Till now Brad Bird’s name has been synonomous with well… absolutely nothing. Except among raging movie geeks like me who happened upon the Iron Giant, a fantastic animated movie that seemed to be resoundingly ignored. The Iron Giant was Brad Bird’s first cinematic masterpiece. By teaming up with Pixar, it’s starting to look like he may have created his second in The Incredibles.

I’ll be seeing it tomorrow night, but in the meantime I’m still hungry for any scrap of Incredibles info I can get my hands on. If only I could have been on hand to interview Brad Bird. I wasn’t, but someone else was. Here’s a look at the latest round table interview with Brad on his work making The Incredibles.

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Brad: … I think that when people talk about people it seems like they aren’t actually human or something you know? And certainly there are some stories that have come through. I’ve been surprised that some people admit to me later that, "I was afraid of you originally because dadadadada" and its like they heard some story where one element was kind of true you know but it got blown out of proportion over the years so I think that you just deal with people then it gets very comfortable very quickly and it just becomes about the work.

I am the first virus to be let into this climate controlled atmosphere. I’ve known John for a long time and when they said they had been talking about me coming up there since Bug's Life, I mean I was huge fan of toy story so I was already pre-sold on them. I think that they liked Iron Giant a lot and it worked out. At the end of Iron Giant you know they had been talking with me about coming up there so I went up there and pitched them The Incredibles and they said, "lets make it." What was really surprising about the company, was that we got serious about talking right after Toy Story 2 and they had three successes in a row. Instead of saying, "we got it all figured out, and if you want to come up here, are the ten things you have to put in your story, and dadadada, we have the formula down, we rock, you don’t." Instead of saying that 'they said we are only afraid of one thing and that is becoming complacent,' we always want to throw ourselves off base, off balance, because it will force us to continuously grow and we want to try different kinds of films, and do things, and you know, they were kind of inviting me to come in, and you know, do it differently which I thought was incredibly amazing when they had had nothing but success doing it the way they were doing it. So it was wonderful cause I have been fired for shaking things up but I have never actually been hired for it, and this was with the full complicity with the heads of the company John Lasseter, Ed Catmull, and Steve Jobs.

Q: Do you see working with 3D as being an asset or a liability?
Brad: I felt that the most important things to any films no matter what the medium that you put it on whether its animated or live action are the same elements, its still character that you care about, a plot that involves you emotionally; that is surprising yet seems logical when you go back and think about what happened, and I think that that is the stuff that dictates whether a film succeeds or fails, the technology has very little to do with it.

Q: Where is the balance of real and feeling real? Can you explain and give your take on the matter?
Brad: Well I think that there is a segment of the CG community whose goal is to make photo realistic stuff. That makes sense to me as a goal if you are creating Golum and he has to share the screen with real actors. I thought Golum was an amazing achievement and you know I love The Lord of the Rings films. But it seems to me an odd goal to try to get something to be totally real, if they are just people. It seems to me that our goal was to make stylized people feel real rather than look real. I feel that there is a playfulness and caricature.

To good animation that I think is its asset and if you play towards that and take advantage of that then I think you are in a sweet spot that is wonderful and our goal was to do something that was very designee but makes you connect with it and feel like this is a real guy, I know this guy, or I know this woman or I know this kid, and forget that you are watching any contraption and get engaged emotionally.

One of the reasons why I love the median of film that it is all of the arts all combined into one. I love the arts and I feel like if art weren’t invented I would be a bag man or something I don’t know I just love the arts and the median of film making is all the arts combined together so I feel fairly comfortable moving from one thing to another and it was a lot of fun writing something and being able to follow it through.

Q: Can you tell me about Frozone and having Sam Jackson voice and what kind of flavor was put into him?
Brad: Well we were trying to deal with arctic types and we were usually trying to deal with character traits that would define the super power rather that the other way around. With Frozone, here’s a guy that is just absolutely cool all the time and I cant think of anybody cooler that Sam Jackson. Maybe that’s just me, but I think he is one of the best actors on the planet. Every time he’s in a movie I want to see, he has avoided type casting. You see him in something like the Red Violin and then he turns around and he’s in Pulp Fiction. He's kind of a chameleon he is also really funny a lot of people don’t know that about him. He’s got great comic timing as well. He’s one of my heroes and it was a pleasure to work with him.

Q: Was that part written with him in mind?
Brad: No it was not. I very seldom write with a particular actor in mind. Sometimes someone’s voice creeps in your head and you start picturing them saying a line as you write it. I kind of try to let myself to be free when I am writing something and when I am finished I ask whose is the best person for that. Pixar has sort of a philosophy of trying to find the best voice for a character whether or not that person is really famous or kind of famous or not famous at all we run the gauntlet on this film of having people that are very well known like Sam Jackson, Holly Hunter, Jason Lee and Craig T Nelson but we also have people like Brett Parker, who does the voice of Carrie the babysitter, is one of our animators. It is more important that we get something that is absolutely right for the character than any other consideration.

Q: What is the process you go through to finally pick the voice of a character?
Brad: Well we figure out who the character is then we design the character, we draw it up and we try a lot of things and, you know, how tall is the character, how fat is the character, how old is the character, you know what kind of clothes does the character wear. And once we have that we kind of do this thing where we actually take clips from films if the actor is well known or has done other work and we take sound clips and put them behind a still drawing of the character and see. We want to see how one character plays off another; so we'll have one image of Bob here and one image of Frozone here and then we'll try different combinations.

Q: Does your team brainstorm possible combinations?
Brad: We do, and I have the ones I think of first, and then its funny because we grab lines from various films and try to create these kind of abstract little dialogues that don’t make any since but they actually sound like a real full conversation sometimes. Even though they are different actors from different movies, and sometimes they are really funny because you can find a good response from a different movie but you see how the voices sound together. You don’t want two voices that sound a lot alike; they might be two really good actors but if their voices are the same sort of timber you don’t want that because then its like peanut butter and peanut butter instead of peanut butter and jelly. It’s just an interesting part of the process but we think of the character first and then find a voice we don’t build characters around voices.

Q: You had mentioned on radio and I appreciate that you had a Hispanic playing a non-Hispanic role, which was Elizabeth, and I feel she did a fabulous job.
Brad: Yea she was perfect. I am glad you liked it. Again, I did not pick her because she was Hispanic, I picked he because she had an exotic, really you know, toothy, fabulous voice that made you feel mysterious and all that. I think that the goal is just to transport the audience somewhere and I love Elizabeth’s voice and I think she is a terrific actress.

Q: Animation and dealing with adult themes for example the insurance scene in the Incredibles that’s the one the adults like.
Brad: I think that the way Ed Catmull described it we were at a Finding Nemo thing and I overhear Ed talking to someone about The Incredibles, which was next so people were starting to ask about it. He said if John Lasseter represents the center of Pixar Monster's Inc. skews a little younger, and The Incredibles skews a little older, but I don’t think they I think they are interested in trying a number of things under their umbrella, and there are things that people want to always connect with Pixar. They want always to be thought of as having strong characters and good stories and really breath taking worlds and all of that, but the stories are kind of up for grabs. Its whatever excites them so we did at some point have to hold hands and say we are doing something that’s a little different here. They were absolutely cool with that and they wanted it to be what it is; they didn’t want it to be something else.

Q: What is the evolution of the story it something that has been around for a while?
Brad: Yeah I have had the idea for about twelve years and I think that it came out of a time in my life when I was trying to make movies and had some frustration with that and at the same time, I had a new family and there was some anxiety about where best to put my time because I felt like if I did what I needed to do to break through in the movies I would be sliding my family and if I really was a great dad then I would never make it in the movies and I think and none of this was conscious. I had to kind of figure this out in retrospect, but I think that that is one reason I kept returning to this story, because that anxiety about meaningful work and the importance of family is kind of found in the film.

Q: What was your implication on the idea that good super heroes can die - I felt that they were immortal are you saying Santa Clause isn't real?
Brad: They do in life you know. I think a lot of our greatest men and women don’t last as long as we'd like them to and certainly nobody lives forever. I think its important to set that up because the audience should be, I think, a little bit off balance all the time. I think that I think there is a tendency, particularly when the scene and medium is a children’s medium, and I think seen falsely I think animation can tell any story under the sun. Some people call it a genre, and its not a genre, its an art form that can do any genre and I don’t think it should be limited by some idea that the audience exists between the ages of three and five and I certainly don’t think Pixar thinks that. I think Pixar thinks it wants everyone to see their films, which I like, but I think that there is a tendency to bubble wrap any conflict and particularly when people are seeing as part of their audience as kids and I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing for kids. One of the most traumatic films for kids that were ever made is Bambi. Talk to anyone "what was one of the traumatic things that you saw as a kid?" They always bring up Bambi because mom dies, but I wouldn’t change a frame of Bambi and I think if Bambi were made nowadays I think mom would come out at the end from the thicket at the end of the movie with a bandage around her head and she would say "its just a flesh wound son" which I think diminishes the power of the film. I think the message that everyone thinks of consciously of Bambi is that it is possible for mom to die before its her time to die but I think the underlying real theme of Bambi is that life goes on anyways, and that you will go on, you can survive and make something of your life, and I think that is an incredibly strong and powerful message. I don’t think we wanted to make an action movie where there were no consequences to the action.

Q: Talk about the challenge of being creative and yet staying focused?
Brad: you know it would make a great sound byte if I said that, " it was incredibly distracting." The truth of the matter is the gods on Mt. Olympus were so far up above the clouds that we in the trenches. Both Disney and Pixar guys are just happily going about our work and getting along with each other very well thank you. I felt a lot of support from Disney certainly in ushering this film out into the world. There is no one who could do it better than Disney particularly after my last experience where people weren’t really prepared for the film. I feel that I am getting the first class limousine limo ride now. All I know is that there are a lot of great people at Disney that work very hard and are very creative and were all working to make The Incredibles a success and you know well on us you know. I have nothing but good stuff to say.

Q: Why is there no short before this one?
Brad: There should have been. There is a short called Bounding that should have been there, but well I don’t know, maybe they were just shaving a couple of minutes off. I don’t know, it will be in the theaters there is a short called Boundin’ that was written and directed by Bud Luckey who does the voice of Rick Dicker in The Incredibles, the old kind of hound dog, government guy whose seen way too much. That guy is bud luck so there is another non-famous persons voice that was perfect.

Q: Is there a theme of technology without a heart in this film?
Brad: I think it is probable that I think everyone in this room is slightly suspicious of technology, aren’t you? I mean, its like any advance it can do wonderful things and it can use against you. You have the cure for cancer but it cans also makes you grow a second head, you know. Isn’t everything they develop this and is the wonderful thing and the only thing is you will vomit for a week and so they are always doing that and hey guess what, the atomic weapon, you know, lets get the bomb first so that Hitler doesn’t. We'll beat him to it so now we have the bomb and then is the world better? No, it certainly limited some wars in one sense, but I don’t sleep easier with the bomb so I think we are dealing with this all the time. The thing is, humans are more technologically advanced than they are spiritually advanced, and I think that is one of our conundrums of having a brain and it has been an issue in story telling and mythology as long as there have been stories. But what do you do with power, you know, if you create a weapon to have dinner but you can use it against your friend? It's that finally being able to advance but always in a positive way. This wrestling match that seems to happen and I think it will always be a current problem.

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