan is less than enthused to be a father. Laura can tell, and it breaks her heart. After discovering she’s had a miscarriage, she tells Riggan, “I always wanted to be a mother, but my body seems to disagree.”
Everyone is a liar in Birdman. Either to themselves or the rest of the world. The entire industry of acting, from broadway plays to Hollywood movies, is portrayed as being “full of shit.” Everyone inside the industry fights for relevance, lasting legacy, and superiority over the everyday people who watch them. But, as Riggan’s arc would tell us, it’s all in vain. He only achieves the notoriety that he’s been longing for after attempting suicide on stage, and even then, that praise can never last. As displayed by Sam’s tallying on toilet paper, a coping mechanism she learned in rehab. Each line represents 100 years of Earth’s six billion years of existence, and only the last two squares, one hundred and fifty thousand years, represent human existence. Just two squares on an entire roll of toilet paper. “I guess they were trying to remind us that that’s what all our egos and self-obsession are worth.”