An Interview with Brad Bird

Talk about timing. We scheduled our interview with The Incredibles director Brad Bird just three days after the biggest night of his professional life - he had just won an Oscar for Best Animated Film. Bird was also nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category, but lost out to Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

Bird began his career in animation in 1981 as an animator for Disney's The Fox and the Hound. He also worked for Steven Spielberg on an episode of Amazing Stories in 1985. He'd make a brief foray into live action, co-writing the screenplay for *batteries not included.

He would spend several years working as a consultant for The Simpsons, The Critic and King of the Hill. In 1999, made his feature film debut with The Iron Giant, which received massive critical acclaim (97 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and the few who saw it absolutely fell in love with the heart-felt film.

Unfortunately for him and the movie, Warner Bros. had decided to ditch its animation efforts and more or less threw the movie on the market with no promotion, where it promptly sank.

Like another Warner title, The Shawshank Redemption, the movie's fan base would grow slowly on the home video market and its fan base didn't just like the movie, they adored it. Such is its popularity that every year on Thanksgiving, Cartoon Network runs an Iron Giant marathon, replaying the movie for 24 hours straight.

For his next trick, Bird went to an animation studio that had its pixels together: Pixar Animation Studios. The end result, The Incredibles has everything fans love about The Iron Giant -- it's intellectual honest, it's relatable, has heart and it speaks to the viewers rather than down at them. Audiences responded in kind, to the tune of $260 million.

The Incredibles represented a real change for Pixar. It had never used humans to any great extent before in one of its films, and human motion is a lot more complex than a fish swimming. The extras for The Incredibles shows the effort that went into this, as Pixar animators recorded themselves walking, just to get the hang of proper human motion.

We only had 15 minutes to chat with Bird, but could have talked for three times that length. He has plenty to offer. Here's what he said to us.

IGN DVD Editor Andy Patrizio: Congratulations on your big win.

Brad Bird: Thanks.

IGN DVD: Be honest. Did you think you had it locked up?

Bird: Every time I started going in the direction of thinking how it might turn out, I started to just turn my brain around and not go there, because I think the surest way to guarantee that you won't win is to assume that you will. So I tried to not think about anything else except "Hey, I get to go to the ceremony and a bunch of cool parties later."

IGN DVD: What was the feedback from your peers and fellow directors at the show?

Bird: Everyone is delighted. Part of us would have loved to have gotten the screenplay as well, but we were delighted, and felt like it capped a wonderful experience of making the film. It was really, really hard to make but we had a really good time and we all got very close to each other making it. It was kinda like going through a war or something, we all had this huge mountain to climb, the weather got bad a few times, we got stranded at the 16,000 foot level a few times. But we all made it down alive and we're very happy with the film. So it's just been a wonderful experience all around.

A scene from The Incredibles

IGN DVD: Perhaps you're a better man than me, because I would have been on the Warner lot the next day rubbing it in, after the way they bungled The Iron Giant.

Bird: (chuckles) You know what? We got to make that film, and you can focus on that, but the bottom line is they gave me my first opportunity to direct a film, and even though it could have been an easier experience and they could have handled it better, they did allow me to make the film I wanted to make, so I am grateful.