title: Birdman (film)

text: During the final preview, after seeing Mike and Sam kissing backstage, Riggan accidentally locks himself outside with his robe stuck in the fire escape door. He is forced to walk through Times Square in his briefs and enter through the audience to do the final scene. A concerned Sam is waiting in his dressing room after the show, and she thinks the performance was very unusual but interesting. She shows him that the Times Square footage is going viral and explains how this actually helps him.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Riggan goes to a bar for a drink and approaches Tabitha Dickinson, a cynical and highly influential theater critic. She promises to "kill" his play with a deprecating review without seeing it. On the way back, Riggan buys a pint of whiskey, drinks it, and passes out on a stoop. The next day, walking to the theater with a severe hangover, he visualizes Birdman trying to convince him to abandon the play and make a fourth Birdman film. Riggan then imagines himself flying through the streets of Manhattan before arriving at the theater.


title: Birdman (film)

text: On opening night, the play is going very well. In his dressing room, a strangely calm Riggan confesses to his ex-wife, Sylvia, that several years ago, he attempted to drown himself in the ocean after she caught him having an affair. He also tells her about the Birdman voice, which she ignores. After Sylvia leaves, Riggan picks up a real gun for the final scene in which his character commits suicide. At the climax, Riggan shoots himself in the head on stage. The play receives a standing ovation.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Riggan wakes up in a hospital—the suicide attempt merely blew off his nose, which has been surgically reconstructed. Tabitha has published a glowing review of the play, calling the suicide attempt just what American theater needed. Sam visits with flowers and takes a picture of him to share with the skyrocketing number of followers on the Twitter account she has created for him. While she steps outside to find a vase, Riggan goes into the bathroom, removes the bandages revealing his swollen new nose, and says goodbye to Birdman, seen seated on the toilet. Fascinated by the birds flying outside his room, he opens the window, peers up at them, and then climbs out onto the ledge. Sam returns to an empty room and frantically runs to the open window, scanning the ground before slowly looking up into the sky and smiling at what she sees.


title: Birdman (film)

text: "Birdman" director Alejandro G. Iñárritu originally conceived the film as a comedy filmed in a single shot set in a theatre. The original choice behind the film's genre, which was subsequently re-adapted to concentrate on Riggan's final emotional tailspin, came from the director wanting to see a change in his approach. All his previous films were dramas, and after directing "Biutiful", he did not want to approach his new film in the same tragic manner again. The decision to make the film appear as a single shot came from his realization that "we live our lives with no editing". By presenting the film as a continuous shot, he could "submerge the protagonist in an 'inescapable reality' and take the audience with him". Iñárritu shared his idea with the Argentine screenwriters/cousins Nicolás Giacobone and Armando Bo, as well as playwright Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., who had all worked with him on his previous film. Their first reaction was to tell him the continuous-shot idea could not work. According to Dinelaris and Giacobone, "huge" and "important" people told him to not even try the project for the same reason. Iñárritu himself described the technique as "almost suicidal", worrying that it would be distracting, instead of immersive. Dinelaris later said that had they truly paused and considered the idea, they might have talked Iñárritu out of it.


title: Birdman (film)

text: The personal and vocational experiences of the four co-writers were central to writing the script. Dinelaris' exposure to Broadway shaped the depictions of rehearsals and events backstage, though he admitted exaggerating these. He also felt his background writing long scenes of dialogue helped since scenes in the film "were really more like play scenes". Iñárritu's own experiences influenced many of "Birdman"s themes. "What this film talks about, I have been through", Iñárritu recalled. "I have seen and experienced all of it; it's what I have been living through the last years of my life." Dinelaris described this aspect as "a laughing look at oneself", but said it had to be done in a comedic way; otherwise, "it would have been the most unbelievably self-absorbed look at the subject". Themes from Raymond Carver's short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", which Riggan adapts for stage in the story, also influenced the script. Iñárritu wanted to find the connection between the themes in Riggan's story and those of Carver's. Because of this, it was important to the director that Carver's story be the subject of the play depicted within the film. Therefore, Iñárritu stated that his desire to use Carver's work was "terrifying" because the rights to using the Carver material were still subject to the possibility of being rejected during development of the film, but no issues arose. Carver's widow, writer Tess Gallagher, loved the script and permitted the adaptation, saying that Carver would be laughing about the film.


title: Birdman (film)

text: While some aspects of the film the first frame with Riggan, for instance went unchanged from "Birdman's" conception to release, others went through several iterations. One of these was the sequence in which alter ego Birdman takes complete control over Riggan's thoughts. The writers knew it would occur at Riggan's lowest point, so at one stage planned for it to happen after Riggan hears the initial negative press coverage and destroys his dressing room. In another discarded version, Riggan tries to drown himself in Central Park and flies out to save himself.


title: Birdman (film)

text: The film's ending also changed, the final version being written halfway through filming. The original intended to depict Johnny Depp in Riggan's dressing room with a "Pirates of the Caribbean" poster in the back. Iñárritu grew to strongly dislike this ending, calling it "so embarrassing", and rewrote it with Dinelaris and Giacobone after a new ending came to him in a dream. Iñárritu was reluctant to describe the original ending, but it was leaked by Dinelaris. He said the original ending was set in the theatre, instead of the hospital, and involved Depp putting on Riggan Thomson's wig, and in Jack Sparrow's voice, "... the poster asks Depp, 'What the fuck are we doing here, mate?', and it was going to be the satire of the endless loop of that." The director and co-authors ruled out the satirical ending, and favored the new, more ambiguous, ending.


title: Birdman (film)

text: The project of co-writing was expedited by the collaboration between the four co-writers on the internet working from different geographical locations. With Iñárritu in Los Angeles, Giacobone and Bo in Buenos Aires, and Dinelaris in New York, the script was mainly written through Skype calls and emails. Although this complicated the writing process, Dinelaris said he believed the best ideas in "Birdman" came from Skype sessions at two in the morning where he and Giacobone were "cracking each other up". Incorporating the one-shot feature also affected the writing. Bo said: "We wrote everything thinking of this one shot, and a lot of decisions that would mostly be taken in the editing room were taken before shooting". The one-shot approach meant the scenes could not be removed or re-ordered in post-production, so the writers needed to be "very, very sure about what was on the page". As a result, it took about a year and a half to complete the final draft. As Dinelaris summarized: "You have to be an idiot to do it all in one shot. You have to be an idiot to attempt it. It takes a great, great deal of ignorance to not pay attention to the difficulties and to think you're going to do this. "Birdman" looks like a good idea now, but [at the time of production] we did not know how we would land."


title: Birdman (film)

text: Iñárritu cast several of the leading roles before the film was financed. Among these was the lead role. Early in script development, Iñárritu did not have Keaton in mind, but he had changed his mind by the end: "When I finished the script, I knew that Michael was not the choice or option, he was the guy". Iñárritu cast Keaton for his depth in a variety of acting styles: He could handle the demands of the stage, up-close work, and comedy and empathy "with a profound depth to both".


title: Birdman (film)

text: Keaton knew about "Birdman" before Iñárritu contacted him. He was in the middle of production of another project when he learned that Iñárritu was making another film. Keaton, a fan of his work, flew home to find out more. Iñárritu sent him the script and they discussed it over dinner. The first thing Keaton asked the director was whether he was making fun of him (regarding his role in Tim Burton's "Batman" films), but after Iñárritu explained the role, its technicalities, and the film's production, Keaton agreed to play Riggan; despite this, the final film contains numerous references to Burton's "Batman" films, including the year Riggan is mentioned to have last played Birdman being 1992.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Iñárritu called his decision behind casting Galifianakis as Jake "a bet". Galifianakis met the director's criteria of being lovable and funny, but Iñárritu also considered him sensitive, which scored him the role. Emma Stone already knew she wanted to work with Iñárritu before she was offered the role of Sam. The script that Iñárritu gave her and the rest of the cast came with the photo "Man on Wire", which featured Philippe Petit crossing the Twin Towers on a tightrope. Iñárritu told the cast, "We are doing that".


title: Birdman (film)

text: Once these actors were committed, Iñárritu sought funding. He first invited Fox Searchlight Pictures to finance the project, but they turned his offer down because they felt his asking budget was too high. At one stage Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures wanted to be involved in the project, but decided against it because, unlike her other films, she had not been involved since the beginning. Iñárritu approached Brad Weston, president of New Regency, who accepted the offer. When executive Claudia Lewis of Searchlight heard about the deal, she reconsidered and asked to be included in the deal. Searchlight and New Regency had previously worked together to finance "12 Years a Slave", and they decided to join together for "Birdman", financing a budget of $16.5 million.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Weston and Lewis developed a close relationship with Iñárritu, editing the script with him and switching some of the actors. When they joined production, Josh Brolin was set to play the role of Mike Shiner, but the financiers decided to switch him for Norton because of scheduling conflicts.


title: Birdman (film)

text: He said Norton's experience as a theatre actor, combined with his self-confidence, meant that "in a way, there was some kind of mental reality to Edward", but Norton believes he was the one who convinced Iñárritu to take him on. Norton was a fan of the director's work and impressed with his ability to push outside film-making boundaries. Norton heard about Iñárritu's project from a friend. Once he got the script, he read it straight through until 3:00 am. Norton said, "I laughed so hard I woke people up." Norton wanted to meet Iñárritu the next day, and once they met, Norton told him he could not cast someone who was the "embodiment" of what the script was taking aim at. Instead, the director needed to cast someone "who has at least a little bit of authentic depth of experience, in this world". Iñárritu agreed.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Amy Ryan, one of the last actors to be cast, was invited because Iñárritu had seen her in the play "Detroit". Lindsay Duncan had vast experience in the theatre world too, and decided to accept the offer to play the critic because of the quality of the script. "It's delicious because of the writing." But like Shiner's character, Iñárritu found casting Laura difficult. Riseborough met him on a street corner for a cup of tea, and recalling the event, said, "I told him that I would crawl across hot coals to work with him". Iñárritu described Laura as "a very wacky, quirky role", but said, "when [Andrea Riseborough] did it, I knew that it was her, because she did it right in the tone, and she understood who she was – she was not judging".


title: Birdman (film)

text: Once the writing was finished, Iñárritu contacted friend and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to discuss his idea for the film. After reading the script, Lubezki was worried that Iñárritu would offer him the job since "Birdman" "had all of the elements of a movie that I did not want to do at all" comedy, studio work and long takes but changed his mind after further discussion with the director. The pair had worked together on commercials and a short film in the anthology "To Each His Own Cinema", but not on any feature films. Lubezki wanted to be sure that this was a decision Rodrigo Prieto, cinematographer of all four of Iñárritu's feature films, was comfortable with, but after receiving his blessing, the two headed into pre-production.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Lubezki was concerned that no film had been shot in the way Iñárritu envisioned, meaning there would be no reference material to look up. The two decided the only way to learn how to shoot it would be to shoot it themselves, so they built a proxy stage at Sony Studios in Los Angeles. The setup was minimal. Canvas and C-stands were used for walls, while tape and a few pieces of furniture marked out areas. Using a camera and some stand-ins, the duo worked through the movie to see if it was possible. Realizing no theatre could accommodate the intricate camerawork they needed, they hired Kaufman Astoria Studios in New York. Still, Iñárritu wanted to shoot at a Broadway theater, but would have to wait until several weeks into rehearsals before securing St. James Theatre. They then spent a few months designing and making "blueprints" of the shots and blocking the scenes, using the stand-ins to read and walk through the script. The planning was precise. Iñárritu said: "There was no room to improvise at all. Every movement, every line, every door opening, absolutely everything was rehearsed." The actors started rehearsing once this preliminary work was completed: According to Lubezki, they did the scenes with the actors "once we kind of knew what the rhythm of the scenes were". He described the atypical approach "like an upside down movie where you do post-production before the production".


title: Birdman (film)

text: Editors Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione were involved in the project by this stage. When Iñárritu told Mirrione that he planned for Lubezki to record table readings and the rehearsals, he suggested they edit them immediately to discover what was and was not working early on. The editing also allowed the editors to discuss pacing issues with the director, such as the position of the night-day transitions and other moments of rest in the film. Production designer Kevin Thompson was on hand too, and mapped out the scenes. The camerawork required many elements of the set to be built in a certain way. For example, Riggan's makeup mirror and desk were constructed so that the camera would see his reflection. Thompson also took into consideration the needs of the crew, for instance designing the stairs a little wider for Steadicam operator Chris Haarhoff's footsize.


title: Birdman (film)

text: He then constructed a template of the set they would build when in New York. The writers were also involved in the rehearsals, fine-tuning the script to "make sure the film was fluid and never stopped".


title: Birdman (film)

text: Once the logistics of the scenes were worked out and they had the timing down, the team headed to Kaufman Studios for more rehearsals, followed by principal photography based exclusively in New York during the spring of 2013. The studios were used to film the backstage areas of the film, including Riggan's dressing room and the theatre corridors. St. James Theatre was used for two weeks; it was the location for the stage scenes. The bar segments were shot in The Rum House on 47th Street, and 43rd Street was used for the action-sequence. The film was unable to be shot chronologically because of scheduling with the theatre. Throughout the locations, including the studio, the scenes were lit with natural light, since Lubezki wanted the movie "to look as naturalistic as possible". The night-time scenes were possible to film in this way due to the brightness of New York. Lubezki found lighting the scenes to be the hardest part of his work on the film. Not only did the lighting need to look realistic, but also had to be designed so that the continuous movements of the camera did not project the crew's shadows onto the actors.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Throughout shooting, Arri Alexa cameras were used; an Alexa M was used for handheld sequences, and an Alexa XT was attached to the Steadicam. Neither used matte boxes, however. Steadicam operator Chris Haarhoff explained this decision: "We didn't want this big black thing gliding into their eyeline. This way we could get very close and get the light past the lens and onto the actor's face." Lubezki who did all the handheld camerawork had chosen the Alexa M because the camera was very small and allowed him to get into tiny spaces and close to the actors, sometimes filming two inches (5 cm) away from Keaton's face. The camera also allowed recording for such a long period necessary for the long takes of the movie that Lubezki went so far as to say the movie would have been impossible to do years before. The cameras were lensed with Leica Summilux-C or Zeiss Master Primes. Lubezki stated that these gave clean images, saying "You can have all these lights in the frame and they are not really causing bad flare or things like that". In terms of sizes, they initially trialled a 21mm, but this did not give Iñárritu the "intimacy" he wanted. The crew instead went to an 18mm Leica, which was used for the majority of the film. Only when emphasis was needed did they switch the lens to a 14mm, but this was rare.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Despite all the preparation, a typical shooting day would begin with rehearsals. These usually lasted most of the morning, after which photography followed. The meticulous timing for the scenes meant that takes were cancelled because of the slightest mishaps. Emma Stone, in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, recalled how a six-minute take of the scene where Riggan first meets Mike was ruined after she walked around a corner too quickly. Takes were also repeated if a scene's rhythm did not feel right to Iñárritu, or if he and Lubezki were not satisfied with a shot's framing. As shooting progressed lines of dialog would also be dropped, giving Iñárritu more options during post-production. Because of this, the number of takes for a given scene was high, usually 20 for the shorter scenes, the takes running smoothly around the fifteenth. Chris Haarhoff described it as "a type of dance where everyone would hopefully try to peak all at the same moment". The locations sometimes placed restrictions on the takes too; the live Times Square sequence was shot only twice since they did not want to attract the attention of tourists.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Whenever shooting was taking place there was pressure on everyone involved, but the cast had a positive experience. Norton said that normally in movie production half the people can "check out" due to repetitive aspects, but during the shooting of "Birdman", "everybody's on, the whole thing, and you're all on pins and needles because you're all relying on forty other people not to drop the ball". Because of this, Stone said the director was able to get the best out of the cast, saying Iñárritu's process "creates this sort of fury in you, and then you end up realizing that he just got so much out of you that you didn't even know you had". Naomi Watts commented that the atmosphere "felt emblematic of how it feels onstageat least my long-time memories from long ago". Andrea Riseborough, meanwhile, described the process as "wonderful", mentioning how it was possible to hear the filming of a sequence from far away before the camera arrived, and then "the magic happens with you, and then everything leaves you, and everything's silent". Once they successfully completed a take though, it was obvious to everybody involved. Norton said: "I've never, ever been on a set where every day ended with an enormous, authentic sort of cheer at having made it. You're waiting for the scream from [Iñárritu], and everybody was genuinely excited."


title: Birdman (film)

text: The film's original music segments are a drum score consisting entirely of solo jazz percussion performances by Antonio Sánchez. The score is offset by a number of well known classical music pieces, including Mahler and Tchaikovsky. Iñárritu did not regard the particular choice of classical pieces as important. Nonetheless, the choice of classical music was strongly oriented to highly melodic scores taken predominantly from the 19th century classical repertoire (Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Ravel). Iñárritu stated that the classical components come from the world of the play, citing the radio in Riggan's room and the show itself as two sources of the music. The classical music segments also included two compositions by American composer John Adams. Several jazz compositions by Victor Hernández Stumpfhauser and Joan Valent counterbalance the original music composition by Sánchez. The drum sections comprise the majority of the score, however, and were composed by Sánchez. Iñárritu explained the choice by saying they helped to structure scenes, and that "The drums, for me, was a great way to find the rhythm of the film... In comedy, rhythm is king, and not having the tools of editing to determine time and space, I knew I needed something to help me find the internal rhythm of the film."


title: Birdman (film)

text: Iñárritu contacted friend and jazz drummer Antonio Sánchez in January 2013, inviting him to compose the score for the film. His reaction to writing a soundtrack using only drums was similar to Lubezki's thoughts of shooting the movie like a single shot: "It was a scary proposition because I had no point of reference of how to achieve this. There's no other movie I know that has a score like this." Sánchez had also not worked on a film before, nevertheless, after receiving the script, he composed "rhythmic themes" for each of the characters. Iñárritu was looking for the opposite approach, however, preferring spontaneity and improvisation. Sánchez then waited until production moved to New York before composing more, where he visited the set for a couple of days to get a better idea of the film. Following this, a week before principal photography, he and Iñárritu went to a studio to record some demos. During these sessions the director would first talk him through the scene, then while Sánchez was improvising guide him by raising his hand to indicate an event such as a character opening a door or by describing the rhythm with verbal sounds. They recorded around seventy demos, which Iñárritu used to inform the pacing of the scenes on set, and once filming was complete, spliced them into the rough cut. Sánchez summarized the process by saying, "The movie fed on the drums, and the drums fed on the imagery". The official soundtrack was released as a CD (77 min) in October 2014, and as an LP (69 min) in April 2015.


title: Birdman (film)

text: When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released their longlist for the Academy Award for Best Original Score in December 2014, "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" was absent from the list. The previous day, Sánchez received a note from the award committee explaining the decision, quoting rule fifteen of the 87th Academy Award Rules, noting "the fact that the film also contains over a half an hour of non-original (mostly classical) music cues that are featured very prominently in numerous pivotal moments in the film made it difficult for the committee to accept your submission". Sánchez launched an appeal, and along with Iñárritu and the executive vice-president of Fox Music, they sent letters to Charles Fox, the chair of the Academy's music branch executive committee, asking that the committee reconsider their decision. One of the points they raised was that the committee incorrectly calculated the ratio of classical to original music, which after being clarified Sánchez thought he was "on really solid ground". A response from Fox on December 19, however, explained that a special meeting of the music committee was held, and although its members had "great respect" for the score and considered it "superb", they thought that the classical music "was also used as scoring", "equally contributes to the effectiveness of the film", and that the musical identity of the film was created by both the drums and classical music. Ultimately, they did not overturn their decision. Sánchez said that he and Iñárritu were not satisfied with the explanation.


title: Birdman (film)

text: "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" was edited by Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione, who had both worked with the director before on "21 Grams" and "Babel". Stitching shots together was, of course, a crucial component of the editing, but Crise and Mirrione already had experience doing this. The director had included takes that were joined together in previous films, but in these if the editors didn't think the stitching worked they had the ability to introduce cuts. Mirrione said that in "Birdman" Iñárritu had "let go of that safety net". Because of this the editors needed to be involved in the project early on, and during principal photography Crise was on set every day. (Mirrione was busy and unable to be in New York.) Crise was not used to being on set and providing feedback, but said he was happy Iñárritu "dragged it out" of him, knowing that they wouldn't have much room to fix scenes later so they needed to get them right. For stitching, aside from the director, Crise also discussed strategies with Lubezki and Thompson, and techniques for gluing takes together included panning on walls and actors' bodies. The editors were used to being able to adjust the rhythm of a scene by the positioning of cuts, so without this tool used Sánchez's music instead. The director gave the New York recordings to Crise early on to help with pacing, asking him to cut the music to the film. Still, in terms of the editing workflow, Crise described it as "pretty traditional". The editors cut the film together back in Los Angeles. A few weeks after shooting, they were quite far along the cut itself, and transitioned into visual-effects mode, where they fine-tuned the shots.


title: Birdman (film)

text: The visual effects for the film were created by Montreal based studio Rodeo FX. They spent four months working on the film, and according to visual effects supervisor Ara Khanikian "visual effects touched 90% of the frames in the movie". A lot of the work was subtle. For example, stitching shots together, or creating the background for the windows in the hospital scene. Many shots in the film feature mirrors, and much work was spent removing the reflections of the crew from these. To accomplish this the studio created a 2.5D digital matte painting of the reflected environment. They then rotoscoped out the parts of the mirror not containing the foreground actors and their reflections, and replaced these with the digital environment. Some of the original shots captured smudges and dirt on the mirrors, so the studio developed a way to extract them so they could paste them back into the film. A matte-painting was constructed for the night-day time lapses in the film too, created by matchmoving and reprojecting shots of the buildings it features, captured at different times of the day, together. Rodeo FX also adjusted the pace of scenes. Iñárritu demanded a "very precise rhythm and flow" to the film, so the studio had to re-speed much of it with timewarp curves to fit the pacing the director desired.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Unlike some of the smaller adjustments though, the flying sequence required extensive preparation. Iñárritu spent three weeks with Halon Entertainment to previsualize the sequence. In New York, Lubezki then used the choreography of the previsualization to shoot background plates for the sequence, using a camera crane on a truck. When these were shot, Lubezki had mounted four GoPro cameras to the lens of the film camera to capture the light environment around him. Later, on a greenstage in Montreal, using a technique he had developed on "Gravity", Lubezki lit Keaton with LED panels featuring high-dynamic-range images of the surrounding New York footage. The panels then realistically lit Keaton. Khanikian described the effect of the process, saying, "Instead of using standard lighting on greenscreen, [we were getting] the proper red bounce from the red bricks, and the same color of the sky reflected on Michael's head. It worked so well." Rodeo FX then completed the final shots. The sequence was the last piece the editors inserted into the film. Mirrione commented that before the sequence was finished, they "had only imagined what it was going to feel like", but once it was completed, "it took the movie to this ecstatic level that absolutely blew me away".


title: Birdman (film)

text: Sound design for the film was handled by Martín Hernández, who has worked on all the director's feature films. The production sound his team was given was "surprisingly perfect and clean", so they didn't need to spend much time tidying it. The lack of visual cuts in the film meant a departure from the usual way Hernández edited sound though. "Normally, Alejandro likes, as he calls it, 'the clashing of the sounds'. The camera changes angle within the scene and there is a change of everything backgrounds, texture, dialog. Obviously, that would not work on "Birdman" because here, everything is flowing." Additionally, the sound of objects in the film needed to be coordinated with their position onscreen, a non-trivial task, since the camera was nearly always moving. Hernández also helped to cut Sánchez's tracks, selecting and editing moments from the New York recordings against the film. When the tracks were re-recording in Los Angeles, in order "to have distance, and closeness and resonance" the team used thirty two microphones for each take. Hernández described the job as "crazy". A large challenge of the post-production soundwork was designing the sound of the theatre audience, particularly in the scene when Mike is drunk and comes out of character. Iñárritu knew how he wanted the audience to respond, but figuring out the sound of their reaction took four months of work from five sound designers. Hernández said he thought, for a film in general, that the narrative created by sound "provokes more 'explosions'" than that created by images, and that in "Birdman", "Alejandro has sound exploding all throughout the film".


title: Birdman (film)

text: The digital intermediate was completed by a team at Technicolor led by Steven Scott. They had previously collaborated with Lubezki on "Gravity", but needed to approach "Birdman" differently because of the continuous-shot approach. According to Scott, "we have never done anything like it before". The color timing had to be done in such a way that the transitions between color-corrected environments were invisible, in contrast to a usual film where the transitions coincide with visible cuts. To do this, the team inserted their own cuts whenever the camera was stationary, and in the middle of pans and other camera movements. They then devised a way to color correct the stationary cuts and turn the moving cuts into a form of dissolve, allowing them to "do all these independent, crazy, complicated, color corrections that would flow organically from one to another". Inserting the dissolves required rotoscoping methods which the software Scott and his team were using did not have, but an enterprise agreement between Technicolor and the software's developer led to the creation of a tool Scott required. For the color timing itself, one of the priorities of the team was making the faces as dimensional and readable as possible. This required, amongst other things, that faces be highlighted, but the moving camerawork meant that the mattes used in this process had to be animated by hand. Lubezki would provide notes on the areas he wanted tracked, then the team would carry out the animations. Of the whole process, Iñárritu remarked that "everyone was out of their comfort zone", while Scott said it was the most challenging DI project of his career.


title: Birdman (film)

text: The director has emphasized and defended the various ambiguities intentionally included in the film: "At the ending of the film, [it] can be interpreted as many ways as there are seats in the theater." Many aspects of film theory were debated concerning the film by critical reviews which included, among other subjects, (a) film genre; (b) intended and unresolved ambiguities of plot; and (c) the complex interaction of Riggan's personal life with his professional life as an actor. A short list of the diverse forms of film genre associated with the film has included it being referred to alternatively as a black-humor film, a mental health film, a realism/surrealism/magical realism film, a dark-humor parody film, a film of psychological realism, a failed domestic reconciliation drama, or a film concerning theatrical realism and naturalism. Iñárritu has maintained his penchant, well-known to followers of his previous films, for deliberately including multiple plot lines in this film which are intentionally left unresolved at the ending. Separate reviews in the press have also summarized the film as closely associated with the theme of the final tailspin of a late mid-life crisis in the life of a has-been actor seeking closure and resolution in his public and private life.


title: Birdman (film)

text: The father-daughter themes in the film, portrayed through the relationship of Riggan and Samantha, were the "most difficult" and important parts of the film to depict for co-writers Dinelaris and Giacobone, as they both had similar experiences within their families involving their own relationships with their daughters. When the writers were asked about the meaning of the ambiguous ending which the director refused to comment upon, they stated that any comedic ending was completely ruled out. The writers also stated that reflections about the conclusion to the film were not directly concentrated upon Riggan or the character of Birdman as much as upon the lives of the surviving characters portrayed in the film, in particular the portrayal of Riggan's daughter Samantha.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Noting the thematic pull between Riggan's insanity or actual superpowers, Travis LaCouter of "First Things" writes that "the importance of these powers real or imagined is apparent: They are for Riggan the thing beyond the labels, the kernel of his genius and, because he sees drawing upon them as selling out, the source of his great angst." LaCouter concludes that "the quirky profundity of this film is in how it dares the viewer to consider the everyday magic that we tend to ignore, repress, or resent".


title: Birdman (film)

text: Critics Barbara Schweizerhof and Matthew Pejkovici see the film's central theme as a satirical critique of contemporary theatrical realism, with Pejkovici laudably comparing it to Fellini's film "8½" (1963). As Pejkovici states: "Much like Fellini's 1960[sic] classic "8½", Iñárritu's "Birdman" is a very intimate film about an artist's malaise, yet is epic, innovative, and ambitious in approach. Iñárritu captures the artist's battle between ambition, admiration, and celebrity with stunning scope and skill in the form of a one-take format, as his camera sweeps through the backstage corridors, across the stage, out on the busy NYC streets, and back again in breathtaking fashion."


title: Birdman (film)

text: Thematically, Richard Brody also compared it to "Opening Night" (1977) by John Cassavetes. Brody said that the actors played in "the sort of modern naturalism, without eccentricity of gesture, excess of expression, or heightened and formalistic precision, that is the business-casual of contemporary cinema". "The Wall Street Journal"s Caryn James compared the story to that of "Don Quixote" (who believes himself to be a knight), as the main character believes he is a superhero (the equivalent to a knight in the 21st century). This relationship was also highlighted by the scholarly literature.


title: Birdman (film)

text: "Birdman" was selected as the opening film of the 71st Venice International Film Festival along with Mohsen Makhmalbaf's new film. A limited release began in four North American theatres on October 17, 2014, followed by a nationwide release in 857 theatres on November 14, 2014.


title: Birdman (film)

text: "Birdman" grossed $42.3 million in North America and $60.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $103.2 million, against a budget of about $17 million.


title: Birdman (film)

text: The film earned $424,397 during its limited North America opening in four theatres in New York and Los Angeles on the weekend of October 17, 2014, a per-theater average of $106,099, making it the 18th all-time earner (eighth among live-action movies) and ranking 20. In the second weekend of October 24, 2014, "Birdman" expanded to 50 theaters and earned $1.38 million, which translates to a $27,593 per-theater average. The film expanded nationwide to 857 theaters in the weekend of November 14, 2014, grossing $2,471,471, with a per theatre average of $2,884, and ranking 10. In the same weekend, "Birdman" grossed $11.6 million.


title: Birdman (film)

text: The film opened in Mexico on November 13, 2014, grossing $628,915 in its opening weekend, and opened in the United Kingdom on January 2, 2015, grossing $2,337,407 over the weekend. In the United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy, the film grossed $7.6 million, $3.97 million, and $1.97 million, respectively.


title: Birdman (film)

text: On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 91%, based on 351 reviews, and an average rating of 8.50/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A thrilling leap forward for director Alejandro González Iñárritu, "Birdman" is an ambitious technical showcase powered by a layered story and outstanding performances from Michael Keaton and Edward Norton." On Metacritic, the film received a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 58 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale. In 2015, the film was named as one of the top 50 films of the decade so far by "The Guardian".


title: Birdman (film)

text: Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton from "At the Movies" praised the film's writing, direction, performances and cinematography. Stratton also described the implementation of the percussion score as "really exciting", while Pomeranz summarised: "It's just really beautifully written and stunningly performed and beautifully made." The pair both gave the film five stars, making "Birdman" the only film to receive such a rating from the hosts in 2014. In "The New York Times", Manohla Dargis compared the main character to Icarus, the Greek mythological figure who crashed to his death after flying too close to the sun. She also noted a reference to Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation" in the dressing-room mirror.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Richard Kolker compared the film to both Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948) and Alexander Sokurov's "Russian Ark" (2002). Kolker concludes that "Birdman" is "a film about acting, identity, transformation, and the mysterious effects of superheroes, (and) is filmed to create the illusion of being made in one continuous take. As with "Rope", the edits are hidden, and the result is a rhythmic slide through the life of an actor in search of his self, a search doomed from the start." Ollie Cochran called the film "an amalgam of technical prowess, hypnotising visuals and pragmatically perceptive dialogue", believing it to be "a thought-provoking, energetic perspective of a fading actor looking to revitalise his career."


title: Birdman (film)

text: International reception of the film was also at a high level of praise. In Germany, a film aggregate rating at EPD Film gave the film a 3.4 out of 5 rating, based on seven critiques. The German critic Barbara Schweizerhof gave the film a 4 out of 5 possible stars, complimenting the director's satirical virtuosity in making the film. In her review, Schweizerhof spoke of the film as inviting the viewer to re-watch it "a second and third time", and praised the technical achievement of representing a storyline depicting "the feverish stream of consciousness" of its main character throughout the film.


title: Birdman (film)

text: The camerawork, which depicts most of the film as one continuous take, was met with extensive acclaim for its execution and usage. The acting was widely praised, particularly Keaton's, with Peter Debruge of "Variety" calling the performance the "comeback of the century". Debruge described the film as "a self-aware showbiz satire", and called it "a triumph on every creative level". Robbie Collin of "The Daily Telegraph" rated the film 5/5 and gave particular praise to the use of long takes by Emmanuel Lubezki, director of photography. Richard Roeper gave the film an "A" and wrote that Keaton made a serious case for an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination (which Keaton later achieved).


title: Birdman (film)

text: Writing for "The New Yorker", Richard Brody called the film "Godardian", comparing it to "Pierrot le Fou" (1965), "Every Man for Himself" (1980), "Alphaville" (1965), and "Germany Year 90 Nine Zero" (1991), four classic films by French director Jean-Luc Godard. However, he suggested the film fell short of reaching the same cinematic mastery, adding, "it's not a good idea for a filmmaker to get in the ring with Mr. Godard". In his critical comments on the film, he concluded that the film "trade[d] on facile, casual dichotomies of theatre versus cinema and art versus commerce" and "deliver[ed] a work of utterly familiar and unoriginal drama". In another review in "The New Yorker" separately supplementing the review by Brody, Anthony Lane rejected the film's suggestion that film critics are out to destroy films, explaining, "Someone could have told Iñárritu that critics, though often mean, are not preemptively so, and that anybody who'd say, as Tabitha does, 'I'm going to destroy your play', before actually seeing it, would not stay long in the job."


title: Birdman (film)

text: Some reviews were negative. Richard Lawson of "Vanity Fair", called the film "hoary" and "deceptively simple". Scott Tobias, writing for The Dissolve, gave the film 1.5 stars. He commends Lubezki's cinematography as succeeding at "trapping viewers in a pressure-cooker atmosphere as Riggan and his players struggle to keep it together", but suggests that Iñárritu is "incapable of modulation", and that there exists "a sourness to "Birdman" that Iñárritu can't turn into wit".


title: Birdman (film)

text: At the 87th Academy Awards, "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" won four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. Michael Keaton was nominated for Best Actor, Edward Norton and Emma Stone were nominated in Best Supporting Acting categories, and it also received nominations for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.


title: Birdman (film)

text: Keaton received his first Golden Globe Award, winning for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards. The film also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay.


title: JSON-LD

text: JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a method of encoding linked data using JSON. One goal for JSON-LD was to require as little effort as possible from developers to transform their existing JSON to JSON-LD. JSON-LD allows data to be serialized in a way that is similar to traditional JSON. It was initially developed by the JSON for Linking Data Community Group before being transferred to the RDF Working Group for review, improvement, and standardization, and is currently maintained by the JSON-LD Working Group. JSON-LD is a World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation.


title: JSON-LD

text: JSON-LD is designed around the concept of a "context" to provide additional mappings from JSON to an RDF model. The context links object properties in a JSON document to concepts in an ontology. In order to map the JSON-LD syntax to RDF, JSON-LD allows values to be coerced to a specified type or to be tagged with a language. A context can be embedded directly in a JSON-LD document or put into a separate file and referenced from different documents (from traditional JSON documents via an HTTP Link header).


title: JSON-LD

text: The example above describes a person, based on the FOAF (friend of a friend) ontology. First, the two JSON properties codice_1 and codice_2 and the type codice_3 are mapped to concepts in the FOAF vocabulary and the value of the codice_2 property is specified to be of the type codice_5. In other words, the homepage id is specified to be an IRI in the context definition. Based on the RDF model, this allows the person described in the document to be unambiguously identified by an IRI. The use of resolvable IRIs allows RDF documents containing more information to be transcluded which enables clients to discover new data by simply following those links; this principle is known as Follow Your Nose.


title: JSON-LD

text: By having all data semantically annotated as in the example, an RDF processor can identify that the document contains information about a person (codice_6) and if the processor understands the FOAF vocabulary it can determine which properties specify the person’s name and homepage.


title: JSON-LD

text: The encoding is used by Schema.org, Google Knowledge Graph, and used mostly for search engine optimization activities. It has also been used for applications such as biomedical informatics, and representing provenance information. It is also the basis of Activity Streams, a format for "the exchange of information about potential and completed activities", and is used in ActivityPub, the federated social networking protocol. Additionally, it is used in the context of Internet of Things (IoT), where a Thing Description, which is a JSON-LD document, describes the network facing interfaces of IoT devices.


title: Tim Daly

text: James Timothy Daly (born March 1, 1956) is an American actor. He is known for his role as Joe Hackett on the NBC sitcom "Wings" and his voice role as Clark Kent/Superman in "", as well as his recurring role as the drug-addicted screenwriter J.T. Dolan on "The Sopranos" (for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award). He starred as Pete Wilder on the ABC medical drama "Private Practice" from 2007 to 2012. From 2014 until 2019, he portrayed Henry McCord, husband of the Secretary of State, on the CBS drama "Madam Secretary".


title: Tim Daly

text: Daly was born March 1, 1956, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, the only son and youngest of four children of actor James Daly (1918–1978) and actress Mary Hope Daly (; 1921–2009). He is of Irish descent, his ancestors being from Limerick and Kerry. He is the younger brother of actress Tyne Daly. He has two other sisters, Mary Glynn (wife of Mark Snow) and Pegeen Michael. Daly attended The Putney School, where he started to study acting.


title: Tim Daly

text: Daly began his professional career while a student at Vermont's Bennington College, where he studied Theatre and Literature, acted in summer stock, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. He graduated from college in 1979, and returned to New York to continue studying acting and singing.


title: Tim Daly

text: Daly debuted on stage when he was seven years old in "Jenny Kissed Me" by Jean Kerr, together with his parents and two sisters. He appeared for the first time on TV when he was 10 years old in an American Playhouse adaptation of "An Enemy of the People" by Henrik Ibsen, which starred his father James Daly. He dreamed about a sports or music career and also considered becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but finally decided to become an actor. Daly started his professional acting career when he appeared in a 1978 adaptation of Peter Shaffer's play "Equus".


title: Tim Daly

text: His first leading film role was in the film "Diner", directed by Barry Levinson, in which he shared screen time with actors including Kevin Bacon and Mickey Rourke. Starring roles soon followed in Alan Rudolph's feature, "Made in Heaven", the American Playhouse production of "The Rise & Rise of Daniel Rocket", and the CBS dramatic series, "Almost Grown" created by David Chase.


title: Tim Daly

text: In theatre he has starred in the Broadway production of "Coastal Disturbances" by playwright Tina Howe opposite Annette Bening and received a 1987 Theatre World Award for his performance. He has also starred in "Oliver, Oliver" at the Manhattan Theatre Club, "Mass Appeal" by Bill C. Davis and "Bus Stop" by William Inge at Trinity Repertory Company, "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams at the Santa Fe Festival Theatre, "A Knife in the Heart" and "A Study in Scarlet" at the Williamstown Playhouse, and "Paris Bound" at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. During this time, Daly also starred in the CBS television miniseries "I'll Take Manhattan" as Toby Amberville.


title: Tim Daly

text: Daly describes himself as being highly self-critical in regard to his career. In an interview with New Zealand 'ZM' radio personality Polly Gillespie, Daly was quoted as saying, "I think part of it (his self-critical nature) is passed down to me from my parents who are actors. The theatre was our temple... When you entered you were expected to live up to the example of this glorious place."


title: Tim Daly

text: "Wings" is an American sitcom that ran on NBC from April 19, 1990, to May 14, 1997. It starred Daly and Steven Weber as brothers Joe and Brian Hackett. The show was set at the fictional Tom Nevers Field, a small airport in Nantucket, Massachusetts, where the Hackett brothers operated the one-plane airline, Sandpiper Air.


title: Tim Daly

text: In 1993, he gave a much-respected performance as David Koresh in "" (TV), though the film itself was controversial because it was already in production while the Waco standoff was still on-going.


title: Tim Daly

text: In 1997, he and J. Todd Harris formed Daly-Harris Productions, through which he produced such movies as: "Execution of Justice" (1999) (TV), "Urbania" (2000) and "Tick Tock" (2000). In 1998, Daly appeared in several episodes of the Emmy award-winning, Tom Hanks-produced HBO mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon" playing astronaut Jim Lovell, whom Hanks himself had portrayed in the film "Apollo 13".


title: Tim Daly

text: During the 2000–2001 television season, Daly starred as Dr. Richard Kimble in a remake of the classic television series "The Fugitive". The series lasted only one season.


title: Tim Daly

text: In 2002, Daly guest-starred as himself in the TV series "Monk" in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Airplane", briefly reuniting him with his "Wings" castmate Tony Shalhoub. In 2006, Daly returned to Broadway when he appeared on stage opposite David Schwimmer and Željko Ivanek in the Broadway revival of "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial". Daly made several appearances on "The Sopranos" as J.T. Dolan, an AA buddy of Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli). Daly received a 2007 Emmy nomination for his work on the series. He appeared on the midseason ABC crime series "Eyes", which got good reviews but was canceled after only five episodes. In 2006, Daly played the role of Nick Cavanaugh on the new ABC drama "The Nine". From 2007 to 2012, Daly played a love interest for Kate Walsh's character on the TV series "Private Practice".


title: Tim Daly

text: As a voice-actor, Daly portrayed superhero Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent in "" (1996–2000), but was unable to return as Superman (thus being replaced by Christopher McDonald in "Batman Beyond" and George Newbern in "Justice League" and "Justice League Unlimited"), as he was under contract to star in a remake of the 1960s TV drama "The Fugitive". He reprised his role as Superman in the video game "" and the direct-to-video releases "", "", "" and "". Daly reprised his role as Superman in an animated remake of the trailer for the 2013 film "Man of Steel" by the Hub Network to celebrate the release of the film and to promote the network's upcoming marathon of Superman episodes.


title: Tim Daly

text: Daly heads Red House Entertainment. Movies produced through the company include "Edge of America", which won a Peabody Award and a Humanitas Prize, and Daly's directing debut, the independent film "Bereft". Daly also created Wandering Bark Productions, based at Paramount Pictures, a company designed to develop and produce a variety of film, television and theater projects. The company's producing credits include the Los Angeles premiere of Vincent J. Cardinal's play "A Colorado Catechism", starring Daly. The play received favorable reviews and earned Daly the Drama-Logue Award for Best Actor. Daly co-produced a documentary, "PoliWood", about the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. The documentary, directed by Barry Levinson had its premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.


title: Tim Daly

text: In 2014, Daly guest starred in recurring roles on "The Mindy Project" and "Hot in Cleveland". From mid-2014 until 2019, he played Henry McCord, the husband of the title character on the TV series "Madam Secretary".


title: Tim Daly

text: In 2015, Daly reprised his role as Superman for "", an interactive dark ride found at seven different Six Flags theme parks across the United States and Mexico.


title: Tim Daly

text: In the beginning of 2007, Daly became a member of The Creative Coalition (TCC), a nonprofit, (501(c)(3)) liberal, politically active group formed of members of the American film entertainment industry; since 2008, Daly has served as President of the Creative Coalition. As a member of TCC Daly has joined the National Task Force on Children's Safety, a program co-founded by The Creative Coalition and Safety4Kids, "the first children's media brand focused solely on safety and health." According to the program website: "The Task Force is the first critical step in creating a national dialogue on safety and media literacy and determining next steps to ensure that the issues are prioritized in the minds of parents, educators and legislators." "The Task Force is dedicated to awareness, education and lasting change by impacting national policy on safety education and media literacy." In August 2007, Daly became one of the three chairs for the organization's activity at the 2008 Democratic and Republican conventions. Along with actress Kerry Washington and writer/director Sue Kramer, Daly was responsible for leading "TCC's Convention efforts designed to bring issues of importance to the forefront of the 2008 presidential campaign." In November 2007, Daly interviewed Senator John Edwards, one of the Democratic presidential candidates.


title: Tim Daly

text: In June 2008, Daly, together with Chandra Wilson, was named the 2008 ambassador for Lee National Denim Day – a fundraiser for breast cancer, benefiting the Women's Cancer Programs of the Entertainment Industry Foundation. In August 2008, Daly was named co-president of the Creative Coalition, a liberal group that works on issues such as health care reform and arts funding.


title: Tim Daly

text: Daly married actress Amy Van Nostrand, daughter of Dr. Van Nostrand, famed New York City Dermatologist, in 1982. They have two children, including Sam. In "Madam Secretary", his son played the ex-fiancé of main character Daisy Grant and his daughter played the niece of his character Henry McCord. She graduated from Barnard College in 2011 and was a Fulbright scholar to Brazil. In 2010, Daly and Van Nostrand divorced. He has been dating his "Madam Secretary" co-star Téa Leoni since December 2014.


title: Tim Daly

text: In 2012, Daly climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. That same year, he and his sister Tyne endorsed the re-election campaign of Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama. Daly was in the Virgin America first-class lounge during the 2013 Los Angeles International Airport shooting. In January 2017, Daly broke both legs in a ski accident while on vacation in Sundance.


title: Allah

text: Allah (; , ) is the common Arabic word for God. In the English language, the word generally refers to God in Islam. The word is thought to be derived by contraction from "al-ilāh", which means "the god", and is linguistically related to the Aramaic words Elah and Syriac (ʼAlāhā) and the Hebrew word "El" ("Elohim") for God. The feminine form of Allah is thought to be the word Allat.


title: Allah

text: The word "Allah" has been used by Arabic people of different religions since pre-Islamic times. The pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped a supreme deity whom they called Allah, alongside other lesser deities. Muhammad used the word "Allah" to indicate the Islamic conception of God. "Allah" has been used as a term for God by Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) and even Arab Christians after the term "al-ilāh" and "Allah" were used interchangeably in Classical Arabic by the majority of Arabs who had become Muslims. It is also often, albeit not exclusively, used in this way by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Sephardi Jews. Similar usage by Christians and Sikhs in West Malaysia has recently led to political and legal controversies.


title: Allah

text: The etymology of the word "Allāh" has been discussed extensively by classical Arab philologists. Grammarians of the Basra school regarded it as either formed "spontaneously" ("murtajal") or as the definite form of "lāh" (from the verbal root "lyh" with the meaning of "lofty" or "hidden"). Others held that it was borrowed from Syriac or Hebrew, but most considered it to be derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article "al-" "the" and ' "deity, god" to ' meaning ""the deity"", or ""the God"". The majority of modern scholars subscribe to the latter theory, and view the loanword hypothesis with skepticism.


title: Allah

text: Cognates of the name "Allāh" exist in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic. The corresponding Aramaic form is "Elah" (), but its emphatic state is "" (). It is written as () in Biblical Aramaic and () in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church, both meaning simply "God".


title: Allah

text: Regional variants of the word "Allah" occur in both pagan and Christian pre-Islamic inscriptions. Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in pre-Islamic polytheistic cults. According to the Islamic scholar Ibn Kathir, Arab pagans considered Allah as an unseen God who created and controlled the Universe. Pagans believed worship of humans or animals who had lucky events in their life brought them closer to God. Pre-Islamic Meccans worshiped Allah alongside a host of lesser gods and those whom they called the "daughters of Allah." Islam forbade worship of anyone or thing other than God. Some authors have suggested that polytheistic Arabs used the name as a reference to a creator god or a supreme deity of their pantheon. The term may have been vague in the Meccan religion. According to one hypothesis, which goes back to Julius Wellhausen, Allah (the supreme deity of the tribal federation around Quraysh) was a designation that consecrated the superiority of Hubal (the supreme deity of Quraysh) over the other gods. However, there is also evidence that Allah and Hubal were two distinct deities. According to that hypothesis, the Kaaba was first consecrated to a supreme deity named Allah and then hosted the pantheon of Quraysh after their conquest of Mecca, about a century before the time of Muhammad. Some inscriptions seem to indicate the use of Allah as a name of a polytheist deity centuries earlier, but nothing precise is known about this use. Some scholars have suggested that Allah may have represented a remote creator god who was gradually eclipsed by more particularized local deities. There is disagreement on whether Allah played a major role in the Meccan religious cult. No iconic representation of Allah is known to have existed. Allah is the only god in Mecca that did not have an idol. Muhammad's father's name was meaning "the slave of Allāh".


title: Allah

text: In Islam, "Allah" is the unique, omnipotent and only deity and creator of the universe and is equivalent to God in other Abrahamic religions. "Allah" is usually seen as the personal name of God, a notion which became disputed in contemporary scholarship, including the question, whether or not the word "Allah" should be translated as "God".


title: Allah

text: According to Islamic belief, Allah is the most common word to represent God, and humble submission to his will, divine ordinances and commandments is the pivot of the Muslim faith. "He is the only God, creator of the universe, and the judge of humankind." "He is unique (') and inherently one ('), all-merciful and omnipotent." No human eyes can see Allah till the Day Of Judgement. The Qur'an declares "the reality of Allah, His inaccessible mystery, His various names, and His actions on behalf of His creatures." Allah doesn't depend on anything. God is not a part of the Christian Trinity. God has no parents and no children.


title: Allah

text: The concept correlates to the Tawhid, where chapter 112 of the Qur'an ("Al-'Ikhlās", The Sincerity) reads:


title: Allah

text: In Islamic tradition, there are 99 Names of God ("" lit. meaning: 'the best names' or 'the most beautiful names'), each of which evoke a distinct characteristic of Allah. All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name. Among the 99 names of God, the most famous and most frequent of these names are "the Merciful" ("ar-Raḥmān") and "the Compassionate" (""), including the forementioned above "al-Aḥad" ("the One, the Indivisible") and "al-Wāḥid" ("the Unique, the Single").


title: Allah

text: Most Muslims use the untranslated Arabic phrase "" (meaning 'if God wills') after references to future events. Muslim discursive piety encourages beginning things with the invocation of "" (meaning 'In the name of God'). There are certain phrases in praise of God that are favored by Muslims, including "" (Glory be to God), "" (Praise be to God), "" (There is no deity but God) or sometimes ""lā ilāha illā inta/ huwa"" (There is no deity but "You"/ "Him") and "" (God is the Most Great) as a devotional exercise of remembering God (dhikr).


title: Allah

text: In a Sufi practice known as "dhikr Allah" (Arabic: ذكر الله, lit. "Remembrance of God"), the Sufi repeats and contemplates the name "Allah" or other associated divine names to Him while controlling his or her breath. For example, in countless references in the context from the Qur'an forementioned above:


title: Allah

text: 1) Allah is referred to in the second person pronoun in Arabic as ""Inta" (Arabic: َإِنْت)" like the English ""You"", or commonly in the third person pronoun ""Huwa" (Arabic: َهُو)" like the English ""He"" and uniquely in the case pronoun of the oblique form ""Hu/ Huw" (Arabic: هو /-هُ)" like the English ""Him"" which rhythmically resonates and is chanted as considered a sacred sound or echo referring Allah as the "Absolute Breath or Soul of Life"—"Al-Nafs al-Hayyah" (Arabic: النّفس الحياة, "an-Nafsu 'l-Ḥayyah")—notably among the 99 names of God, "the Giver of Life" ("al-Muḥyī") and "the Bringer of Death" ("al-Mumiyt");


title: Allah

text: 2) Allah is neither male or female (who has no gender), but who is the essence of the "Omnipotent, Selfless, Absolute Soul ("an-Nafs," النّفس) and Holy Spirit" ("ar-Rūḥ," الرّوح) - notably among the 99 names of God, "the All-Holy, All-Pure and All-Sacred" ("al-Quddus");


title: Allah

text: 3) Allah is the originator of both before and beyond the cycle of creation, destruction and time, - notably among the 99 names of God, "the First, Beginning-less" ("al-Awwal"), "the End/ Beyond ["the Final Abode"]/ Endless" ("al-Akhir/ al-Ākhir") and "the Timeless" ("aṣ-Ṣabūr").


title: Allah

text: According to Gerhard Böwering, in contrast with pre-Islamic Arabian polytheism, God in Islam does not have associates and companions, nor is there any kinship between God and jinn. Pre-Islamic pagan Arabs believed in a blind, powerful, inexorable and insensible fate over which man had no control. This was replaced with the Islamic notion of a powerful but provident and merciful God.


title: Allah

text: According to Francis Edward Peters, "The Qur’ān insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews (). The Qur’an's Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted with Abraham". Peters states that the Qur'an portrays Allah as both more powerful and more remote than Yahweh, and as a universal deity, unlike Yahweh who closely follows Israelites.


title: Allah

text: The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for "God" than "Allah", except Jehovah's Witnesses who add the biblical name "Jehovah" (يهوه) to the title "Allah". Similarly, the Aramaic word for "God" in the language of Assyrian Christians is "ʼĔlāhā", or "Alaha". (Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Malta, whose population is almost entirely Catholic, uses "Alla" for "God".) Arab Christians, for example, use the terms ' () for God the Father, ' () for God the Son, and "" () for God the Holy Spirit. (See God in Christianity for the Christian concept of God.)


title: Allah

text: Arab Christians have used two forms of invocations that were affixed to the beginning of their written works. They adopted the Muslim ', and also created their own Trinitized ' as early as the 8th century. The Muslim ' reads: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." The Trinitized ' reads: "In the name of Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God." The Syriac, Latin and Greek invocations do not have the words "One God" at the end. This addition was made to emphasize the monotheistic aspect of Trinitarian belief and also to make it more palatable to Muslims.


title: Allah

text: According to Marshall Hodgson, it seems that in the pre-Islamic times, some Arab Christians made pilgrimage to the Kaaba, a pagan temple at that time, honoring Allah there as God the Creator.


title: Allah

text: Some archaeological excavation quests have led to the discovery of ancient pre-Islamic inscriptions and tombs made by Arab Christians in the ruins of a church at Umm el-Jimal in Northern Jordan, which initially, according to Enno Littman (1949), contained references to Allah as the proper name of God. However, on a second revision by Bellamy et al. (1985 & 1988) the 5-versed-inscription was re-translated as "(1)This [inscription] was set up by colleagues of ʿUlayh, (2) son of ʿUbaydah, secretary (3) of the cohort Augusta Secunda (4) Philadelphiana; may he go mad who (5) effaces it."


title: Allah

text: The syriac word ܐܠܗܐ ("ʼĔlāhā") can be found in the reports and the lists of names of Christian martyrs in South Arabia, as reported by antique Syriac documents of the names of those martyrs from the era of the Himyarite and Aksumite kingdoms


title: Allah

text: In Ibn Ishaq's biography there is a Christian leader named Abd Allah ibn Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad, who was martyred in Najran in 523, as he had worn a ring that said "Allah is my lord".


title: Allah

text: In an inscription of Christian martyrion dated back to 512, references to 'l-ilah (الاله) can be found in both Arabic and Aramaic. The inscription starts with the statement "By the Help of 'l-ilah".


title: Allah

text: In pre-Islamic Gospels, the name used for God was "Allah", as evidenced by some discovered Arabic versions of the New Testament written by Arab Christians during the pre-Islamic era in Northern and Southern Arabia. However most recent research in the field of Islamic Studies by Sydney Griffith et al. (2013), David D. Grafton (2014), Clair Wilde (2014) & ML Hjälm et al. (2016 & 2017) assert that "all one can say about the possibility of a pre-Islamic, Christian version of the Gospel in Arabic is that no sure sign of its actual existence has yet emerged." Additionally ML Hjälm in her most recent research (2017) inserts that "manuscripts containing translations of the gospels are encountered no earlier than the year 873"


title: Allah

text: Irfan Shahîd quoting the 10th-century encyclopedic collection Kitab al-Aghani notes that pre-Islamic Arab Christians have been reported to have raised the battle cry ""Ya La Ibad Allah"" (O slaves of Allah) to invoke each other into battle. According to Shahid, on the authority of 10th-century Muslim scholar Al-Marzubani, "Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some Ghassanid and Tanukhid poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.


title: Allah

text: The word "Allāh" is generally pronounced , exhibiting a heavy lām, , a velarized alveolar lateral approximant, a marginal phoneme in Modern Standard Arabic. Since the initial alef has no hamza, the initial is elided when a preceding word ends in a vowel. If the preceding vowel is , the lām is light, , as in, for instance, the Basmala.


title: Allah

text: The history of the name "Allāh" in English was probably influenced by the study of comparative religion in the 19th century; for example, Thomas Carlyle (1840) sometimes used the term Allah but without any implication that Allah was anything different from God. However, in his biography of Muḥammad (1934), Tor Andræ always used the term "Allah", though he allows that this "conception of God" seems to imply that it is different from that of the Jewish and Christian theologies.


title: Allah

text: Languages which may not commonly use the term "Allah" to denote God may still contain popular expressions which use the word. For example, because of the centuries long Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, the word "ojalá" in the Spanish language and "oxalá" in the Portuguese language exist today, borrowed from Arabic "inshalla" (Arabic: إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللَّٰهُ). This phrase literally means 'if God wills' (in the sense of "I hope so"). The German poet Mahlmann used the form "Allah" as the title of a poem about the ultimate deity, though it is unclear how much Islamic thought he intended to convey.


title: Allah

text: Some Muslims leave the name "Allāh" untranslated in English, rather than using the English translation "God". The word has also been applied to certain living human beings as personifications of the term and concept.


title: Allah

text: Christians in Malaysia and Indonesia use "Allah" to refer to God in the Malaysian and Indonesian languages (both of them standardized forms of the Malay language). Mainstream Bible translations in the language use "Allah" as the translation of Hebrew "Elohim" (translated in English Bibles as "God"). This goes back to early translation work by Francis Xavier in the 16th century. The first dictionary of Dutch-Malay by Albert Cornelius Ruyl, Justus Heurnius, and Caspar Wiltens in 1650 (revised edition from 1623 edition and 1631 Latin edition) recorded "Allah" as the translation of the Dutch word "Godt". Ruyl also translated the Gospel of Matthew in 1612 into the Malay language (an early Bible translation into a non-European language,


title: Allah

text: made a year after the publication of the King James Version), which was printed in the Netherlands in 1629. Then he translated the Gospel of Mark, published in 1638.


title: Allah

text: The government of Malaysia in 2007 outlawed usage of the term "Allah" in any other but Muslim contexts, but the Malayan High Court in 2009 revoked the law, ruling it unconstitutional. While "Allah" had been used for the Christian God in Malay for more than four centuries, the contemporary controversy was triggered by usage of "Allah" by the Roman Catholic newspaper "The Herald". The government appealed the court ruling, and the High Court suspended implementation of its verdict until the hearing of the appeal. In October 2013 the court ruled in favor of the government's ban. In early 2014 the Malaysian government confiscated more than 300 bibles for using the word to refer to the Christian God in Peninsular Malaysia. However, the use of "Allah" is not prohibited in the two Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. The main reason it is not prohibited in these two states is that usage has been long-established and local Alkitab (Bibles) have been widely distributed freely in East Malaysia without restrictions for years. Both states also do not have similar Islamic state laws as those in West Malaysia.


title: Allah

text: In reaction to some media criticism, the Malaysian government has introduced a "10-point solution" to avoid confusion and misleading information. The 10-point solution is in line with the spirit of the 18- and 20-point agreements of Sarawak and Sabah.


title: Allah

text: The word ' is always written without an to spell the ' vowel. This is because the spelling was settled before Arabic spelling started habitually using ' to spell '. However, in vocalized spelling, a small diacritic "" is added on top of the "" to indicate the pronunciation.


title: Allah

text: In the pre-Islamic Zabad inscription, God is referred to by the term , that is, alif-lam-alif-lam-ha. This presumably indicates "Al-'ilāh" = "the god", without "alif" for "ā".


title: Allah

text: Since Arabic script is used to write other texts rather than Koran only, rendering ' + ' + "" as the previous ligature is considered faulty which is the case with most common Arabic typefaces.


title: Allah

text: Unicode has a code point reserved for ', = U+FDF2, in the Arabic Presentation Forms-A block, which exists solely for "compatibility with some older, legacy character sets that encoded presentation forms directly"; this is discouraged for new text. Instead, the word ' should be represented by its individual Arabic letters, while modern font technologies will render the desired ligature.


title: Allah

text: The calligraphic variant of the word used as the coat of arms of Iran is encoded in Unicode, in the Miscellaneous Symbols range, at code point U+262B (☫).


title: Robert Johnson

text: Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Although his recording career spanned only seven months, he is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style, and is also one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as being "the first ever rock star".


title: Robert Johnson

text: As a traveling performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime. He participated in only two recording sessions, one in San Antonio in 1936, and one in Dallas in 1937, that produced 29 distinct songs (with 13 surviving alternate takes) recorded by famed Country Music Hall of Fame producer Don Law. These songs, recorded solo in improvised studios, were the totality of his recorded output. Most were released as 10-inch, 78 rpm singles from , with a few released after his death. Other than these recordings, very little was known of him during his life outside of the small musical circuit in the Mississippi Delta where he spent most of his life; much of his story has been reconstructed after his death by researchers. Johnson's poorly documented life and death have given rise to much legend. The one most closely associated with his life is that he sold his soul to the devil at a local crossroads to achieve musical success.


title: Robert Johnson

text: His music had a small, but influential, following during his life and in the two decades after his death. In late 1938 John Hammond sought him out for a concert at Carnegie Hall, "From Spirituals to Swing", only to discover that Johnson had died. Brunswick Records, which owned the original recordings, was bought by Columbia Records, where Hammond was employed. Musicologist Alan Lomax went to Mississippi in 1941 to record Johnson, also not knowing of his death. Law, who by then worked for Columbia Records, assembled a collection of Johnson's recordings titled "King of the Delta Blues Singers" that was released by Columbia in 1961. It is widely credited with finally bringing Johnson's work to a wider audience. The album would become influential, especially on the nascent British blues movement; Eric Clapton has called Johnson "the most important blues singer that ever lived." Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Robert Plant have cited both Johnson's lyrics and musicianship as key influences on their own work. Many of Johnson's songs have been covered over the years, becoming hits for other artists, and his guitar licks and lyrics have been borrowed by many later musicians.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Renewed interest in Johnson's work and life led to a burst of scholarship starting in the 1960s. Much of what is known about him was reconstructed by researchers such as Gayle Dean Wardlow and Bruce Conforth, especially in their 2019 award-winning biography of Johnson: "Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson" (Chicago Review Press). Two films, the 1991 documentary "The Search for Robert Johnson" by John Hammond Jr., and a 1997 documentary, "Can't You Hear the Wind Howl?: The Life & Music of Robert Johnson", which included reconstructed scenes with Keb' Mo' as Johnson, were attempts to document his life, and demonstrated the difficulties arising from the scant historical record and conflicting oral accounts. Over the years, the significance of Johnson and his music has been recognized by the Rock and Roll, Grammy, and Blues Halls of Fame; and the National Recording Preservation Board.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Robert Leroy Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, possibly on May 8, 1911, to Julia Major Dodds (born October 1874) and Noah Johnson (born December 1884). Julia was married to Charles Dodds (born February 1865), a relatively prosperous landowner and furniture maker, with whom she had ten children. Charles Dodds had been forced by a lynch mob to leave Hazlehurst following a dispute with white landowners. Julia left Hazlehurst with baby Robert, but in less than two years she brought the boy to Memphis to live with her husband, who had changed his name to Charles Spencer. Robert spent the next 8–9 years growing up in Memphis and attending the Carnes Avenue Colored School where he received lessons in arithmetic, reading, language, music, geography, and physical exercise. It was in Memphis that he acquired his love for, and knowledge of, the blues and popular music. His education and urban context placed him apart from most of his contemporary blues musicians.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Robert rejoined his mother around 1919–1920 after she married an illiterate sharecropper named Will "Dusty" Willis. They originally settled on a plantation in Lucas Township in Crittenden County, Arkansas, but soon moved across the Mississippi River to Commerce in the Mississippi Delta, near Tunica and Robinsonville. They lived on the Abbay & Leatherman Plantation. Julia's new husband was 24 years her junior. Robert was remembered by some residents as "Little Robert Dusty", but he was registered at Tunica's Indian Creek School as Robert Spencer. In the 1920 census, he is listed as Robert Spencer, living in Lucas, Arkansas, with Will and Julia Willis. Robert was at school in 1924 and 1927. The quality of his signature on his marriage certificate suggests that he was relatively well educated for a boy of his background. A school friend, Willie Coffee, who was interviewed and filmed in later life, recalled that as a youth Robert was already noted for playing the harmonica and jaw harp. Coffee recalled that Robert was absent for long periods, which suggests that he may have been living and studying in Memphis.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Once Julia informed Robert about his biological father, Robert adopted the surname Johnson, using it on the certificate of his marriage to sixteen-year-old Virginia Travis in February 1929. She died in childbirth shortly after. Surviving relatives of Virginia told the blues researcher Robert "Mack" McCormick that this was a divine punishment for Robert's decision to sing secular songs, known as "selling your soul to the Devil". McCormick believed that Johnson himself accepted the phrase as a description of his resolve to abandon the settled life of a husband and farmer to become a full-time blues musician.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Around this time, the blues musician Son House moved to Robinsonville, where his musical partner Willie Brown lived. Late in life, House remembered Johnson as a "little boy" who was a competent harmonica player but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. Soon after, Johnson left Robinsonville for the area around Martinsville, close to his birthplace, possibly searching for his natural father. Here he perfected the guitar style of House and learned other styles from Isaiah "Ike" Zimmerman. Zimmerman was rumored to have learned supernaturally to play guitar by visiting graveyards at midnight.


title: Robert Johnson

text: When Johnson next appeared in Robinsonville, he seemed to have miraculously acquired a guitar technique. House was interviewed at a time when the legend of Johnson's pact with the devil was well known among blues researchers. He was asked whether he attributed Johnson's technique to this pact, and his equivocal answers have been taken as confirmation.


title: Robert Johnson

text: While living in Martinsville, Johnson fathered a child with Vergie Mae Smith. He married Caletta Craft in May 1931. In 1932, the couple settled for a while in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in the Delta, but Johnson soon left for a career as a "walking" or itinerant musician, and Caletta died in early 1933.


title: Robert Johnson

text: From 1932 until his death in 1938, Johnson moved frequently between the cities of Memphis and Helena, and the smaller towns of the Mississippi Delta and neighboring regions of Mississippi and Arkansas. On occasion, he traveled much further. The blues musician Johnny Shines accompanied him to Chicago, Texas, New York, Canada, Kentucky, and Indiana. Henry Townsend shared a musical engagement with him in St. Louis. In many places he stayed with members of his large extended family or with female friends. He did not marry again but formed some long-term relationships with women to whom he would return periodically. In other places he stayed with whatever woman he was able to seduce at his performance. In each location, Johnson's hosts were largely ignorant of his life elsewhere. He used different names in different places, employing at least eight distinct surnames.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Biographers have looked for consistency from musicians who knew Johnson in different contexts: Shines, who traveled extensively with him; Robert Lockwood Jr., who knew him as his mother's partner; David "Honeyboy" Edwards, whose cousin Willie Mae Powell had a relationship with Johnson. From a mass of partial, conflicting, and inconsistent eyewitness accounts, biographers have attempted to summarize Johnson's character. "He was well mannered, he was soft spoken, he was indecipherable". "As for his character, everyone seems to agree that, while he was pleasant and outgoing in public, in private he was reserved and liked to go his own way". "Musicians who knew Johnson testified that he was a nice guy and fairly average—except, of course, for his musical talent, his weakness for whiskey and women, and his commitment to the road."


title: Robert Johnson

text: When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. Musical associates have said that in live performances Johnson often did not focus on his dark and complex original compositions, but instead pleased audiences by performing more well-known pop standards of the dayand not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, he had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries later remarked on his interest in jazz and country music. He also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience; in every town in which he stopped, he would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Shines was 20 when he met Johnson in 1936. He estimated Johnson was maybe a year older than himself (Johnson was actually four years older). Shines is quoted describing Johnson in Samuel Charters's "Robert Johnson":


title: Robert Johnson

text: During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman about 15 years his senior and the mother of the blues musician Robert Lockwood Jr. Johnson reportedly cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. He reputedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases, he was accepted, until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.


title: Robert Johnson

text: In 1941, Alan Lomax learned from Muddy Waters that Johnson had performed in the area around Clarksdale, Mississippi. By 1959, the historian Samuel Charters could add only that Will Shade, of the Memphis Jug Band, remembered Johnson had once briefly played with him in West Memphis, Arkansas. In the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York City. In 1938, Columbia Records producer John H. Hammond, who owned some of Johnson's records, directed record producer Don Law to seek out Johnson to book him for the first "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson's death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but he played two of Johnson's records from the stage.


title: Robert Johnson

text: In Jackson, Mississippi, around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir, who ran a general store and also acted as a talent scout. Speir put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who, as a salesman for the ARC group of labels, introduced Johnson to Don Law to record his first sessions in San Antonio, Texas. The recording session was held on November 23–25, 1936, in room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections and recorded alternate takes for most of them. Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom", "Sweet Home Chicago", and "Cross Road Blues", which later became blues standards. The first to be released was "Terraplane Blues", backed with "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", which sold as many as 10,000 copies.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session with Don Law in a makeshift studio at the Vitagraph (Warner Bros.) Building, on June 19–20, 1937. Johnson recorded almost half of the 29 songs that make up his entire discography in Dallas and eleven records from this session were released within the following year. Most of Johnson's "somber and introspective" songs and performances come from his second recording session. Johnson did two takes of most of these songs, and recordings of those takes survived. Because of this, there is more opportunity to compare different performances of a single song by Johnson than for any other blues performer of his era. In contrast to most Delta players, Johnson had absorbed the idea of fitting a composed song into the three minutes of a 78-rpm side.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Johnson died on August 16, 1938, at the age of 27, near Greenwood, Mississippi, of unknown causes. Johnson's death was not reported publicly. Almost 30 years later, Gayle Dean Wardlow, a Mississippi-based musicologist researching Johnson's life, found Johnson's death certificate, which listed only the date and location, with no official cause of death. No formal autopsy had been done. Instead, a "pro forma" examination was done to file the death certificate, and no immediate cause of death was determined. It is likely he had congenital syphilis and it was suspected later by medical professionals that this may have been a contributing factor in his death. However, 30 years of local oral tradition had, like the rest of his life story, built a legend which has filled in gaps in the scant historical record.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Several differing accounts have described the events preceding his death. Johnson had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about from Greenwood. According to one theory, Johnson was murdered by the jealous husband of a woman with whom he had flirted. In an account by the blues musician Sonny Boy Williamson, Johnson had been flirting with a married woman at a dance, and she gave him a bottle of whiskey poisoned by her husband. When Johnson took the bottle, Williamson knocked it out of his hand, admonishing him to never drink from a bottle that he had not personally seen opened. Johnson replied, "Don't ever knock a bottle out of my hand." Soon after, he was offered another (poisoned) bottle and accepted it. Johnson is reported to have begun feeling ill the evening after and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days his condition steadily worsened. Witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain. The musicologist Robert "Mack" McCormick claimed to have tracked down the man who murdered Johnson and to have obtained a confession from him in a personal interview, but he declined to reveal the man's name.


title: Robert Johnson

text: While strychnine has been suggested as the poison that killed Johnson, at least one scholar has disputed the notion. Tom Graves, in his book "Crossroads: The Life and Afterlife of Blues Legend Robert Johnson", relies on expert testimony from toxicologists to argue that strychnine has such a distinctive odor and taste that it cannot be disguised, even in strong liquor. Graves also claims that a significant amount of strychnine would have to be consumed in one sitting to be fatal, and that death from the poison would occur within hours, not days.


title: Robert Johnson

text: In their 2019 book "Up Jumped the Devil", Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow suggest that the poison was naphthalene, from dissolved mothballs. This was "a common way of poisoning people in the rural South", but was rarely fatal. However, Johnson had been diagnosed with an ulcer and with esophageal varices, and the poison was sufficient to cause them to hemorrhage. He died after two days of severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and bleeding from the mouth.


title: Robert Johnson

text: The LeFlore County registrar, Cornelia Jordan, years later and after conducting an investigation into Johnson's death for the state director of vital statistics, R. N. Whitfield, wrote a clarifying note on the back of Johnson's death certificate:


title: Robert Johnson

text: In 2006, a medical practitioner, David Connell, suggested, on the basis of photographs showing Johnson's "unnaturally long fingers" and "one bad eye", that Johnson may have had Marfan syndrome, which could have both affected his guitar playing and contributed to his death due to aortic dissection.


title: Robert Johnson

text: The exact location of Johnson's grave is officially unknown; three different markers have been erected at possible sites in church cemeteries outside Greenwood.


title: Robert Johnson

text: John Hammond Jr., in the documentary "The Search for Robert Johnson" (1991), suggests that owing to poverty and lack of transportation Johnson is most likely to have been buried in a pauper's grave (or "potter's field") very near where he died.


title: Robert Johnson

text: According to legend, as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, Johnson had a tremendous desire to become a great blues musician. One of the legends often told says that Johnson was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. (There are claims for other sites as the location of the crossroads.) There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. The Devil played a few songs and then returned the guitar to Johnson, giving him mastery of the instrument. This story of a deal with the Devil at the crossroads mirrors the legend of Faust. In exchange for his soul, Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.


title: Robert Johnson

text: This legend was developed over time and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow, Edward Komara and Elijah Wald, who sees the legend as largely dating from Johnson's rediscovery by white fans more than two decades after his death. Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson's astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House and there were fully two years between House's observation of Johnson as first a novice and then a master.


title: Robert Johnson

text: Further details were absorbed from the imaginative retellings by Greil Marcus and Robert Palmer. Most significantly, the detail was added that Johnson received his gift from a large black man at a crossroads. There is dispute as to how and when the crossroads detail was attached to the Robert Johnson story. All the published evidence, including a full chapter on the subject in the biography "Crossroads", by Tom Graves, suggests an origin in the story of the blues musician Tommy Johnson. This story was collected from his musical associate Ishman Bracey and his elder brother Ledell in the 1960s. One version of Ledell Johnson's account was published in David Evans's 1971 biography of Tommy Johnson, and was repeated in print in 1982 alongside House's story in the widely read "Searching for Robert Johnson", by Peter Guralnick.


title: Robert Johnson

text: In another version, Ledell placed the meeting not at a crossroads but in a graveyard. This resembles the story told to Steve LaVere that Ike Zimmerman of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, learned to play the guitar at midnight while sitting on tombstones. Zimmerman is believed to have influenced the playing of the young Johnson. Recent research by the blues scholar Bruce Conforth, in "Living Blues" magazine, makes the story clearer. Johnson and Ike Zimmerman did practice in a graveyard at night, because it was quiet and no one would disturb them, but it was not the Hazlehurst cemetery as had been believed: Zimmerman was not from Hazlehurst but nearby Beauregard, and he did not practice in one graveyard, but in several in the area. Johnson spent about a year living with and learning from Zimmerman, who ultimately accompanied Johnson back to the Delta to look after him.


title: Robert Johnson

text: While Dockery, Hazlehurst and Beauregard have each been claimed as the locations of the mythical crossroads, there are also tourist attractions claiming to be "The Crossroads" in both Clarksdale and Memphis. Residents of Rosedale, Mississippi, claim Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the intersection of Highways 1 and 8 in their town, while the 1986 movie "Crossroads" was filmed in Beulah, Mississippi. The blues historian Steve Cheseborough wrote that it may be impossible to discover the exact location of the mythical crossroads, because "Robert Johnson was a rambling guy".


title: Robert Johnson

text: Some scholars have argued that the devil in these songs may refer not only to the Christian figure of Satan but also to the trickster god of African origin, Legba, himself associated with crossroads. Folklorist Harry M. Hyatt wrote that, during his research in the South from 1935 to 1939, when African-Americans born in the 19th or early 20th century said they or anyone else had "sold their soul to the devil at the crossroads", they had a different meaning in mind. Hyatt claimed there was evidence indicating African religious retentions surrounding Legba and the making of a "deal" (not selling the soul in the same sense as in the Faustian tradition cited by Graves) with the so-called devil at the crossroads.


title: Robert Johnson

text: This view that the devil in Johnson's songs is derived from an African deity was disputed by the blues scholar David Evans in an essay published in 1999, "Demythologizing the Blues":


title: Robert Johnson

text: The musicologist Alan Lomax dismissed the myth, stating, "In fact, every blues fiddler, banjo picker, harp blower, piano strummer and guitar framer was, in the opinion of both himself and his peers, a child of the Devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme".


title: Robert Johnson

text: Both Lomax's and Evans's accounts themselves have been disputed and dismissed by Black scholars and authors including Amiri Baraka and Cornel West. West defines Blues as a creation of a people "who are willing to look unflinchingly at catastrophic conditions.", as children of God responding to those conditions. Baraka's words are more directly critical of white writers who study African-American Blues artform and culture from a Western viewpoint, stating that they "They have to do that to make themselves superior in some kind of way: that everything has come from Europe, which is not true". Baraka cites that rather than being formed out of any Western context, Blues derives from an African context of its own. The call-and-response singing Lomax argues is different than Blues has been widely cited as being a central aspect of Blues music.