Birdman: Existentialist Selfie

I like Alejandro G. Iñárritu's directorial work, and a movie starring Michael Keaton was a plus. A trusted friend had seen Birdman in Telluride and gave it high marks. Off to the movies!

Keaton's work has grown darker, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Would he be the antic Beetlejuice? Or, the square-jawed, somewhat reluctant patriarch of Batman? Y'know, the daddy who makes it clear that nobody else is capable of saving the world so he'll have to do it? The story rushed headlong into all the hard questions revolving around love, death and what gives life meaning, but they were overlain with the pop culture vagaries that make everything and everyone seem shallow these days.

The movie opens with Riggan (Michael Keaton) in his backstage dressing room floating cross-legged with his back to us. I rolled with it and marveled less at his yogic weightlessness than with the question of whether he knows one of his shoulders is higher than the other and if it's painful. The camera holds steady, tightening in, for perhaps the longest scene in the movie.

This was a relatively peaceful moment . . . except for the voice which irritatingly dominates Riggan. We've all heard that voice, the one telling us to doubt ourselves. Riggan is a loveless actor staking his life and reputation on Broadway in a production of Raymond Carver's, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The voice is telling him to abandon this theatrical exercise in "art" and return to the sure celebrity of his movie star roles.

Death is not a member of the cast, but Riggan has heard its call. He wants his life to have meaning, but he is so not living in the moment. He reminds his ex-wife that "Farrah Fawcett died on exactly the same day as Michael Jackson," but no one noticed. Riggan does not want to be a Farrah Fawcett Footnote after he's gone.

His just out of rehab daughter (Emma Stone) screams at him that he doesn't even have a Twitter account or a Facebook page, therefore his existence is nil. His love of self prevents him from giving her any credibility or feeling the love standing right in front of him. She sets up a Twitter account for him which garners over 80,000 hits. If Riggan had only listened to her, he could have self-actualized with selfies and lived online into perpetuity.

 The voice follows Riggan down narrow and twisting backstage hallways that are shadowed and not so clean. It quiets only when he is onstage. There he wrestles with dramatic egos other than his own. Lesley (Naomi Watts) is happy to finally be on Broadway and is not about to have the experience ruined by her boyfriend Mike (Edward Norton), who eerily echoes Riggan's vacuousness regarding love. His method acting means he's impotent except onstage. Riggan's lawyer and manager, Brandon Vander Hey (Zach Galifianakis) is a practical breath of fresh air in the stale oxygen residues left behind by other people. Cinematic, albeit satirical, references to superheroes and the actors who played them abound. At one point, Mike wonders if they'll replace him with Ryan Gosling. This is after he's flashed his six-pack for the viewer.

Is Riggan experiencing existential angst or is he just crazy? Sartre said that life has no meaning...that it's up to each of us to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that we assign to it. Personal love, the love between humans didn't matter to Riggan. They weren't as real to him as fame. He chose fame and went out with a blaze of glory . . . and lots of twitter hits.

Revelations

My bro and me alongside Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Posted this on Facebook in 2009:



1. I like to drive in heavy weather: heavy winds in Texas, blizzards in New Mexico, sandstorms in Arizona, tooley fogs outside Fresno.

2. Before I could drive I’d sit on our swing set during electrical storms in New Mexico daring the lightening to strike.

3. In an outdoor swimming pool I dove under the water during a storm to see raindrops hit the water. Beautiful. Muffled screams from adults and a deep angry thunder rumble added a thrill.

4. My mom let me drive by myself when I was twelve.

5. My dad bought a yellow Cadillac once. It had fins and leopard skin seat covers.

6. He taught me how to swim by tossing me off a boat into a lake. He’d been drinking. I sunk to the bottom and saw a big catfish. It had long whiskers and didn't look surprised to see me.

7. Dad wouldn’t let me have cats, so when my parents divorced Mom let me have as many as I wanted. Six was my max.

8. I’d babysit my cousins and tell such terrifying stories that I scared myself and made them sleep near the edge of the bed so the monster underneath would reach around and grab them first.

9. I initiated the game of doctor so often as a kid, I feel like I should have an M.D. after my name.

10. Felt guilty about all my lascivious thoughts so went to extra religion classes and began to bathe in Lysol.

11. Went through a stage in h.s. where I stopped wearing short skirts, and dropped the length of everything to mid-calf. Boys still liked me, but the girls bullied me.

12. Stopped going to dances and stayed home and read more.

13. Stopped going to school and stayed home and read more.

14. Got a random obscene phone call one night and stayed on the line with the guy for an hour. Very satisfying. Knew I was doomed to hell.

15. Moved out of my mother’s home 5 times between the ages of 13 to 17.

16. First time lived with my dad and stepmother. When she’d leave the house, I’d pour a shot of bourbon down my throat, strip off my clothes and run around naked. I especially loved rubbing my butt all over her velveteen couch and throw pillows, which were normally off limits to the dog and me. When I heard her Oldsmobile round the corner, I’d get dressed and set everything right, sit at my desk and do my homework.

17. Even though I rarely went to school, somehow managed to graduate and through sheer serendipity got into college where I discovered that I was smart.

18. Enjoyed being smart so much stayed in school for as long as possible.

19. Began to embrace my doom more. Invited the devil to just take me and get it over with.

20. Still had a hard time with boys my age; dated a man 14 years my senior. We’re still friends.

21. In graduate school experimented widely and wildly: physical, mental and sexual possibilities and limits.

22. Started a business.

23. Never wanted to get married or have kids.

24. Got married, had kids. Thought I could have it all.

25. Very hard to have it all. Did it until I thought I was stupid for falling for that crock. Became a writer. Happy.

Thanksgiving to My Mother-in-Law

How cooking on Thanksgiving would look without my mother-in-law's help:

I hate the whole preparation for this holiday: the sheer monotony of having “traditional” food and the resistance from those members of one’s immediate family who cannot tolerate the slightest variance from the ridges in the canned cranberry sauce, all the stores you have to go to, the slicing and dicing and making room in the fridge, all the expectations and subliminal messages.

I'm a reluctant matriarch.

Yet, it all turns out okay. My mother-in-law, that sweetheart, flies across the country to be with us. What a trooper! My husband is her oldest child. That's motivation enough, but she’s also very good about staying in touch with her grandchildren here. Her other children never left Memphis, so this west coast branch is decidedly different. My 14-year-old niece is active on Facebook.  My son refuses to have a Facebook entry, and disapproves of mine. We don’t smoke or eat a lot of junk food. We exercise and recycle. Radical.

During her annual visit, she and I go to lunch, we shop, and we have cocktails. She’s open to some new experiences. I could take her to the Olympic Spa where Asian women purify and cleanse in rocking hot water.  Then they lie naked on heated floor tiles to sooth away deep muscle aches.  We could get a side-by-side massage from Korean women clothed in black bras and panties who’d scrub us down with salt or sugar and pummel us to within an inch of any fantasy of our choosing.

I think my mother-in-law might be willing to join me because she’s the true matriarch.  I’m just her acolyte.