If you haven’t seen Birdman, that’s cool. It’s a beautifully made film with an interesting story, and it will likely earn star Michael Keaton (AKA Batman) his first Academy Award, but it’s not for everybody. However, the movie almost featured a cameo from someone who might have garnered it more attention. According to writer Alex Dinelaris, Birdman‘s original ending featured actor Johnny Depp lampooning his Pirates of the Caribbean franchise character Captain Jack Sparrow:
“So we had one other ending that was satirical,” says Alex Dinelaris. “The other ending was that he shoots himself on the stage. The camera comes around to the audience and their standing ovation — all the way around, like Chivo [Emmanuel Lubezki] and Alejandro did the whole time — and the segue was back on to the stage and on the stage was like James Lipton or Charlie Rose and Michael [Keaton] was sitting across from him and he’s sort of reading the review. He’s saying, ‘Oh my God, you got this tremendous review’ and Michael is like, ‘Yeah.'”
Adding that they would brush past that, he goes on to say, “then the camera prowled like it did the whole film, went back stage through the halls we’ve seen the whole time and we’d get to the dressing room where literally Johnny Depp would be sitting looking in the mirror and putting on his Riggan Thomson wig and then the poster of Pirates of the Caribbean 5 would be in the back. In Jack Sparrow’s voice [it would say], ‘What the fuck are we doing here, mate?’ It was going to be the satire of the endless loop of that.” Dinelaris concludes with a laugh, “We couldn’t get Johnny Depp or even the poster.” (Via The Film Stage)
How incredibly meta would that have been? Depp donning the wig on the one hand, and flowing in and out of character as Sparrow on the other. Frankly, I don’t see what all the fuss from Depp and Disney’s reps is about. Besides, the short segment would’ve blown Mortdecai out of the water (along with everything else that surpassed it).
(Via The Film Stage)
