Brad Bird bleeds animation. As a young boy, the director studied under Milt Kahl, one of the original Disney "Nine Old Men" who worked on such classics as "101 Dalmations" and "The Jungle Book." After working as an animator on Disney films such as "The Fox and the Hound," Bird served as a director and executive consultant for the first eight seasons of "The Simpsons."
After the critically successful but commercially disappointing "The Iron Giant," his feature-length directorial debut, Bird signed on with Pixar Animation Studios in 2000.
Pixar, of course, is the highly revolutionary computer animation company that released the very first entirely computer-generated (or CG) animated film, "Toy Story," not to mention last year's immensely successful "Finding Nemo."
While Bird's history has been exclusively in the traditional medium of hand-drawn animation, he was now crossing over to computer-generated animation, which most studio heads consider a more popular form. Bird said that his "hand-drawn buddies" said he was "selling out to CG." However, Bird maintains that he didn't sign with Pixar to work in CG, but because Pixar protects its stories.
"I want my story to be protected and I want it to be nurtured," Bird said. "I love working in CG, but I don't think one kind of animation is better than another. I think that the reason that Pixar is successful is because they protect stories and are interested in original director-driven projects."
The story that Bird strived to protect is "The Incredibles," an action-adventure tale of a superhero family that must come out of hiding to battle a new threat. Bird said that the superpowers of the family correspond with their character traits. The father, Mr. Incredible, must be strong. The mother, Elastigirl, has the power to stretch (she is pulled in all different directions) The son, Dash, has super-speed and is very hyperactive, and the teenage daughter, Violet, has the power of invisibility, due to her shy nature. With some of the most difficult animation to pull off in the history of computer-generated animation, "The Incredibles" has been a daunting four-year task for Pixar and Bird.
After the initial success of "Toy Story," the highest-grossing film of 1995, Pixar continued with an unprecedented string of hits throughout the late '90s and well into this decade.
Bird said that there was tremendous pressure to live up to Pixar's consistent success.
"It's like being at Yankee Stadium, and the previous five batters have hit home runs, and you're the next one at bat and you get one pitch," Bird said. "I think that if you think about that, you will just curl up into a ball and not be able to do anything."
With recent hand-drawn box-office disappointments like Disney's "Treasure Planet" and "Home on the Range," and box-office monsters like DreamWorks' "Shrek" films and Pixar's "Finding Nemo," it seems that Hollywood is banking on computer-animated films as guaranteed hits. Bird said he isn't so sure that that is a wise way of thinking.
"If you put your ear to the ground you're gonna hear the rumble of bad CG films coming," Bird said. "Three years from now you're not going to be able to breathe because they're gonna be jammed so close together ... Because a few people have had some successes in CG, everybody thinks, 'That's what they want! They want computer animation!'"
Bird said that many of these "bad" CG films will not be box-office successes, and this will support Pixar's slogan that "story is king."
"When they fail, which most of them will, the headline will then be: 'Audience losing interest in CG,'" Bird said. "It's so beside the point. The point is, whatever medium you're working in, you have characters and a story. A lot of times when people are only seeking to imitate success in order to make bucks, they miss the point."
When Bird came to Pixar with the idea for "The Incredibles," he received help from Pixar's story department and was involved in its collaborative filmmaking process. Still, Bird said he was able to make the movie he wanted to make. This experience remains strikingly different from Bird's experience on "The Iron Giant" with Warner Bros., though it's not a polar opposite.
"I think [Warner Bros.] had some bad experiences with feature animation," Bird said. "They spent a lot of money and didn't get a lot in return. By the time we showed up [to make 'Iron Giant'], they were kind of closing up shop, which was a blessing in that they kinda left us to make the movie we wanted to make. But when it came time to sell it, we hadn't really laid the groundwork so that the audience knew what it was."
Bird said when doing press for the film in Toronto, people would walk by the inflatable Iron Giants and ask, "Is this a Japanese film or what?" Bird said he was immediately disheartened by the lack of awareness of the film. He said "The Iron Giant" scored tremendously high with test audiences but failed to make a significant dent in the box office.
A special-edition DVD release of "The Iron Giant" is scheduled for Nov. 16, and Bird said he is pleased by the film's increasing audience.
"People are catching up with it all the time, and if they see it, they recommend it," Bird said. "We just couldn't figure out [how] to get anyone to want to see it."
In "The Incredibles," Bird and Pixar have made some interesting choices for voice casting. Picks like Craig T. Nelson and Jason Lee to voice principal roles in the film might surprise audiences who are expecting more celebrities. However, this seems in stride with Pixar's track record of picking voices that fit the roles, instead of the current Hollywood star-scape (think Dave Foley in the 1997 Pixar film "A Bug's Life.")
DreamWorks' most recent computer-animated film, "Shark Tale," seems to be having box-office success with celebrity voices like Will Smith, Jack Black and Robert DeNiro. However, Bird said he thinks that big names don't draw audiences to animated films.
"I don't think that people go to an animated film to listen to celebrities," Bird said. "That's a silly idea, and if you bother to look at the track record of it, it's horribly inconsistent. Robin Williams is always hailed for the magnificent job he did in 'Aladdin,' but a lot of people don't remember that he also, the same year, did the voice in 'Ferngully,' and it didn't help 'Ferngully's' box office. The recipe for success is not Robin Williams, it's that the Genie character was a well-conceived character."
Bird even voices a character in "The Incredibles," Edna Mode, who designs the superheroes' costumes. Bird said that the character came out of a curiosity surrounding superheroes.
"I always wondered who did the [superhero] costumes, and usually they didn't address it," Bird said. "And when they did address it, they always had a somewhat awkward scene of some muscle-bound guy sewing in the basement."
"The Incredibles" seems to hold the traditional Disney ideal of preservation of story with the combination of computer technology. Bird cites Milt Kahl as a mentor who helped shape his creativity.
"For me to work with him as a kid was like being in acting and getting to work with Brando," Bird said. "I was amazed by him. He [wouldn't] let a scene go - he was like a bull terrier - until it met a quality that was really high. He would push his scenes and explore. I am still trying to leap over the bar that remains set where those guys left it. My respect for those original old nine men is over the moon. We are forever indebted to them because they wrote the book, literally and figuratively."
While Bird has not committed to any future Pixar films besides sitting in on sessions for the upcoming Pixar film "Cars," opening in 2005, Bird said that he has several projects ahead of him - some animated, some live-action. Bird also said that he wouldn't close the door on any kind of animation.
As this new boom of computer-generated animation proves, Pixar's impressive record of success is attempting to be imitated and it seems that "The Incredibles" will. Bird knows first-hand after his work on "The Simpsons" that not all imitators will get it right.
"I can't tell you how many 'Simpsons' rip-offs I've seen where they totally miss what makes 'The Simpsons' great," Bird said. "As crazy and googly-eyed as the Simpsons were, there is actually a real underlying intelligence. I imagine that a lot of people are going to miss the point of what Pixar does well. It's heart, it's originality, and I think they are continually trying to make a movie that they would want to see. That's something I can certainly sign up for"
