The ending of filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu’s comedy Birdman is both ambiguous and exciting, but the film almost concluded in a very different manner. If you’ve been paying attention to interviews with Iñárritu or Michael Keaton, you know that during production, the director and his writers dramatically altered the film’s conclusion. It was supposed to end one way, but Iñárritu decided that ending was “shit” and had come up with a better way to close out the film—the ending we see now.

So what was that original ending? We may have just found out. Appearing on Jeff Goldsmith’s podcast (via The Film Stage) with other Oscar-nominated screenwriters, Birdman co-writer Alex Dinelaris revealed the original conclusion to the film:

“So we had one other ending that was satirical. The other ending was that he shoots himself on the stage. The camera comes around to the audience and their standing ovation — all the way around, like Chivo [Emmanuel Lubezki] and Alejandro did the whole time — and the segue was back on to the stage and on the stage was like James Lipton or Charlie Rose and Michael [Keaton] was sitting across from him and he’s sort of reading the review. He’s saying, ‘Oh my God, you got this tremendous review’ and Michael is like, ‘Yeah.’”

Dinelaris continues by saying they would’ve brushed past this encounter to reveal a pretty massive cameo:

“Then the camera prowled like it did the whole film, went back stage through the halls we’ve seen the whole time and we’d get to the dressing room where literally Johnny Depp would be sitting looking in the mirror and putting on his Riggan Thomson wig and then the poster of Pirates of the Caribbean 5 would be in the back. In Jack Sparrow’s voice [it would say], ‘What the fuck are we doing here, mate?’ It was going to be the satire of the endless loop of that.” Dinelaris concludes with a laugh, “We couldn’t get Johnny Depp or even the poster.”

So that’s, uh, pretty insane. Admittedly it would’ve been in keeping with the film’s themes, but boy that would’ve come out of nowhere. I definitely think the current ending is better.

Click over to iTunes to listen to the full 90 minute discussion, which also includes the Oscar-nominated scribes behind Whiplash, The Imitation Game, Foxcatcher, Americacn Sniper, Nightcrawler, and The Theory of Everything.