Keaton is McLovin’ it in ‘Founder’
Starring role as fast-food icon part of career resurgence
Michael Keaton has a cold, and it’s a whopper. The actor makes that abundantly clear with a germ-safe, fist-bump greeting along with apologies as he enters his office. He takes a seat behind a simple table desk with a paper cup of coffee in one hand and a balled-up Kleenex in the other.
Even with severe congestion, Keaton, 65, quickly serves up a smile and builds a full head of steam talking about the movie resurgence he’s enjoying, capped off with his starring role as fastfood icon Ray Kroc in The Foun
der (in theaters nationwide Jan. 20 after a limited, awards-qualifying December run).
“Some people, I have no idea why, they go, ‘Well, is it a comeback?’ ” Keaton says, laughing. “I don’t know why everyone is dancing around it. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care what people call it, swear to God. It doesn’t matter, because I’m just having fun.”
Then it’s decided. Killer cold and all, Keaton is inhaling this career resurgence — sorry, career comeback — that began with his Academy Award-nominated role in 2014’s Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). The Batman star’s return to Hollywood prominence was the compelling story of the 2015 Oscars, as Birdman clinched best picture. But Keaton was far from done, following up with his role as Bos
ton Globe journalist Walter “Robby” Robinson in 2015’s ensemble drama Spotlight, which also won a best-picture Oscar. Now the story behind Kroc’s hamburger empire has flipped Keaton’s critically acclaimed performance into the awards discussion again, albeit as a dark horse.
“I am loving this act in Michael Keaton’s career, with top-level projects, using his natural charm in fascinating and complex characters,” says Dave Karger, special
correspondent for the movie website IMDb.com, “He’s one of very few actors to star in back-toback best-picture winners and delivers another strong performance in The Founder.”
With the kind of bravado worthy of Ray Kroc, Keaton says he predicted this enviable rise with certainty, years back.
“I sat across the table from someone and said, ‘This is what is going to happen.’ And I have to tell you, it’s been pretty damn close to what happened,” Keaton says. “And that can only come out of one person — not an agent, there’s no pal. Actually, nobody is going to do what you have to do.”
It’s all done with the dramatic flair of the idiosyncratic Mr. Mom and Beetlejuice star, who stepped into the Batsuit for director Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman and 1992 Batman Returns. Keaton then declined to appear in director Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever, reportedly turning down a $15 million offer before the role was handed to Val Kilmer.
But that bat role sticks with a guy, Keaton explains, holding up his hands pyramid-style to show how the Hollywood game gets trickier at the tiny pinnacle.
“The pyramid goes like this: You teeter from the top. That’s life,” says Keaton, explaining that any work slowdown is then magnified. “So if I wasn’t seen for a year in, say, 1983, nobody would have cared. But suddenly some guy in Poland is freaked out over Batman along with 9 zillion other people, and all bets are off, everything changes. Then that year you’re not seen, it’s in a much brighter spotlight.”
There were vibrant roles such as in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 Jackie Brown. But Keaton rolled into the 2000s far from that pyramid peak and apparently not too bothered. He was raising his son, acclaimed musician Sean Douglas (with Keaton’s ex-wife, actress Caroline McWilliams, who died in 2010). Keaton says he was also living it up, enjoying life.
“One thing about those fallow periods was I’m out having fun. I’m going around the world, getting on helicopters with snowboards or with fishing rods. I’ve seen some fairly attractive women in Europe. I’m having fun, dude,” Keaton says. “And at some point, you look at your bank account and you go back to work.” Keaton’s role in Disney’s 2005 Herbie Fully Loaded alongside a fresh-faced Lindsay Lohan was what he calls “a potential paycheck.” Potential, because a profitable sequel never materialized. But the role afforded a chance to wait for the right power role that would shoot him back to the top.
“I’m sitting back waiting for the pitch to hit. You know what I mean? The one you know you can crush.”
A POWER PLAY That home run came for Keaton as an over-the-hill former comicbook movie star looking for his theater break in writer/director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman.
“Birdman, for sure, was ‘Boom!’ ” Keaton says dramatically. “Someone put me in the rubber band and shot me out.”
During the sustained Birdman awards hype, Founder director John Lee Hancock was inspired to cast Keaton in the Kroc role for the warts-and-all look at the famed McDonald’s chief.
“Birdman put Michael on the list for The Founder, to be completely honest,” says Hancock, a longtime Keaton admirer. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t have fought for him anyway. But Birdman made it a very easy choice: Yeah, we’re going to Michael.”
Keaton shows the same magnetism as the American business icon who died in 1984 after making McDonald’s the most successful food operation in the world with its signature golden arches.
“When you’re with Michael, he lights up a room. He’s very focused in his conversations,” Hancock says. “Kroc had the same attributes. When Kroc was on point, he was on point.”
The Founder tells the story of Dick and Mac McDonald (Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch), one the McDonald’s corporation downplays. The duo were true 1950s pioneers, creating the revolutionary fast-food approach to burger preparation and even the name for their San Bernardino, Calif., hamburger stand.
Kroc, an often-struggling milkshake-machine salesman with big dreams, was inspired. He joined the brothers in business, charged with expanding the brand and franchises. Even the title The
Founder is ironic, knocking Kroc’s institutionally backed boasts of establishing the institution.
“If someone said, ‘Ray Kroc, quickly, who was he?’ Most people would go, ‘Oh, yeah, McDonald’s.’ But McDonald’s how? McDonald’s why?” Keaton asks. “I thought he was, in fact, the founder, that Ray Kroc started everything. I didn’t know there were McDonald brothers.
“The fact (Kroc) wanted to push this ‘ I’m the founder’ idea. It’s like, ‘Ray, really? Come on, dude.’ ”
The Founder shows Kroc playing hardball with the brothers, taking over the company and even forcing them to remove the name from their own restaurant. Keaton was inspired by the Machiavellian turn.
“Kroc’s career, I admire quite a bit,” Keaton says. “Hard worker. Not given anything. This is a bootstrap story. I love his work ethic and his drive.
“And then he certainly goes south. What makes a guy keep turning the screw, shoving the knife in deeper? Ray was brutal, in the end.”
Keaton agreed with Hancock’s vision that there should be no character sugarcoating or unnaturally happy ending.
“I told John there were 100 others who could do this better if he was looking for that actor winking, saying, ‘Please love me anyway,’ or ‘I’m not really that bad,’ ” Keaton says. “My job is to tell the story. And it’s a role which all of a sudden turns.”
FEEL-GOOD BAD GUY Keaton keeps his own career turn moving, venturing back to the comic-book world as the villainous Vulture in Marvel’s SpiderMan: Homecoming (July 7). He says he tried to turn down the plum part because his packed schedule has been too stretched. He hasn’t even had time to give a needed redecoration to his office, which is sparsely appointed with an unused, outdated fax machine in the corner. But his rejection only pushed Marvel to rearrange the shooting schedule to make it more agreeable for Keaton. He has had no regrets.
“It’s jumping into a giant Marvel machine, and I’m just a little piece of it. But it’s an amazing machine to be inside of,” Keaton says.
He says he often thanks the Big Guy Upstairs for his good fortune. “If not every morning, then literally before I go to bed at night, you know how they say ‘That’s what your knees are for,’ ” says Keaton, managing another smile. “Man, I’m so grateful. And, yeah, man, I’m having a ball.”