“’I used to say no to almost everything, because I thought, I’ve got enough dough, I know what I want to do, and I know what I’m capable of,’ Michael Keaton says before switching to a baseball metaphor, something the Pennsylvania native and lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates fan has a habit of doing. “It’s really like saying, ‘I’m going to make you throw me my pitch. I’ll foul a bunch off, but ultimately I have faith that somebody’s going to throw me my pitch.’ By those terms — the Keaton version of ‘I am big, it’s the pictures that got small’ — Birdman may best be described as a fast-breaking curveball the actor manages to hit out of the park.” — from Scott Foundas‘s Variety interview with the Birdman star.

The long-predicted Birdman Wars have begun, of course, and there’s been a little pushback here and there. Not much but enough for the Friends of Birdman to say “okay, it may not win the Best Picture Oscar…it ought to but it may not, even though it’s still looking like the most exciting and creative film of the year…it’s a 21st Century 8 1/2…but people have to give the Best Actor Oscar to Keaton…a great performance plus a career-comeback tale…they can’t slink out of this one.”