Winner of the Golden Globe amd Spirit Award for Birdman, Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomspn, a schizophrenic movie actor who's trying to revive his career by directing a Broadway play - a production of Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love at the St. James Theatre.
At one point backstage, Riggen tokes a joint after a tense argument with his daughter, Sam (Emma Stone, also nominated for a Golden Globe), who's just come out of rehab.
Riggan: What is that? That smell? Look at me! LOOK AT ME!
Sam: What? What?
Riggan: You've got to be shitting me. Where is it? I can't believe it.
He rifles throughout the garbage and finds a joint.
Riggan: This, this. What is that?
Sam: (pause, in a whisper) Pot. Relax.
Riggan: Relax. You can't do this to me.
Sam: To you?
Riggan: Oh shut up, you know what I'm talking about.
Sam: Oh yeah, you're talking about you. What else is new?
Riggan: Look, I'm trying to do something that's important.
Sam: This is not important!
Riggan: It's important to me, ok? Maybe not to you or your cynical friends whose only ambition is to go viral. This is, God, this is my career. I finally get to do some work that means something.
Sam: Something to who? You had a career, Dad, before the third comic book movie, before people started to forget who was inside of that bird costume…
She dresses him down and walks out. Riggen looks at the half joint on the counter. He picks it up and lights it, inhaling three times. The last time he tosses the roach on the counter and walks into a smokey hallway and back to the stage.
Keaton is the front-runner to win the Oscar. The last Best Actor to smoke a joint was Kevin Spacey in American Beauty in 1999.
