Tom DiCillo
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Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
influenced by Living in Oblivion (1995)
Themes
(There are echoes of the fraying realities of the fictional directors played by Steve Buscemi in Living in Oblivion and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New York .)
In Bruges (2008)
Directed by Martin McDonagh
influenced by Living in Oblivion (1995)
Characters Plot
Consider that old saw of a dwarf actor enlisted for a surreal dream sequence in an art film (already definitively put out to pasture by Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion ), here made "palatable" by having said little person be a bigoted prig given to hiring Dutch whores and frequenting Ray's drug-dealer love interest (Clémence Poésy).
This diminutive dyspeptic, Jimmy (Jordan Prentice, in a peculiar gloss on Peter Dinklage's role in Living in Oblivion) keeps himself entertained with hookers and drugs, the latter provided by Chloe (Poesy), who Ray comes to see as a kindred spirit.
As per the satire in Living in Oblivion, the scene being shot features a dwarf (Jordan Prentice) in a dream sequence.
But the mad, stream-of-consciousness clown has always been his particular specialty — "Box of Moon Light," "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "Seven Psychopaths."
In a comedy of errors explained (sort of) later on, a CD copy of Ozzie's autobiographical jabberwocky winds up in the possession of two dingbat employees of a gym called Hardbodies: Linda (Frances McDormand, married to Joel Coen), a Ms. Lonelyhearts frustrated in her quest for love and plastic surgery; and Chad (the previously stated Pitt), a dumb twit with vertiginous hair that's still only a third of the height of Pitt's über-pompadour in Johnny Suede .
Brad Pitt as McDormand's dense partner in extortion lets his frosted pompadour (recycled from the early '90s -- Johnny Suede to be exact) do most of the acting for him, though he's pretty funny when his character tries to suggest menace by cluelessly narrowing his eyes.
But though the narrative isn’t all that clever, it’s enough on which to hang a steady succession of amusing touches, from Malkovich’s rant on learning of his demotion through Clooney’s peculiar anniversary present for Sandy, McDormand’s conversation with an amazed cosmetics surgeon (Jeffrey DeMunn), Jenkin’s sad-eyed worship of Linda, and Pitt’s happy return to his “Johnny Suede” look and his engagingly flippant, goofily conspiratorial attitude.