f anyone feels at home in the world of animation, it's Brad Bird. From The Family Dog, a comedic short segment in Steven Spielberg's anthology series Amazing Stories, to the imaginative and underrated feature Iron Giant, Bird has brought hand-drawn images to life on the screen with one primary goal: telling good stories. It was a philosophy that he saw mirrored in the films of Pixar Studios, the computer-animation powerhouse responsible for Toy Story, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo. And so, when it came time to find a development home for his latest idea about a family of superheroes, it was only natural that Bird turned to Pixar.
The result of that collaboration was the blockbuster film The Incredibles, which earned more than $70 million in its opening weekend, the second-highest debut of an animated film in history (only Shrek 2 ranks higher). The film, starring the voices of Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson and Jason Lee, went on to gross $260 million domestically and nearly $630 million worldwide. Audiences of all ages embraced the film's central family, who are forced to hide their superhuman abilities after a rash of lawsuits forces a government crackdown on hero activity. On Feb. 27, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences echoed the audience's sentiments and awarded The Incredibles the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
Science Fiction Weekly was recently invited to Northern California to tour Pixar's facilities, where we spoke with Bird about the DVD release of The Incredibles, which comes out on March 15.
This project was originally conceived back when you were still at Warner Brothers. Can you talk about the process of bring this to Pixar and getting it made?
Bird: While we had a very young, relatively inexperienced team, in general, on Iron Giant, they were really hard-working, and I felt at the end of Iron Giant that we had learned so much that we were ready to take on something really challenging, which this was. But at the end of it, Pixar had been talking to me for a while, and I just thought that the main reason to come to Pixar was not about the technology. I felt that the story would be well taken care of there. And that I would be able to focus all of my energy on making the film. [Iron Giant] was my first film, and the [Warner Brothers animation] department was undergoing a lot of changes. They were kind of closing it down as we were making the film. And it was a struggle. I think the Warner Brothers guys would totally agree with that. It was not an easy experience. I'm very grateful for the opportunity they gave me, but I spent probably a third of my energy protecting what the other two-thirds of my energy produced. And I didn't want to repeat that. Pixar had been talking with me about coming up for a long time, and I knew I wanted to make The Incredibles next. So I asked them if they would be interested in doing The Incredibles, and they were. So I thought it was the best move for the film, because there's no better place for a story to grow up into a film than this place.
Pixar is known for combining rich visuals with good stories. Was that your experience?
Bird: A lot of the guys, the key guys, members of this team, came up with me and had also worked on Iron Giant. So a lot of the visual style [came from them]. I think it would have been a nice-looking film no matter what medium we did it in, because I have so much respect for [artists] Lou Romano, Teddy Newton, Tony Fucile and all these guys. But absolutely, Pixar is known for its lushness and the lighting and the depth and the tactile feeling of everything. But to me, that stuff is kind of gravy. The real heart of the matter is character and story. It's not technology. It's not about the latest technological doohickey. We end up talking about that stuff a bit because it's kind of new, but quite honestly, sometimes you feel like you're talking about it like it's a new car. "Well, what do you have now?" "Well, we have Corinthian leather, and there's a new stereo system that can hold one more disc or can plug into your iPod." Or whatever. It's not really about that. In the long run, nobody cares.
In other words, 10 years from now nobody's going to be talking about the fur in Monsters, Inc. They're going to be talking about, "Man, that last scene I felt like crying when he sticks his head back into the door." And that's the heart of what makes Pixar great, and what makes great movies great, is a feeling, an empathy and all of that stuff, and the reason I came up here. I was glad to join a place that's so technologically savvy. I mean, that sounded wonderful to me. That's not why I came up here. I came up here because they were a filmmaker-based company with director-driven projects, and they pushed and pushed and pushed to make your story as good as it possibly could be. And when you had something that was good, they protected it. And so I just felt like I'm ready for that experience. And I think it was absolutely the right one.
You've said you came up with idea for the film when you became a father and had to balance your family with your career.
Bird: It's vaguely based on an idea that I had before The Incredibles. It was another kind of fantasy character who was looking back, and it felt like life had passed him by a little bit. And I liked that idea for a character, and I liked it being in an unusual character, and I thought, "What if it was a superhero instead?" And once I had that notion of a superhero that was still young and still vital, but was looking back at being a superhero, was kind of bitter about it, then I just started asking questions. Like, why did he have to stop being a superhero? Are there other superheroes? Is he married to a superhero? Do they have kids? And each time I answered the question, the story fleshed itself out a little more.
I think that what I was getting emotionally connected to in the film is that here's a guy who's torn between being unable to do what he loves, work that he loves, and giving enough attention to the family that he loves and needs. And I was worried. I was having trouble getting movie ideas off the ground. I could always get them backed for development, but I couldn't get them up to the screen. They wouldn't ever pull the trigger on them. So I was frustrated, because I felt like they were good movies that weren't being allowed to happen. And at the same time, I had two of my three boys at that point. In fact, my middle boy is named Jack, and we called him Jack-Jack when he was little, and that's kind of how I know how old the idea is. But I was starting to worry that if I did what I needed to do to get the opportunity to make the movie, if I redoubled my efforts, I would not be there for my kids and my wife. And I felt like if I was really a good parent I would never get the opportunity to make the movie. And I was anxious about it, because I loved both of them, I needed both of them, and I didn't want to fail at either one. And I think that anxiety, without me knowing it, filtered its way into this really kind of crazy film about a superhero.
Let's talk about the DVD. Parents would probably buy this for their kids no matter what. So why was it important to you to put so much extra into it?
Bird: All of the Pixar discs, I think, are labors of love, and I'm not cynical about the audience. Just because you could get away with doing less—and a lot of people do—I don't think you ought to assume that your audience deserves less than your best. I think that if you want to quickly become yesterday's birdcage fodder or whatever—I don't know where I'm going with that—if you want to become outmoded, I think you can start with starting to disrespect your audience and not give them your best. And I think you owe it to bring your A game. And quite frankly, this is what's going to be sticking around. And it's also our last opportunity to play with these characters that we've grown to love. You kind of create a family when you make a film, and there's a bunch of people, and they're funny and they're smart and they have lots of ideas and they want to play with different things. And so it's a way for us to also do things that are smaller ideas and kind of pack them in there. And I like DVDs that are just jam-packed with chocolaty goodness [laughs]. I think that, just like we don't analyze what we can get away with, or anything like that, in terms of the movie, we try to make movies that we want to see, we've made a disc that we would want to own.
Of all the extras on the DVD, what is your favorite?
Bird: I don't know. I have a lot of them. They scratch different itches. I really love the "Jack-Jack Attack" short. That was a blast to do. But I also like the film that we kind of "discovered," that Bob discovered, the failed pilot. I think our documentary is really a good documentary about the making of. I don't think it's just your standard-issue one. And I think our easter eggs are really cool and weird. And I love Sarah Vowell's little piece about doing the voice for Violet, because I think she's a brilliant writer and a really wonderful voice. And I mean that in the sense of the author. She's got a very specific take on life, and I loved that she accepted when I asked her to do a little kind of video essay for our film. So I just think it's full of really cool, weird stuff. And I love the disc as a disc as much as I love the movie as the movie.
Sarah Vowell was a great find, and she'd never acted before.
Bird: I was so happy that she agreed to go along with it. I think she's been asked to lend her voice to things before and her agent said, "She doesn't do this. She won't ever do it." And he let us call her anyway, and she immediately agreed to do it, and it was a blast. I think she's fantastic. I got a great kick out of working with her.
You have a very talented voice cast. How did they all come into place?
Bird: Sarah was kind of a new idea. I was listening to This American Life with Sarah. Samuel Jackson and Holly Hunter and Jason Lee, I'm just a tremendous fan of their work. And Wally Shawn. I admire all of those guys. And I'm very happy with our voice cast. I think Craig has an easy way with comedy, and yet when you need him to be dramatic and have some punch, he's there with it. So it was just an opportunity to work with people I admire.
The character of Mr. Incredible looks a lot like Craig T. Nelson, and has from the beginning. Did you always have him in mind?
Bird: Tony Fucile, other than myself, he has worked on the project the longest. And when I was first having the idea—I forgot that I said this, but he remembers—I described the dad as kind of a Craig T. Nelson type. Meaning that Craig is a big guy, he just feels like he's done sports. I don't know how to describe it. But he has just kind of an easy manner. There's a certain kind of person that plays sports. I played sports, and Tony played sports, when we were in high school. And Craig has that sort of physicality. But he kind of also could be your next-door neighbor. He also feels like he could be strong and kind of imposing if he needs to be. And so I didn't remember that I said that. And years later, when we were looking for voices, he seemed like a perfect voice. But I guess I had him kind of in mind all along.
You yourself provided the voice for one of the most memorable characters in the film: Edna Mode. Can you talk about how that came about?
Bird: At Pixar, when we do the story reels, we use people within the building, and we kind of cast within the building, just to kind of get a feeling for tempo, and to see if sometimes lines that read well don't sound good coming off the lips, and you have to adjust them a little bit. But we do these temporary voices, thinking that we're going to replace all of them. And sometimes people like them so much that they leave them in. Andrew Stanton, who wrote and directed Finding Nemo, did the voice for Crush, the surfer-dude turtle. And Joe Ranft has done voices, and Bob Peterson did Roz in Monsters Inc. So I'm not the first to do it. But I was intending to replace myself, and Andy Stanton and John Lasseter both said, "No, leave it in."
How did you come up with the voice?
Bird: I don't know. I was just thinking that she was small, and she's got a great design sense. She's powerful, and she's also technological. And I thought, "What countries are small, have a very big voice, have great design and technology?" And Germany and Japan come to mind. So I thought she's got to be half-Japanese and half-German. I don't know where the accent came out. It's some sort of weird combo of those two. I don't know. All I know is the most fun I had as a writer was writing her scenes.
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