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 In an interview with Reuters, Lubezki said his first thought
was: "'I hope I don't get to do this' because it was such a big
challenge and I didn't want it to be gimmicky."
Known popularly as "Chivo" ('goat' in Spanish), Lubezki is a
favorite to win the Academy Award on Feb. 22 for best
cinematography, a year after the Mexican earned his first for
space thriller "Gravity."
"Birdman" is also a front-runner for best picture.
A seven-time Oscar nominee, the 50-year-old Lubezki has what
Inarritu describes as "beautiful talent and exquisite taste,"
and together they have created a "terrific process." They are
now making their second film.
When Inarritu won the Directors Guild award last weekend, he
joked with "Gravity" director and fellow Mexican Alfonso Cuaron
about their "shared secret weapon."
Still, Lubezki gives Inarritu full credit for the idea of the
long, unbroken shot: From the beginning, the director wanted to
immerse the audience in Riggan Thomson, played by Michael
Keaton, and the collapse of his life as the former superhero
actor attempting a comeback in his own Broadway play.
"He wanted this one shot not to be completely objective, so that
made it very hard," Lubezki said. "The shot is sometimes very
subjective, so you are feeling what he is feeling and you are
watching what he is watching, and then goes back to reveal the
environment."
EMOTIONAL GRIND
It was a formidable challenge for the actors to be filmed in
long takes, accustomed as they are to working in tiny bursts of
scenes. Keaton felt the full burden.
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"He realized that this was no joke, that he had to learn all the
dialogue and go through this whole emotional grind in very, very,
long takes," Lubezki said.
Only recently did Lubezki realize that "Michael Keaton is playing,
like, five characters" in Riggan's different states of mind.
"Sometimes he goes from one character to another, to another, in the
same take with no safety net, so it is really, really hard," he
said.
The whole undertaking would have been much more taxing for Lubezki
if Inarritu had gotten his wish of truly doing the movie in one
unbroken shot, in a theater that had everything they needed.
"I just got lucky that we couldn't find a theater to do all the guts
of the theater and all the hallways and dressing rooms that worked,"
he said. "And because of that, we had to chop."
When they were nearly done shooting and they started to put a lot of
the movie together, Lubezki said he suddenly felt "the pay-off was
immense."
"I have seen a lot of movies that have very long shots, but I have
never seen a movie that is partly a comedy, that uses the close-ups
these ways," he said. "There was something very special about it."
(Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Bernadette Baum)
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