The Press Box - ‘Incredibles 2’ and Brad Bird’s Super-Powered Return to Pixar | The Big Picture (Ep. 483)

Episode Date: June 15, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey chats with Pixar original Brad Bird about returning to his animation roots with ‘Incredibles 2’ after making live-action movies like ‘Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol’ and ‘Tomorrowland.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And I don't sit there and immediately go, I must do another Incredibles because Incredibles was a hit, and I must follow a hit up with another one or else. That's not the way my brain works. It's more like a giant airplane hanger, and there are different projects being assembled in different parts of the chamber. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of the ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the most interesting filmmakers in the world. Brad Bird is a Pixar original. As a member of the animation giant's early brain trust,

he made classics like Ratatoui and The Incredibles. But his career started well before that with a hand-drawn cult classic The Iron Giant, and it later evolved into live action with Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, a personal favorite of mine, and then 2015's Tomorrowland. Now Bird is returned to his roots with Incredibles 2,

another story about the super-powered Parr family. This time, Bird tangles with parental frustrations, adolescent anxiety, and the burdens of responsibility. It's as fun and clever as the original and twice as flashy. I talked to Bird about how Pixar has changed over the years and how he bounced back from the criticisms of Tomorrowland. Here's Brad Bird.

Absolute delight to be joined by Brad Bird, the director of Incredibles 2, along with many other films you probably love. Brad, thanks for joining me. Pleasure. So, Brad, it's been more than 10 years since you released an animated film. Yes. And I was wondering if you could talk just at the top about maybe some things you learned working on live action movies

that you might have brought back to this new Incredibles movie. It's not been that abrupt. I think that I was kind of lucky in that I went from hand-drawn animation to CG animation before I did live action because CG kind of mimics the lenses and how they work. And when you lay things out, camera moves. It's a version of actual physical space. In terms of what I learn, I don't know. I think that there's a certain. momentum to films that is slightly scary. You know, the money is flying out the door a lot faster when you start shooting. And if something doesn't work, you have to have a plan B right away because you can't stand there and stroke your chin while money disappears, you know. Interesting. There's a sort of a momentum urgency that has helped. But I think any time you tell a story, whether it's in live action or animation or whatever medium, you learn something.

That said, I would also say that the more films I make, the more mysterious the process gets to me. Interesting. What was more mysterious this time around? Was there anything particular that you picked up on? No, it's just a miracle to me that movies ever work and get made. You know, when I was in college, you know, I had that sort of punk attitude of college students of like, you know, I'd be mad at certain filmmakers. Man, you really blew it because you didn't explore this possibility and that, you know. And everything is kind of like that.

Like, when I am king, I'll show you how to. And when you start actually making films, you become a lot more humble because there's so many things that can go wrong. There's so many forces at play, and the machinery is so big and sort of complex. And the medium is hard, you know, it's a dream kind of language. It's hard to, you know, kind of get your hands on sometimes. It's not logic. It's kind of movie logic. You know what I mean?

So the more films I make, the more like my hat's off to anyone that can get a film completed, regardless of its quality. It's like, if you can just get one done, you know, you have a certain. amount of my respect. Did you always know you were going to return to the animation format? Was that something that you needed to do? Yeah. And, you know, at the time when I went into live action, people were like, you're never coming back, man, you know, because now you're going to be taken seriously

because no one intakes animation seriously. And I was like, no, man, you know, if I get the opportunity, I'd love to just bounce back and forth between the mediums. I love if you go back to the press at the time, I said, no, I'd love to do more animation. I've been really consistent about that. I considered an amazing medium. And I have still more animated films that I'd like to do. But I don't want to only do that.

The next film that I want to do is mostly live action. Interesting. You've said for a while that you wanted to go back to the incredible story. So why now? It's not a now for me. I had the idea for this film when we were pushing the first film. The central idea, which was that Helen would get the, assignment rather than Bob. And then Bob would be having to stay home and cover the kids. And I also

knew I had the unexploded bomb of Jack Jack, that the audience knew that Jack Jack had multiple powers, but the Parr family did not. So I had several elements in place since the first film. And I don't sit there and immediately go, I must do another Incredibles because Incredibles was a hit, and I must follow a head up with another one or else, you know, it's just not, that's not the way my brain works. It's more like a giant airplane hanger, and there are different projects being assembled very slowly, you know, in different parts of the chamber. And one of them was a follow-up to The Incredibles. Another one was the films that I got involved with, and there's more that people don't know about, that I've also been thinking about a long time and you just kind of go wander over to one part of the shop and you tinker a little

and then you go, oh, and you find something over in another part and you just kind of keep adding and subtracting. And what I didn't have was the villain idea, the sort of superhero part of the story. I had the family part of the story, but I didn't have the superhero part of the story. And finally, I had this idea that I thought would work. And during Tomorrowland, I, what? when I was shooting tomorrow and I came back to Pixar and says, I think I have something that would be cool.

And I pitched it and they liked it. And we kind of started the ball rolling. And about eight months into or maybe six months into working on it, that idea didn't work. And it was a good idea, but it didn't interface. It didn't comment on the family the way I needed it to. And it wasn't as emotional as I wanted to be with the family. It was emotional in its own way.

It involved AI. Okay. How do you realize that something like that isn't really working and reset? It has to support the core of the movie, and the core of the movie is the family. Whatever story you had had to be emotional for the family. And so now I've got a release date and the machinery is moving and I'm committed and I don't have it. I was constantly reworking that one aspect. of the story, this sort of superhero plot.

And that changed and changed again. And I had multiple ideas that I still like and may use somewhere else. But the amount of writing I had to do for this that I threw out was just astonishing. And there was like two and a half other incredible movies. Is that significantly more than the two previous Pixar films that you directed? By ease, way, way more. Because we've heard stories over the last 20 years about the sort of the Pixar process and how if something isn't working, there's a team that works, you know, with figuring out how to make the story beats work effectively, and there's a collaboration that goes on.

But it sounds like you also have the ability to identify when something that you're creating isn't working and can scrap it and start it. Well, yeah, and, you know, I have help too. I have other people who go, you know, I don't know, you know, and I listened to them. I'd be a fool not to. Yeah, it's, it's, it was a slew of scenes that I, darlings that I killed on the way to this film. It's funny because when you made the first film, obviously superheroes were in the air. Sorry, that's a bad pun. But nevertheless, there were superhero movies and it was in the consciousness.

But now we're at this incredible, almost inflection point in popular culture with the way superheroes dominate. And so the movie itself, which has more superheroes in it, feels like it is additionally even more of a commentary. Was that something that you were thinking about? You know, that of course comes up. But I think that you would, I always felt like I will date the film. if I get too heavily into commenting on what's in the multiplexes now. So I always try to think one of the things that I loved about Steve Jobs was he was always looking 100 years from now, you know, and wanting, having the long view.

And I try to have that too. And don't want to do something that's just in the news now. I want to do something that will mean something to people. a hundred years from now. And that has to do with ancient things, you know. What did I'm focusing on Elastigirl and her daughter do for helping you tell the story? Because of Me Too and Times Up and all this stuff that's going on now, some people think that I've geared this film toward that. And it's like, no, this is a really old idea. Plus, Helen was a strong woman in the first movie. It's not anything new to the Incredibles

universe. But I was thinking about it more in terms of who. you know, this will really mess Bob up, you know. And just that there was entertainment to be had there and exploration of character. Because when the first movie begins, we see these interviews with them. And, you know, they're all talking about where they're at. And Bob says he'd like to settle down. And, you know, he was terrible at settling down. And Elaster Girl says, why would I settle down?

You know, I'm here with the big dogs, leave the saving of the world to the men. I don't think so. And then she is absolutely the best mom ever and settles down beautifully. And, you know, Frozone is saying, talking about playing the field, and he is so married when the film gets underway. It was a way of saying we're wrong about our own lives. and so Helen has clicked in and, you know, dove in deep with the family. And she kind of has to be urged out the door in this film. But the second that she's out again, she remembers what she loved about it.

And I thought that was interesting, too, you know. So it was really more about, you know, getting the characters uncomfortable and exploring that. We're just rewatching some of your work. It was very cool to see kind of a mirror image of a train sort of tipping in the first film. And then there's a sort of a train tipping over a ledge in the second film. And it seemed like, I wasn't sure if it was an Easter egg or not, but it did strike me. And I was wondering what it's like to sort of nod towards something in the past, but then not repeat yourself. And how do you think about that?

Well, sometimes other people point out what you, you know, the patterns. And when you're making it, you're just trying stuff. and rejecting it and stuff like that. One of my favorite screenwriting heroes is Robert Town, and I've gotten to know him. And, you know, Chinatown is considered like a perfect screenplay and all the how-to-write screenplay books. It's always cited.

And, you know, they say it perfectly follows the structure of, you know, this happens on page 23, and this is set up and then followed up on page 87. And you go to Robert and ask him how it was, and he's going, I didn't know what I was doing. I kind of wanted to talk about, you know, Los Angeles in this point of time, and I bumped into the wall a lot, and I didn't know what I was doing. And then I had, you know, the Fay Dunaway character live,

and Roman wanted her to die, and I hated him for years and thought he was wrong, and now I realized he was right. In other words, the guy who actually did the perfect screenplay, had no idea when he was doing it and made a lot of mistakes and, you know, it kind of came out on a more instinctual level. I think that's kind of the way it is. It's like you, I don't recognize all of my own patterns. I have to have it sort of pointed out to me. I think that I'm, you know, going someplace, you know, completely new.

And someone later points out, well, you know, you did something kind of like that in, you know, one of your other films. And I go, oh, uh-huh. What about the idea of kind of themes and even like allegory, you know, the Iron Giant is a movie that's like aging really well, right? And a lot of people are discovering that movie now, in part maybe because of Ready Player 1. Good. That's very good. But that's a movie that has very strong ideas and it feels like they're underlined in a way. Is that something that you are actively thinking about when you're, you know, brainstorming the story and then talking to animators and the team that helped make the movie?

Sure. We're always looking for ways to simplify and things and certain rules that help us to whittle away the inessential, sort of. And, you know, one of the rules that I gave the crew in the first Incredibles, which we also have in this one, is you don't do something fantastic very long without doing something mundane. And you don't do something mundane very long without doing something fantastic. So when I was pitching the first film, a scene that I always mentioned was where Helen's sneaking into the secret, the villain's lair, and it's super high tech and cool, and she's great at infiltrating it. But she passes a shiny surface and sees that she's gained a few pounds and kind of goes, I don't know, I've got to do something about that. You know, so there's this very mundane sort of human moment in the middle of this fantastic sort of world. and that's sort of a wheelhouse that we like to explore.

Can you tell me a little bit about character creation? How do you decide, because there are a lot of new characters in this movie, how do you decide kind of what are the essential elements for building a character? Because so much of this story especially goes back to those characters that you've designed. I would love to tell you I have some magic formula, but the way that keeps this process more simple for me is I just go, I'm in a beautiful old movie theater. The lights dim, the curtains open, and I see what?

What do I want to see? And then I find something, and then I just keep adding to it. And I started, there was another film idea I had of sort of a magical fantasy figure who was kind of over the hill and was reduced to reenacting past victories in a shopping mall, you know, with kind of props, you know, as a way to kind of make a living. And, you know, I like that idea. But I said, what if that person was a superhero, you know, and what if he's, like, passed his prime? And, like, why has he passed his prime? And are they illegal? Can he not be a superhero anymore? Has he lost it? And you just kind of keep asking questions and answering them in the best way you can. I love that idea of just picturing yourself watching something on a screen, though. That's a really smart way of approaching. Well, listen, the business can stifle any joy easily if you get into the business. And, you know, the press is often nasty about it.

You know, this film is tanking and there's almost a glee in it. And it's like, I'm not rooting for anyone to tank, you know. You know, it's like there's a nasty side to the business. And that part you want to kind of get paid for, you know, suffering. Right. But the part where you make stuff with talented people and you are playing in a big sandbox, that I would do for free, you know, it was like that that's just a joy. Did the reception of Tomorrowland kind of recalibrate how you approach some of this stuff? A little bit. I felt like people were expecting one movie and for whatever reason we delivered

another. I think people were expecting that we were going to spend the whole movie in Tomorrowland. and we're disappointed when we get glimpses of it. It's more of a road film than it is inhabiting tomorrow. Right. And, you know, yeah, that was a little bit. You know, I think we did some really interesting things that people hopefully will look at in the context that we meant them. It was seen as kind of a scolding for liking apocalyptic films, which totally can totally, confused, Damon Lindenloff and myself.

You know, we were sitting there. We love apocalyptic films. You know, I love the Road Warrior films and, you know, a Terminator 2 and all of that. But it's not the only future that we can imagine. Is that it? Were you eager after that experience to get another film out? I was going to specifically ask you about what it's like to have had this incredible career and several films that people love, but still just six director, future director

credits. Boy, I better get to work. Well, obviously, you're working hard. But is it so frustrating to have to wait many years to get something out into the world? Sure. I'm always looking to speed it up. You know, Chris Nolan manages to do really big, ambitious films, but on a fairly brisk clip for how complicated the films are. So I would love to pick up the pace, you know.

But, you know, they took a year off the production of our film because we got moved up because Toy Story 4 was having a story, you know, complications. And that's not unusual for Pixar. I mean, Incredibles was supposed to be after cars. And we came together a little more quickly than the story reels for cars. So that's a normal thing. But, you know, we did move a little faster. And yet, you know, in some way or another, it's three years later.

So, yeah, sure, it takes too long. I agree. Do you have any, like, tricks that I can pull? I don't know a damn thing. Because I'd love to pick it up. I wish I knew how you do, you guys do what you do. Speaking of that, though, has Pixar the way that movies are made at Pixar changed in any significant way since you sort of left your full-time post there? The technology is obviously way more responsive, quick.

For me, the biggest breakthrough on this film, and it's not going to sound exciting, but it was huge, is we're able to do fast. rough renders. So just imagine a really grainy version of the finished frame. It's grainy, and we don't intend it to ever be like that, although it would not be in a decent look for something, but it enables you to see what the lighting is like immediately. And you can respond to it. And before they would work and have to wait days, you know, sometimes before they could see how the lights were interacting. They would set all the lights up, having a good guess of how it was going to look. But they couldn't confirm that, you know, until they got a complete render. And being able to get quick, rough renders is super useful. So you can hone the visuals in a way that

you couldn't in those days. And the rigs, which are the character sort of puppets that the animators use are way more responsive and intricate and you have better controls. So for the animators, it's like they're these amazing drivers and we have much better cars now for them to go. But they still need drivers. A car is useless without a driver. And the animation talent at Pixar now is just through the roof. That's a great segue. This is not blowing smoke. I think is the best action movie I've seen in a long time. Oh, cool. Great.

I'm very curious how you do that. You're not going to qualify it and say animated. I'm not doing that. I love that. So the action sequences, and I'm a bit of a snob about this stuff, are awesome. Really, really, really cool and well done. How do you do that? How do you design an action sequence, whether animation or anything?

I was lucky enough to work with some old Disney Masters, and they, you know, as a kind of a kid. And they got into my head. that they were eternally students. When they were at the height of their powers and these guys are in their 60s and they're the best in the world, they still acted like they had a lot to learn. That made a huge impression on me.

So I feel like I'm a student. And hopefully we'll be until the end of my days because there's always something you can learn. And my heroes in terms of action staging are Spielberg and James Cameron and George Miller and, you know, a few films of John McTiernan, like Diehardt, I think, is just an amazing action movie. For sure. And they all, one of the things they have in common is that they are super aware of geography,

of where everything is in relation to everything else, and they're constantly updating the audience in a way that's artistic and full of flair, but they're constantly updating, like, now this person's near the window. now this is happening, and they can do it at lightning speed. It's actually really hard to be both clear and fast. A lot of people can't do it. That is the thing that jumped out to me is that these sequences are really coherent. You understand what's happening, which is not true of a lot of action movies.

Thank you very much. Obviously, there's storyboarding naturally, but do you, in your head when you're writing a script, are you plotting every beat in a sequence like this? It depends on the scene. If we're to use the first Incredibles as an example, there are some scenes that I write incredibly specifically where I write every action beat and that was like the sequence we called

the 100 mile dash, which is where dash is running through the jungle and all that stuff. I had every beat of that was written in the screenplay. And then the end sequence where the robot is through the city was the opposite. I had the key story beats that we needed to see. Bob needs to save the kids once, you know, from getting crushed.

Frozone needs to enter the scene here. I had those kind of general beats, but I kind of turned it over to Mark Andrews and the story crew and said, we need to get together and just throw ideas around and here's the overall shape, but all the specifics are up for grabs. and people would just rain down ideas and then you kind of grab them and throw your own in and kind of sculpt it. So it just depends on the scene. But there's a fight between Helen and the screenslabor

in this movie that was really difficult to do. And we even brought in a stunt guy, a coordinator and designer that I worked with on Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland named Rob Alonzo, who loves animation and has studied a little bit of animation. But he's also a really good fight choreographer. And he came in and talked to our animators and our storyboard artists, like this is what someone would do if they had to fight blind. And they would try to find a corner so that they would.

They can limit the areas that they're being attacked from. And so hopefully there's a logic to the scene. But, you know, every scene is different. That is a great answer. I had a feeling that there was something tactile going on here because you can feel like there's something. There is a particular kind of choreography brought to that animation. There's also allusions to stuff that you love in this movie,

or I presume that you love, you know, in the Outer Limits and Dementia 13 and things like that. Johnny Quest. Johnny Quest, of course. And you've done that before. to. With those things, are those just fun for you or are those things that the animators are aware of? And you're like, we're pulling from some of this stuff. You know, these are inspirations. Well, I have a rule in animation that if somebody's watching a TV, if it's that kind of, if it's an animated film that is sort of relatively contemporary. And they're watching TV, then what's on the TV needs to be animated too.

We also had an old movie that we used to soundtrack of, but we animated the images, which is the old movie that Jack Jack is watching. That's right. The soundtrack is from an old movie, and it was just a perfect soundtrack to animate to. But the outer limits, there was something about taking control of your televisions that I thought was thematic. It also scared the living beep out of me as a child, but I couldn't turn it off. I would just kind of leave it on but hide from it sort of. Yeah, I know that feeling. But I only use the opening of the Outer Limits, which is very graphic and fits in an animated film.

Once the show started and it was live action, I wouldn't use it. Or I'd animate it. But it was to me, it was thematic because it had kind of connected with the screen sliver. And Johnny Quest, that is exactly the vibe that. The Incredibles is created from as the excitement that I had when I was a kid and I first saw Johnny Quest. And also, for geeks, people don't remember that Johnny Quest, which is always described as Saturday morning cartoon cartoon, cartoon, which is always described as Saturday morning cartoon. Cartoon, was a primetime show when it first went on the air.

It was, so it was kind of for adults, too. It was a cartoon show for adults, how radical. And people died in it, you know. It was not like the animated shows now where people fight endless. mindlessly, but no one ever suffers any consequences. Right. Real stakes. Yeah.

And, you know, there's a, he had a cool friend who had, could levitate and he had a bodyguard who had a fling with a woman named Jezebel Jade who might be kind of evil, but we don't know. And, and, you know, Dr. Zinn? And there's, you know what I mean? It just had, it was mature. And, but it was also pulp crazy goodness of every. single thing that makes a good adventure, you know?

Do you show stuff like that before you start working on a movie like this to the people that will be working on it and say, this is where we're going with this? I used to. I mean, we looked at Day the Earth Stood still when I was doing Iron Giant. But nowadays, I kind of know everybody and we're all movie crazed, you know, people. And so you just have to say something. And everybody goes, oh, yeah, yeah, you know. So it's more that kind of vibe.

me. A couple more things for you. Yeah. Tell me about something else you want to do, because you have one of the more interesting and diverse careers of any director that I've talked to. So what's a kind of story you really want to tell? I have an animated film that I've wanted to do, called Ray Gunn, that I don't want to do it right away, but I would still be interested in making that. I have an idea for a Western that I want to do that I'm really excited about. And it's kind of a weird Western. And I have an idea for a musical that I want to do. Great. And, you know, it's kind of all over the map. Do them all. You know, I got to get going. Why am I sitting around here? I'm sorry. We're just trying to get people to see The Incredibles, too. Okay. Last question. Brad, I end every

episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they've seen. So what is the last great thing that you have seen? I really liked that quiet place. That was fun. What did you like about it? Well, I liked that it went in the opposite direction. A movie seemed to be getting louder and more hysterical, and it went in the absolute opposite direction at knowing that it was a highly exploitable thing to be silent.

And I thought that was incredibly clever and very smart to do in sort of a horror film. I'm not a huge horror film guy. It kind of has to, I kind of have to meet the film halfway. My films tend to be, that I enjoy in that genre, tend to be kind of, you know, horror people would consider them vanilla, you know. Like Jaws and Alien and, you know, I like those films. Sure. So I just thought that was really smart. I saw, you know, I see, you know, I can.

tell you I saw a Blythe Spirit, the David Lean film that I'd never seen. Yeah. I'd love to tell you I loved it, but I kind of thought it was kind of overrated. Interesting. Was it the first time you'd seen it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But I saw a brief encounter also fairly recently, and I thought that was really great. One of my favorite movies in all time. Brad, this has been great. Congratulations on Incredibles, too. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture.

I'll be back next week with an episode with J.A. Bayona, the director of Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. I also made an appearance on the Bill Simmons podcast talking about the movie Hereditary. I'm also on the rewatchables podcast talking about the great Jurassic Park on its 25th anniversary. Please check out the ringer.com to read all about The Incredibles 2. Pixar. We ranked all those movies and there's a whole lot of other great film writing. So please check that out. And please listen next week. Thanks.