Script To Screen: “Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)”

So many great monologues in the 2014 movie Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), but this one may be the best.

Setup: Under enormous personal pressure and his Broadway play on the verge of imploding, Riggan (Michael Keaton) busts his daughter Sam (Emma Stone), who has been in rehab, for smoking pot.

20 INT. GREEN ROOM - THEATER - CONTINUOUS 20
...the Green Room. Sam sits listlessly, drawing some lines
across a roll of toilet paper. RIGGAN
What're you still doing here? SAM
(Continues scribbling.)
Nothing. I'm-- Nothing. Your costumes are
hanging in your room. RIGGAN
Great... SAM
I got the coconut water you wanted. If you
want me to get-- RIGGAN
Hey. SAM
What? RIGGAN
I'm not sure if I said thank you. SAM
For what? RIGGAN
All of it. You've been doing a good job.
And I've been... SAM
Yeah. RIGGAN
So, I just wanted to say that--
(He stops abruptly.)
What is that? SAM
What...? RIGGAN
That smell.SAM
I don't-- RIGGAN
Look at me. SAM
What are you-- RIGGAN
Look at me.She does. He examines her eyes, then immediately rises, scouring
the room. SAM
Dad... RIGGAN
(Continuing to search.)
You have to be shitting me... Where is it? SAM
Could we not do this?Riggan pulls a jar of peanut butter from the trash. RIGGAN
What is this? SAM
That is chunky peanut butter that happens,
by the way, to have Omega--Riggan pulls a stubbed joint out of the jar. RIGGAN
This. SAM
Oh. That's pot. RIGGAN
Sam.SAM
Alright, just relax. RIGGAN
Relax? What the hell are you doing? SAM
Protecting myself from cataracts? RIGGAN
You can't do this to me! SAM
To you? RIGGAN
SHUT UP! You know what I'm talking about. SAM
Yeah. You're talking about you. What else
is new? RIGGAN
Don't try to-- SAM
What? Make it about me? I wouldn't dream of
it. RIGGAN
Listen to me. I'm trying to do something
that's important... SAM
This is not important. RIGGAN
It's important to me! Alright? Maybe not to
you, or your cynical playmates whose sole
ambition is to end up going viral and who,
by the way, will only be remembered as the
generation that finally stopped talking to
one another. But to me... To me... This is--
God. This is my career, this is my chance
to do some work that actually means
something. SAM
Means something to who? You had a career
before the third comic book movie, before
people began to forget who was inside the
bird costume. You're doing a play based on
a book that was written 60 years ago, for
a thousand rich, old white people whose
only real concern is gonna be where they
go to have their cake and coffee when it's
over. Nobody gives a shit but you. And
let's face it, Dad, it's not for the sake
of art. It's because you just want to feel
relevant again. Well, there's a whole
world out there where people fight to be
relevant every day. And you act like it
doesn't even exist! Things are happening
in a place that you willfully ignore, a
place that has already forgotten you. I
mean who are you? You hate bloggers. You
make fun of twitter. You don't even have a
Facebook page. You're the one who doesn't
exist. You're doing this because you're
scared to death, like the rest of us, that
you don't matter. And you know what?
You're right. You don't. It's not
important. You're not important. Get used
to it. Silence. Riggan seems devastated, and Sam can see that. SAM
Dad... She looks at him sympathetically, but not knowing what to
say... exits.

Here is the scene from the movie:

Sam’s monologue in the movie is almost verbatim per the script with a few tiny variations here and there. One notable addition? Instead of “I mean who are you,” in the movie the line is, “I mean who the fuck are you?” Yes, sometimes the F-word packs a punch and as the only F-bomb in this side, it does precisely that.

What I really want to zero in on is the transition in the scene from Sam’s hot anger through all the range of emotions expressed in Emma Stone’s face as she realizes that what she has said, while true in many respects, is incredibly hurtful. Watch that part of the scene starting here until its conclusion. That is what an actor can do with this scene description:

Silence. Riggan seems devastated, and Sam can see that. She looks at him sympathetically, but not knowing what to say… exits.

What if you were writing this on spec? No actors attached. You weren’t set up to direct. And you wanted to convey more specifically what Sam’s character was experiencing in this moment…

How would you write that scene description?

You may read the analysis we did on the Birdman script here.

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

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