Brad Bird Quotes

People think of animation only doing things where people are dancing around and doing a lot of histrionics, but animation is not a genre. And people keep saying, "The animation genre." It`s not a genre! A Western is a genre! Animation is an art form, and it can do any genre. You know, it can do a detective film, a cowboy film, a horror film, an R-rated film or a kids` fairy tale. But it doesn`t do one thing. And, next time I hear, "What`s it like working in the animation genre?" I`m going to punch that person! (From the audio commentary on the DVD for The Incredibles (2004))

Animation is about creating the illusion of life. And you can`t create it if you don`t have one.

I reject that whole point of view - that animation is a children`s medium. The way people talk about it is, well, hey, it`s a good thing I have kids, because now I get to see this. Well, hey, no, man! You can just go and see it. There`s no other art form that is defined in such a narrow way. It`s narrowminded, and I can`t wait for it to die.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 was not a big comic-book reader.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ten-year-old boys move differently than middle-aged women, who move differently than athletic guys, who move differently than government bureaucrats.

If you look at a lot of animated movies, they don`t pay attention to how things move through space.

Well, I like superheroes, but I`m not one of those guys who knows what issue 437 is of "Whatever." And I think people assume that because The Incredibles is about superheroes, that I know all that stuff. I kind of got it second-hand, from the movies. I`m happy to hear from anybody that does know that stuff, but I`m fairly oblivious to that really large volume of comic book lore that`s been generated.

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.

And it`s not only films, I`m pretty unaware of anything that`s going on in popular culture right now.

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.

Really, really little kids should not see this movie. They should wait till they get older. We`re getting some reactions from people who were disappointed that their four-year-old was a little freaked out by it. Well, I don`t want to compromise the intensity in order to please a four-year-old. (on `Incredibles, The`)

Oh yeah, I`m still employed at Pixar and I love it here.

Even in hand drawn animation, humans are widely considered to be the most difficult to execute, because everybody has a feeling for how they move.

I think all movies are an illusion, whether they are live action or animation. And I think the best special effect that people don`t pay enough attention to is caring about the characters who are going through the set pieces. If you can be invested in the characters that you are putting in danger, then you can amp up the pressure, and it really means something because people are rooting for them to survive. Characters are the special effect.

Without naming names, I think other movies look more realistic but they feel less real.

I love, love, love the medium of film. But that is the strange dichotomy of film, is that the medium is so unbelievably magical and wonderful, and the business is so--UGH! It`s kind of the price you pay. Some friend of mine said you`re not getting paid to work in the medium; you`d almost do that for free. But you`re getting paid to suffer all the, you know-(Laughs).

(About Ed Catmull, John Lasseter and Steve Jobs at Pixar): "I refer to those guys as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Ed, who invented this cool medium and is the designer of the human machine that is Pixar, is the Father. John, its driving creating force, is the Son. And you-know-who is the Holy Ghost."

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.

I got my heroes secondhand, from television and movies, to a certain extent.

There is a contingent of the digital-effects community to whom that is the holy grail - to create photographically real humans. To me that is the dumbest goal that you could possibly have. What`s wonderful about the medium of animation isn`t recreating reality. It`s distilling it.

When I write things, often at the moment I`m writing, I`m thinking of camera angles; it`s not a separate part of the process, it kind of comes out all at the same time. So I have really strong opinions about how things are presented, but at the same time I`m thinking about things that I want to present. It`s like when somebody speaks, they assemble words in a certain way, but it`s not always that conscious, it just comes out. That`s the way film is for me.

I think there`s a tendency (among some animators) to wink at the audience so much that you feel that you`re above the world that you`re presenting-like the filmmaker doesn`t really believe in the world that he`s putting on screen. And there`s a safety in that, because if you try to make the audience feel something besides comedy, like if you try to make them feel moved, you risk looking really silly if it doesn`t work.

I think it`s the most extraordinary studio around. I would love to do my next project with Pixar.

My kids love anime, but I don`t show them the really graphic stuff.

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.