Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. One of the key reasons to come to the Santa Barbara Film Festival, both as an audience member and as a reporter, is for these in-depth career retrospectives they do every year. Because of this festival I've been able to see such legends as Clint Eastwood, George Clooney, Peter Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Heath Ledger talk about their careers past, present and future.
These things are always presented in a This Is Your Life way with film clips running and spurring on conversation between the moderator and the filmmaker.
The first Tribute I've done this year is Michael Keaton and if I'm going to be honest this was probably what pushed me over my hesitation and made me commit to driving out for this fest. I grew up with Keaton's work. There's the geek stuff like Beetlejuice and Batman, of course, but Mr. Mom was a constant in my house. My mom loooooooooved that movie.
Keaton has been and continues to be a screen personality I look forward to seeing at the movies. It's awesome that Birdman is rejuvenating his career because more than anything that guarantees we'll be seeing a lot of him in the near future.
I'll be recording my thoughts as the tribute runs its course and include anything funny or interesting in bullet point format below. Enjoy!
Leonard Maltin and Keaton's Multiplicity co-star Andie MacDowell both gave thoughtful intros to the man of the hour. Look at them!
Now it's time for the actual conversation.
-Maltin noted that in Night Shift Keaton is half naked in Times Square. His career has come full circle with Birdman. “When I was a kid I was naked a lot!” Keaton said with a shrug.
-Did he have a game plan when he started out? “Employment.” (lots of laughs from the crowd)
-Read a lot as a kid, didn't get to go to the theater as much as he wanted, but he could roam the woods and that developed his imagination quite a bit.
-Keaton said he grew up in a funny, witty family, but never was a theater kid or anything. His first play was when he was in college and he didn't rock it. “I didn't shake the pillars or anything,” but after his second play he was kind of bitten.
-Did some stand up comedy early in his career, but he didn't really go joke based... more performance and story based. Remembered one of his early gigs he and Larry David were the only two asked to return for the next night. He was so jazzed he wandered the streets of New York with all of $14 to his name.
-While he enjoyed comedy he was in love with filmmaking and wanted to be an actor in big pictures projected on giant screens.
-Michael John Daniel Douglas became Michael Keaton because he got a gig and one of his buddies said “There's a Michael Douglas and a Mike Douglas already. You have to change your name. Ironically Michael Douglas' last name isn't really Douglas. It's something Russian.” Said one of his nicknames as a kid was Jackson, so his first instinct was to call himself “Michael Jackson.” Nope. He ended up picking Keaton at random. He said he only uses Keaton professionally. Nothing in his personal life is “Michael Keaton.”
-Maltin seemed disappointed that Buster Keaton wasn't the reason for the namesake, but Michael said Alejandro brought up Buster Keaton a lot during Birdman.
-Keaton said he auditioned for Night Shift with 10th Avenue Freeze Out, the Springsteen tune, on his walkman. When he got the gig he didn't realize they were using Rolling Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash for his intro, so the first take didn't quite match up.
-Post Night Shift things accelerated rapidly within the industry. It was a modest success, but really put him on the map in the business. Mr. Mom sent him over the top because it made a ton of money. Two scenes were then shown: The Prostitution scene from Night Shift and the Chainsaw Scene from Mr. Mom. Neither was in the script, both came from riffing and improv during rehearsal.
-Keaton claims the original John Hughes script for Mr. Mom was funny, but a little timid, so he did a lot of rewriting, some of that with Hughes, but Hughes had already pretty much moved on to his next project.
-Keaton calls Tim Burton unique, original and an artist. Said his first meeting with Burton didn't go so well. He liked him, but when Burton tried to describe the character of Beetlejuice Keaton couldn't figure out what he was talking about. There were a few nuggets that stuck with him, though. He said Beetlejuice lived in all different times and even said he could live anywhere, even under a rock. When Keaton thought about those things he started building a look for the character. The living under a rock thing lead to the mold accents on his face. Keaton claims he brought the hair, the mold and the voice and Tim brought the striped suit.
-Keaton said the first time he walked onto the set in costume and makeup, without shooting a foot of film, the crew started chanting “Juice, Juice, Juice!”
-Beetlejuice was freeing “because it's not the kind of thing where you could say 'My character wouldn't do that.'”
-When Clean and Sober came to Keaton he said it spoke to him. Many people in his camp didn't think it was a good idea, but he thought it was good material. Didn't necessarily think “this is my chance to be serious.” He just liked the material.
-Showed the Pacific Heights scene with the nail gun. Keaton: “That scene with Melanie... well, she deserved it.”
-Maltin brings up the uproar surrounding Keaton being cast as Batman.“It baffled me that anyone could think about it that much.” He said that he first heard about it when he was on the Concord back to London after visiting his family for a day when he was filming. He was flipping through the Wall Street Journal and saw a cartoon of him with an article talking about the uproar. He said it put a lot of pressure on him because he read that right in the middle of shooting.
-What was the most challenging aspect of the Batman suit? “Breathing.”
-The suit triggered his claustrophobia, but he decided to withdraw into himself because of that, which fit the character. “The imagery was so strong and powerful that all I had to do was work that suit.”
-The origins of Batman's voice: Said he was doing a scene with a Gotham dignitary and it struck him that if he just spoke normally everybody would go “Oh, that's Bruce Wayne!” He had to rationalize why people wouldn't just be going “oh great, Bruce is walking down the street in his rubber suit again.”
-That story was told to Alejandro Inarritu and he loved it so much that he wanted Birdman to have a similar voice.
-Much Ado About Nothing – Branagh had a Shakespeare scholar on hand and Keaton kept calling him “that poor man,” because of how he reacted to each take Keaton gave. He impersonated the sad slump he'd do every time Keaton would film a take.
-On The Other Guy: This was his first comedy in a while and Keaton said Wahlberg and Ferrell bombarded him with fastballs and it took him a bit to catch up. He said nobody makes him laugh like Will Ferrell.
-He loved Alejandro's movies and had a great meeting with him while he was filming RoboCop. He said “the script would have had to have been terrible for me to say no.”
-Keaton said Birdman was a risky role, but why else work in this business if not to take risks?
-Danny DeVito showed up to present the Modern Master Award (now Maltin's Modern Master Award in honor of Leonard Maltin). There was a great moment where DeVito and Keaton met midstage and stared each other down and I totally flashbacked to my 11 year old self watching Batman Returns in the theater. Here are the two of them together:
Although I would have loved to hear Keaton talk a little about Jackie Brown and a bit about Batman Returns, I can't complain too much because the man's been a part of so much over the years that this tribute would have had go on for another couple of hours in order to cover everything interesting.
Keaton came across as the nice, humble, funny and sincere guy he has long been rumored to be. The worst thing you can see at an event like this is a subject who feels like he doesn't want to be there. Before he went up on stage, Keaton was seated in the audience about 4 feet from me and I can't tell you how surreal it was to hear him laugh as a clip from Beetlejuice played and BG spat into his coat and saved it for later.
The point is he was into the event and very open about talking about everything, which made for a great time for this big ol' honkin' Michael Keaton fan. Hope you guys enjoyed the highlights! Thanks once again to Kraken for snapping these pics for me.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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