The words alight onto the ink-black screen.
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
This is Raymond Carver’s verse, forming the start of “Birdman,” a darkly comic movie about love, art and success.
Carver, the celebrated writer who lived the final 10 years of his life in Port Angeles, reappears ghostlike through the picture.
The “beloved on the earth” poem is “Late Fragment,” written shortly before his death in 1988 and engraved on Carver’s gravestone at Port Angeles’ Ocean View Cemetery.
“Birdman” turns next to Carver’s famed short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.”
The movie’s tortured hero, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), is staging an adaptation on Broadway in hopes of reinventing himself as an actor.
Riggan played Birdman, a superhero who’d fly around New York City. But that era of his life is long over.
Now, he’s struggling to create serious art; reconnect with his daughter Sam (Emma Stone), who’s just out of rehab; and cope with the weird voice in his head.
Before shooting began on “Birdman,” director Alejandro Inarritu’s agent had to contact poet Tess Gallagher’s agent.
Gallagher, who lives in Port Angeles, is Carver’s widow and executor of his literary estate — and as it turns out, she also is Inarritu’s ardent admirer.
When asked if she might be interested in having Carver’s story in “Birdman,” Gallagher’s response was: “Are you kidding?
“I absolutely love his films; they are tough. They are full of emotion,” she said in an interview over the weekend.
Gallagher even had her own Inarritu festival a few years ago: a home binge on a filmography that includes “Amores Perros,” “Babel,” “21 Grams” and “Biutiful.”
Gallagher read the “Birdman” script. She was not disappointed. In it, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is revised a bit, but Carver’s voice is still heard.
“Some of the best lines are those of Ray, but I’m very prejudiced,” she said, laughing.
Inarritu and his team integrated two versions of Carver’s work: the one cut deeply by editor Gordon Lish and the original story, which Gallagher had published in the 2009 collection Beginners.
There’s another moment in the movie when Carver steps forward.
Riggan pulls a memento from his wallet: a cocktail napkin he’s kept since he was a young man.
He’d been in a play after which the napkin was passed to him.
“Thanks for an honest performance — Ray Carver,” it said, and those words led to Riggan’s decision to be an actor.
When Gallagher first met Inarritu — on the “Birdman” set — she felt an immediate connection.
Both are not only fans of Carver, but also lovers of poetry. The director and screenwriter shocked Gallagher by telling her he’d read her work — then grabbed her arm and said, “You are a great poet.”
Inarritu’s movies, she added, have a searching quality.
“He’s open to mystery and to unknowns . . . You can’t explicate everything” in an Inarritu film.
“Birdman” is a layer cake, Gallagher said, a layer cake sitting on a raft rushing down a river.
Inarritu’s style reminded her of writing a poem: “I don’t know where I’m going. I’m on a hayride,” she added.
As she talked with Inarritu, Gallagher was reminded of Carver: Laughter, the contagious kind, that burst out of both men.
“They would have been locked in conversation,” she said.
When Fox Searchlight Pictures made an offer for the rights to Carver’s story, Gallagher wasn’t inclined to seek more money.
“I was so eager to have [Inarritu] use it,” she said.
And Gallagher is thrilled with “Birdman.” Fox flew her to a private screening in Los Angeles last March and then to the New York Film Festival in October, where Inarritu’s feature closed the festival.
Now she’s watching it rack up award nominations: seven Golden Globes, five from the Screen Actors Guild and six Independent Spirit Award nods.
“It’s one of the most creative things I’ve seen in a long time,” said Rose Theatre owner Rocky Friedman.
“I love the way it’s shot,” with long takes following Riggan as he imagines himself doing all manner of strange things.
For Gallagher, there’s a pairing between Carver’s story and the tale of “Birdman.”
Both are about authenticity — in love and art.
________
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
