Brad Bird



Brad Bird is a screenwriter/director from Kalispell, Montana. His experience lies mostly within the realm of animation, and he's also known as one of the directors to actually bob and weave his way around the concept of the Animation Age Ghetto, due to most of his works looking aesthetically cartoony, but having a maturity and depth that rivals most live-action pieces. Bird got his start working as an animator on Animalympics, Disney's The Fox and the Hound (film) and Martin Rosen's The Plague Dogs, and moved on to work with Steven Spielberg in his Amazing Stories anthology series, notably with a short titled "Family Dog". He got his big break after he managed to grab the attention of Tracey Ullman, and began work alongside Matt Groening on a crude animated series that premiered on her show, called The Simpsons.

Bird's most recent claims to fame include two films that captured his love of the classic comic book stories, The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, the latter of which was the beginning of his tenure at Pixar. His last film was the Pixar-produced Ratatouille. His latest directing gig is the fourth installment of the Mission Impossible films, which is his live-action debut. The film has received extremely positive reviews, particularly for its action scenes.

"Everyone in Hollywood says they wish they could do it like Pixar, but they really don’t. There’s no secret at Pixar, but there is a belief in letting people pursue something with passion and take chances, and most of Hollywood, really, doesn’t like that. It’s too scary. Some studio executives will say they love obsessive creators who take risks, but really most of them would rather play it safe. Projects cost a lot of money and people would rather follow patterns they know and make things safe and accessible. Hollywood wants there to be a math formula for making hit films. To make something really great and different and interesting means taking risks and following these ideas in your head."
 * Berserk Button: Bird has vowed to punch out the next person who calls animation a "genre", as he believes it is a medium that can tell any kind of story.
 * Cross-Dressing Voices: When he was working on The Incredibles, he had a very specific idea in mind for how the superhero fashion designer Edna Mode was to sound. He demonstrated this for the voice actress he hired, who then told him to just take the role himself- he had it down cold.
 * Deconstructor Fleet: It would appear that Bird loves to take his childhood to pieces and play with the bits.
 * Reconstruction: But then he puts them back together better than ever.
 * The Incredibles: In the first few minutes, he shows the negative effects of superheroes/villains on society, buries them Watchmen-style, then shows how difficult normal life is for supers like the Silver age. Then he gives them a villain to fight and shows that heroes aren't the problem.
 * The Iron Giant: A war-bot's giant metal hand shouldn't be able to save kids who have fallen three to four stories... unless it deliberately matches their speed and then slows down safely.
 * Fiery Redhead
 * Hot-Blooded: Making-of videos show him at his most passionate (which you really need to be for filmmaking).
 * Take That: Has this to say about other studios who try to be like Pixar:


 * What Could Have Been: Brad Bird planned on doing an animated film of Will Eisner's The Spirit. An animated clip made for it was found by Will Einser; he then asked to see the person who animated this sequence. And it was none other than Brad himself. He had a script for an animated feature of The Spirit. This was turned down by Hollywood executives. Although they did like the script, they couldn't picture it working out as a cartoon. One can wonder what would have happened if this got made instead of Frank Miller's take on the comic. While an attempt to to save the film is at hand.