A Gun with a Soul: Brad Bird on The Iron Giant

For Brad Bird, the experience of directing The Iron Giant has been a schizophrenic one, owing to the film's unanimously positive reception by critics tempered by empty theaters and a missed ride on Hollywood's promotional gravy train. This story has a happy ending, however, because quality is its own reward, and the video and DVD release of The Iron Giant will certainly give the film a much-deserved new lease on life. Like the Iron Giant itself, you can't keep a good movie down.

At 37, Bird is at the top of his game. An animator since age 11, he was still a teenager when he was mentored by Milt Kahl, one of the legendary "Nine Old Men" among veteran Disney animators. Since he created, wrote, and directed the popular "Family Dog" episode of Steven Spielberg's TV series Amazing Stories , Bird has become one of the stars of his profession, having served as an executive consultant on the hit animated TV series King of the Hill , The Simpsons , and The Critic . Currently at work on his live-action directorial debut, Bird took some time out to discuss The Iron Giant and its gradual climb up the slippery slope of success.

Amazon.com: The spirit and intention of The Iron Giant is true to Ted Hughes's book, though the adaptation is quite different from the book's basic plot. I understand that you had some interaction with Hughes before he died in 1998?

Brad Bird: I didn't have any direct interaction, which I regret terribly. He did read a draft of the script and wrote a very nice note, kind of poetically written, very Ted Hughes-y, and he was really supportive. We didn't know that he was sick--he kept it very quiet--and we were all stunned when he died.

Amazon.com: The "villain" in Hughes's story--the dreaded "space-bat-angel-dragon"--is not in the film at all. Did you decide to combine the dragon with the Iron Giant, making him both benevolent and threatening?

Bird: What I said in my first meeting with Warner Brothers is that the book is wonderful and as a book, you shouldn't change a word. But as a theatrical experience it felt wrong to move away from the relationship between the boy and the giant, so I wouldn't have the bat. Then I pitched them with the question, "What if a gun had a soul?" and that put the hook in them. Then I pitched the Kent character as an archconservative warmonger and the Dean character as a cool 1950s bohemian guy, and setting the story during Sputnik's brief time in space, and all of that. Luckily they went along with me.

Amazon.com: Did those ideas spring from your own childhood?

Bird: No, I'm too young to have any memories of that period of time. About 10 years ago or so I saw the documentary The Atomic Cafe [available on VHS], which had some wonderful, really obscure educational films and footage from that time. And I think recently I'd seen Quiz Show, which opens with a report about Sputnik on the radio, announcing that "all is not well with America," and for some reason that stuck with me. The bomb had changed our perspective, and the future was no longer this perfect thing. Every upside had a dark underbelly. I thought it was a good atmosphere to drop a big robot into, and the Kent character and the Dean character are two sides of the American coin. Dean's on the cool, artistic side, and Kent is on the side that we aren't happy about, full of fear and paranoia.

Amazon.com: Was it always intended to have the robot computer-animated?

Bird: Yes. We were nervous about it, though, because we felt that the combination of conventional and computer-generated animation had never been done really successfully. So I said to the animators, "Imagine that it's 1940 and we're at Disney Studios. You have a lot of artists and an ample budget, but it's 1940. And how would you draw this giant, if it were hand-drawn?" That governed a lot of decisions and gave them a context for how intricate they made the design. We had to create a computer program that varied the lines just a tiny bit--we called it "wobble," although that's really a simplistic term for what it is. We could vary the wobble depending on the needs of the shot. The wobble should never draw attention to itself--it just shouldn't look absolutely perfect. And we went through quite a bit of trouble to make it so you wouldn't notice it.

Amazon.com: You're an animator, so pardon this blasphemous question, but was this project ever considered for live action with CGI effects?

Bird: Some of the animators thought of it. One guy that I wanted to work on it said, "Well, this could be done in live action," and I'll say to you what I said to him: The days where you do something in animation simply because that's the only way it can be done, are over! When I first started in animation, there were some old guys that said, "If you can do it in live action, don't do it in animation!" And I always used to take off my coat and say, "Put 'em up," because if you genuinely believe that, then you're guaranteeing that animators are obsolete. Live action can do anything now. It can make animals talk. It can make dinosaurs come alive. But that has never been the reason to do something in animation, simply because live action couldn't do it.

The reason to do animation is caricature. It's the same reason that photography didn't render portraiture obsolete. It's because you can draw things in a way that is not trying to reproduce reality, but more the essence of reality. That's why a Hirschfeld drawing of a person looks more like that person than the person does. That's what animation is great at, and it's doing it not only in design but also in movement. Exaggeration is not always doing more; it's sometimes doing less. And that is why animation will always be around, because it's caricature. When it's done well, you are being delighted 24 times a second.

Amazon.com: You assembled a terrific voice cast for the film. When you pay close attention to Hogarth's mom, you realize that Jennifer Aniston gives a very nuanced performance that's both comedic and emotionally expressive.

Bird: It is. And I don't think people think of her first, when they think of a mom. But she had a wonderful sort of stop/start quality that is both sort of assertive and vulnerable at the same time. She took what could have been a typical role and really brought it to life.

Amazon.com: When The Iron Giant was released, there was a vast gulf between the film's unanimously good critical reception and its poor performance at the box office. Now the film has won nine Annie awards, and the video and DVD release stands to be a huge success. This must fill you with very mixed emotions.

Bird: It's been very schizophrenic. Everybody I knew who saw the film said they'd demand that all of their friends and family go see it. They were wildly enthusiastic, and then you'd go to a cinema and there'd be 10 people in the audience… but they'd all be applauding during the closing credits!

Amazon.com: In your opinion, what went wrong?

Bird: The main problem was the studio's delay in giving us a release date. That was a decision from the very top, and it very much crippled us. With animation, you have to start making promotional deals at least a year in advance of the film's release. We would attract people like Burger King and they would get interested. And then they would ask the question that we came to loathe, which was, "When are you coming out?" And we'd go, "We don't really have a release date" and the deal wouldn't happen. And we begged and begged to get a release date, but we weren't given one until we had had successful test screenings, and by that point we were pretty near done! Every single animated feature in the last eight years has had advance posters and trailers, and we were late in all of that. And so they did spend adequate dollars, but that late in the game you're getting thirty cents on every dollar you spend.

Amazon.com: But now the film will be discovered on video and DVD by all those who missed it.

Bird: My hope is that it turns out to be a great investment for Warners--that the film will continue to hang around and, 10 years from now, people will hopefully still be enjoying it. This is a business, and I would love to reward Warners for rolling the dice on me. I do feel that we were not handled the greatest way, which Warner Brothers feels now, too. Hollywood constantly makes these rules, and then the rules are broken, but the rule at that time was, "Animation is a fad that's ending." And then, last winter, four animated films made a lot of money, and suddenly the new wisdom was, "Remember what we just said? Forget it." The main thing is that we got to make the film the way we wanted to, which I don't think I could have gotten at any other studio.

Amazon.com: The film has an ending that is absolutely appropriate and doesn't feel like any kind of a cheat, and yet it does set up a possible sequel.

Bird: Well, that was never my intention. My intention was just to make a very satisfying ending for this film. The studio never asked for that ending. It was just that that seemed like the right ending for that film.

Amazon.com: But the door is open, so are they looking into that possibility?

Bird: Not until it makes them some money! [laughs ] And I would only be interested if the idea was outlandish. One of our story guys--in fact, he won an Annie award for storyboarding on Iron Giant --came up with a premise. He said, "It's 1968, you know? Hogarth is in Vietnam! You do the rest! The Iron Giant returns!" Some outlandish idea like that would be more the kind of thing that I would want to do, which of course would turn off a lot of people. [laughs ] To me, the only reason to do a sequel is if you find a compelling story that does more than just repeat the rhythms of the first one. For example, Toy Story 2 is a really good sequel, because it follows a new premise that still makes sense for those characters.

Amazon.com: What are you working on next?

Bird: I'm getting offers in live action as well as animation. I'm developing Curious George as a live-action/CG film with Imagine. And I also have a couple of animated projects that I'm pursuing that are originals. So we'll see.

Amazon.com: Have you been wanting to move into live action?

Bird: Yes, but not at the exclusion of animation. I think a lot of animation directors get out of animation as quickly as they can, because then they feel more important--an attitude which I have to admit the industry really encourages. A couple of times, people have asked me, "Now are you ready to do a real film?"--not knowing that I'd be insulted by it! I think animation is an amazing medium, and I would never want to permanently leave it.