The most fun I ever had making a movie was the first 'Incredibles.'
— Brad Bird
Original movies of any size are an endangered species.
I always noticed that in art school, that grief was considered more profound than happiness. But why?
I think that children are very smart.
I don't know how anyone ever makes a good movie. It's a miracle every time.
Every movie, I find myself adrift at the beginning of the movie, and then I find my way through the dark forest.
For me, I try as much as possible to just think about being in the movie theatre, having the lights dim, and what would I want to see on the screen. That puts me in the frame of mind that made me want to be in the movie business to begin with.
You hope any film finds its audience and makes enough money that you get to make another one.
I have three boys. Sometimes my wife and I really have to battle to keep video games from encroaching.
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.
I have three kids and a wife, and any moments that aren't dedicated to working on this film in some way, or family, are immediately reserved for sleep.
I was not a big comic-book reader.
If you look at a lot of animated movies, they don't pay attention to how things move through space.
My kids love anime, but I don't show them the really graphic stuff.
That's not the part of the story that I'm interested in, anyway. The part that I'm interested in is all the personal stuff. I tried to base the powers on family archetypes.
Well what's funny is, again, people say they believed what was going on, but again, Bob's hands are about three times bigger than his feet. So these are very caricatured.
If you move something 10 pounds through space and then stop suddenly, there's a little overshoot. When you transfer weight from one leg to another, there's a certain way that it happens.
I see Walt Disney as kind of the epitome of a dreamer. He was a very forward thinker.
There's some great TV, but it's kind of like dessert: It's good to have once in a while, but you can't eat it all day, or you're gonna get really fat and probably die.
Making a movie is like you're behind the wheel, and you're driving through the obstacle course, and the pedal is down, and you can't brake.
History is rife with stories of directors who got so obsessed that their films went massively over budget - out of control.
Usually, people begin with very clear ideas of good movies, they begin with clear ideas about their characters, and then, as they do sequels, they seem to forget the characters more and more, and try to out-spectacle.
I think we kind of changed how people did humans in CG animation after. If you look at films before 'Incredibles,' they tended to be photorealistic in a clunky and ugly way, with pores in their skin and too many eyelashes. It's kind of disturbing. And since, the designs have gotten a lot more playful in a lot of people's films, not just ours.
There are a million logical reasons to not make a film, and I think if you get focused on all the critics or money or any of that other stuff, it never leads anywhere good.
The weird thing is, if I'd made 'The Incredibles,' shot-for-shot - exactly the same script, same timing, same shots - in live action, it would be perceived very differently, and somehow more adult than me doing it in animation. I find that fascinating and frustrating.
And it's not only films, I'm pretty unaware of anything that's going on in popular culture right now.
I got my heroes secondhand, from television and movies, to a certain extent.
I think if you have a really big, heavy person, there's a feeling of an invisible puppeteer jerking them around in space. They don't feel like they are moving themselves.
I'm definitely a centrist and feel like both parties can be absurd.
Look, I think if you talk down to a kid or aim specifically at a kid, most kids aren't gonna like it, really, because most kids can feel when you are being patronizing.
Oh yeah, I'm still employed at Pixar and I love it here.
We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there's some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You're making it too complicated.
Without naming names, I think other movies look more realistic but they feel less real.
Familiarity is all the rage. And if you're doing something that doesn't have its rhythms preset, you know, everybody's a little bit uncomfortable.
It's easier to sit and watch TV than it is to get up and read a book.
I never heard one word in Pixar about, 'Will kids get this?' I don't think it's important that they get everything. I think that it's important that they get engaged, interested.
At the time that George Lucas made the first 'Star Wars,' space was always presented as pristine. And he wanted to show that they may be fabulous vehicles, but they've been driven some miles. And, without anyone thinking about it or thinking that was going to help make it a pop hit, everybody believed in that world, because it looked inhabited.
I love the house in 'North by Northwest.'
I've storyboarded for things other people have shot. So thinking in shots and orchestrating shots is not foreign to me at all.
Other than Peter Jackson doing 'Lord of the Rings,' I don't get it when filmmakers follow up a movie with a sequel to the same movie. God bless 'em if they can be up for it, but that would drive me insane.
Every film has a lot of questions that you don't know the answer to, and you just hope that you figure it out. But I tend to like things that are hard; I don't know why.
But I don't just see the movie when I see the movie, I see all the great people who worked on it and all their hard work, because they could not have worked any harder.
I had about the biggest, longest wish list anyone could have, and 99 percent of what I wanted to get on the screen we got on the screen within our schedule and within our budget and within our resources.
I think it's the most extraordinary studio around. I would love to do my next project with Pixar.
If there are similarities, it's simply because the same thoughts that occurred to other people also occurred to me. I'd be astonished if anyone could come up with any truly original powers that were at all interesting any more.
Look, it's a mainstream animated movie, and how often are those considered thought provoking? It's meant to be a great time at the theater, but it's also designed to work on more than one level.
Ten-year-old boys move differently than middle-aged women, who move differently than athletic guys, who move differently than government bureaucrats.
Well I'm still working on The Incredibles. So I'm going to take a little time off. I've got a couple of tricks up my sleeve. I'm not ready to talk about them yet, but expect the unexpected.
Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can't create it if you don't have one.
