Incredibles 2 once again showcases the prestigious acting and directing skills of Brad Bird.
Of course, anyone who has seen Bird’s work on the animated films “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille” and “The Iron Giant,” or his forays into live action with “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” and “Tomorrowland,” know just how talented the writer and director is.
Bird honed these talents during his nine year stint on “The Simpsons,” where he worked as an Executive Consultant and directed two episodes, too. The skills Bird picked up on “The Simpsons” have stayed with him during his feature film career, and during our recent conversation about “Incredibles 2” he explained how they impacted his approach during production.
“The film just kept morphing and morphing as it went along. If scenes didn’t immediately serve the core concept of the role switch in the family then I had to kill it.”
“So my time on ‘The Simpsons’ was very helpful because there was always another story coming down the conveyor belt and you couldn’t linger over any of the decisions, and you had to act immediately and that came in very handy on this. “
However, when I asked Bird just how influence working on “The Simpsons” has had on his career, he insisted that it is not something he is “consciously aware of,” but did admit, “I just know I had a really great time working on that show.”
“I was originally brought in to not just consult on it but help them with the animation part. James Brooks, Sam Simon and Matt Groening liked this thing I did called ‘Family Dog,’ which was this thing I did for Steven Spielberg’s ‘Amazing Stories’.”
“My original deal was to write an episode as well. But once I got on it I was like, ‘The writing is so covered, there is nothing I can show you in writing that you don’t know better.’”
“But where I did think they needed help was in converting these sophisticated ideas into a visual scene. Even though the animation wasn’t elaborate, the staging and the cutting of these scenes was elaborate, particularly for a TV show.”
“Incredibles 2” is now in cinemas everywhere, and it is, well, incredible.
