Nancy Cartwright.

Brad Bird is the director of the Academy Award-winning films Ratatouille and The Incredibles, from Pixar Animation Studios. Prior to joining Pixar, Bird wrote and directed the critically acclaimed 1999 animated feature, The Iron Giant, which won the International Animated Film Society’s Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Theatrical Feature.

Bird’s credits include acting as executive consultant on The Simpsons and King of the Hill, the two longest running and most celebrated animated series on television. He also created, wrote, directed and co-produced the Family Dog episode of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, and co-wrote the screenplay for the live-action feature *batteries not included.

Brad is currently preparing his next project, 1906, a live-action film.

Nancy Cartwright: When you were 11-years-old, you had taken a tour of the Walt Disney Studio and announced that you would one day be a part of their animation team.

Brad Bird: I didn't really announce I was going to be an animator. A friend of my parents went to Oregon State University with Disney composer George Bruns, and introduced me to him. Mr. Bruns was nice enough to offer to give me a tour through Disney and I immediately (with my parent's indulgence) took him up on it. George took me through the studio and introduced me to many Disney animation legends. When I met Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, George said, "Brad's just started his first animated film." I remember Frank giving this look, this patient smile that said: "We've heard this one before. This kid will get bored with it in three weeks tops." Those guys were shocked when I sent them a completed 15-minute film three years later.

NC: What was it about your childhood that attracted you to animation?

Brad Bird.

BB: Like most kids, I loved cartoons and watched them constantly on television. I loved their broadness and imagination, that they felt so vital. I was also an enormous fan of the Walt-era animated features, which I found spellbinding. I started drawing at the age of three, and although my drawings were about average for a three-year-old, what was unusual about them is that they were sequential: they depicted different actions meant to be viewed in a certain order -- like a comic strip. I had the drawings in a pile and I would show the pictures while I did voices and such and explained the story out loud. I didn't figure this out until much later, but in my own crude, three-year-old way, I was trying to make movies from the very beginning.

NC: By the time you were 14-years-old, you completed your first animated short. How did you do this?

BB: I completed it right before my 14th birthday. One drawing at a time. It helped immensely to have two very supportive parents. I remember at one point I was deep into the film and losing steam. My mom told me about this big nationwide Kodak movie contest, and she said if I completed my film I could enter it. I sparked to the idea at first, then immediately became pessimistic; the film was only half-done at that point, and it would be a hell of a lot of work to finish it. My mom looked at me and nodded, saying, "Yeah, you're right: you'd never be able to finish the film in nine months." I became outraged and said, "What do mean I COULDN'T??" I got all fired up and instantly threw myself into making it happen. My mom knew exactly how to press my buttons. Of course, I went right down to the wire finishing it in time, and at the very end I was handing my mom all the pieces of film in the correct order and she was splicing them together. We made the deadline in the nick of time and the film won several awards... and most importantly, got Disney Studios all excited about me.

NC: Did you have a little studio in your basement/attic?

BB: Yeah! Basements always seem to be the place, aren't they? There was an empty space behind a wall that my dad made into a little workroom. He'd bought a used 8mm camera that was capable of shooting one frame at a time for me, and he jury-rigged it into a camera enlarger stand pointing down at a place where I'd slide my drawings into position to photograph. I got a cheap piece of pressboard and pinned up some cels from Disney features I'd bought at Disneyland (they were only a couple of bucks apiece back then) to inspire me. It was my own little hole-in-the-wall animation room.