Broadway-Centered Birdman & Stage Alum Eddie Redmayne Among Big Winners at 2015 Oscars
Want an Oscar? Make a film about Broadway (preferably shot to look like one take). Birdman, starring Michael Keaton and practically Broadway itself, took home the Academy Award for Best Picture on February 22. The film received three additional trophies for director Alejandro González Iñárritu, Original Screenplay and Cinematography. Previous films with theater ties to take home the top honors include All About Eve (1950) and Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Set largely in Broadway’s St. James Theatre and featuring several of our favorite Great White Way landmarks (including The Rum House, which magically changed streets for the film), Birdman follows Riggan Thomson (Keaton), a past-his-prime actor who sets out to make his big comeback in a self-penned play.
The Oscar-winning screenwriting team consists of Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Armando Bo and Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. Dinelaris is the bookwriter of the off-Broadway cult musical Zanna, Don’t! and has penned the book for the upcoming Broadway Gloria and Emilio Estefan bio-musical On Your Feet!. The film was nominated for nine Oscars total, including nods for recent Cabaret star Emma Stone, who played Sam, Riggan’s recently out-of-rehab daughter.
Eddie Redmayne, who won Tony and Olivier Awards in 2010 for Red and played Marius in the film adaptation of Les Miserables, took home the Oscar for Actor in a Leading Role for his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Among the additional nominees were Birdman’s Michael Keaton, recent The Elephant Man star Bradley Cooper for American Sniper and Olivier winner Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game. The trophy for Actress in a Leading Role went to Broadway alum Julianne Moore for her performance in Still Alice. Broadway vet J.K. Simmons won for Actor in a Supporting Role for Whiplash.
Rob Marshall’s take on Into the Woods failed to take home trophies in the three categories for which it was nominated: Actress in a Supporting Role for Meryl Streep, Costume Design and Production Design; the awards went to Patricia Arquette for Boyhood and to The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Despite the musical’s losses, the ceremony was full of moments for Broadway aficionados to obsess over, including Neil Patrick Harris’ opening song-and-dance number (because of course) penned by Frozen composing duo Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez and featuring Into the Woods and The Last Five Years star Anna Kendrick, the brilliant 50th Anniversary tribute to The Sound of Music from Lady Gaga and a Smash-inspired in memoriam segment led by Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson, who is slated to appear on Broadway this fall in The Color Purple.