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Lynbrook, RVC native takes flight with ‘Birdman’

Critically acclaimed film took home Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture, Best Director

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“Birdman” flapped its way to more glory on Sunday, Feb. 22, securing four Academy Awards and even more prestige for itself and co-writer Alexander Dinelaris, a Rockville Centre native.

The critically acclaimed film took home the Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture. Additionally, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who wrote the script with Dinelaris and co-writers Nicolas Giacobone and Armando Bo, won for Best Director. “Birdman” was Dinelaris’s first credited screenplay.

“Birdman” has taken off. In addition to its Oscar wins, the film took home the Golden Globe Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actor for star Michael Keaton, and the British Academy of Film and Television Awards awarded it Best Cinematography, and it was also nominated for Beast Leading Actor, Best Director, Best Film, Best Original Screenplay and more.

The film is the story of actor Riggan Thomas (played by Michael Keaton), who achieved his fame on the movie screen by playing the super hero Birdman. Now he’s trying to reinvent himself as a serious actor by staging an adaptation of the Raymond Carver short story “What We Talk about When We Talk About Love.” The movie is filmed as one long shot with no visible cut-aways, something that Dinelaris said that director Alejandro Inarritu was planning since the beginning.

Dinelaris first met Inarritu after the director read one of Dinelaris’s plays, “Still Life.” He liked it so much that he asked Dinelaris to help him with an early draft of the screenplay for the 2010 film “Biutiful.” The “Birdman” co-writers Nico Giacobone and Armando Bo also worked on “Biutiful,” and Inarritu brought them all together to work on “Birdman.”

Growing up in Rockville Centre, Dinelaris would spend most of his time in his father’s apartment. He would also split his time with his mother’s home in Lynbrook, where he would sneak into the local movie theater to watch films all day.

When Dinelaris went to college, he said he intended to be a director. After college, he spent 24 years in the restaurant business before he moved to New York City in 1999 and began writing.

Dinelaris and the rest of the writing crew from “Birdman” are already hard at work again. They’re working on a television series for Starz called “The One Percent,” starring Ed Helms, Hillary Swank and Ed Harris. Dinelaris wrote a musical called “On Your Feet,” which will be premiering in October on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre. And he has also been talking with director Guillermo del Toro to work on his next screenplay.