Birdman’s opening shot has a meteor flaring across a twilit sky — a dying star falling to earth being an apt first image for a movie about a film superhero who has flamed out.
The next shot shows what’s happened to him: ex-Birdman Riggan Thomson (played by ex-Batman Michael Keaton) facing away from the camera in yoga position in his dressing room at Broadway’s St. James Theater. As Riggan attempts a comeback on stage, director Alejandro Iñárritu’s camera will follow him, seemingly without a single edit for almost two hours, a stunt we’ll come back to. But first, let’s note one odd thing about the way Riggan is sitting. He is floating in lotus position, about 3 feet off the ground. One other oddity: In his head he hears his own accusing voice, amplified the way it was decades earlier when he was Birdman.
“How did we end up here?” the voice growls. “This place is horrible. Smells like balls. You were a movie star, remember?”
Now, with the last bit of cash from that stardom, Riggan is producing his own Broadway adaptation of the Raymond Carver short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” directed by and starring himself. It’s what’s known in the trade as a vanity production — his possibly pregnant girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) is in it, his stoner daughter (Emma Stone) is his personal assistant, his very nervous best friend (Zack Galifianakis) is stage manager. And after a — um, let’s go with “lucky” backstage accident, it’s a vanity production minus one co-star.