In Alejandro G. Iñárritu's 2014 feature film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), the protagonist, a once successful Hollywood actor called Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), explains to his co-actor in the film, Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) why he has chosen to adapt Raymond Carver's story ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ into a Broadway play. Handing him a crumpled napkin, Riggan says, ‘When I was in high school, I was in a play up in Syracuse and Carver was in the audience. He sent that back to me afterwards.’ Written in an almost indecipherable scrawl, the napkin reads, ‘Thanks for an honest performance. Ray Carver.’ After reading the message aloud, Mike begins to laugh. When Riggan asks him why, Mike says, ‘It's written on a cocktail napkin. He was fucking drunk, man.’

Mike's question – ‘Why Raymond Carver?’ – exposes a pointed critical angle towards Carver's work in Iñárritu's film. Carver, it seems, has influenced both actors in very different ways and both, therefore, have divergent impressions of Carver's work and persona. Riggan holds Carver as a paragon of authenticity – an idea that is linked in his mind to ‘honesty’. He views Carver as a writer of enduring artistic integrity, whose work transcends all social, political and historical concerns – namely, his own past commercially orientated Hollywood career – and holds deeper, universal truths and meanings imperative for human connection and love. Mike, on the other hand, holds a more radical position towards Carver's work. He views him as a working-class alcoholic who suffered in much the same way as his characters. In this sense, Mike's opinion presents a deliberate challenge to Riggan's ideals. It denotes admiration for Carver's artistic sacrifice, in which the reality of his historical experience produced an authentic form of literature. This chapter argues that this dialectic forms the basis for a critical discussion about Carver's work and persona in Birdman that has deeper implications for artwork in the neoliberal era. While Iñárritu's early multi-protagonist trilogy – Amores Perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006) – depict the alienation and dislocation prominent in neoliberal societies, by casting Carver as the axis for a discussion around authenticity and artistic legacy in Birdman, Iñárritu begins to explore the impact of recent neoliberal cultural developments and questions whether it is possible to create authentic artwork in a contemporary neoliberal society.