Brad Bird’s credits include “The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles,” and “Ratatouille,” and fans inside a packed Hall H at Comic-Con International in San Diego cheered loudly as he shared stories of those movies and more on Thursday, July 23.
But the biggest cheers came midway through Bird’s hour on stage when the director offered to show the first 7 minutes of his new animated film “Ray Gunn,” a retro-futuristic noir with Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Waits voicing the three main characters.
“The elevator pitch would be ‘Buck Rogers’ meets ‘The Maltese Falcon,’” Bird said when asked by host Steven Weintraub, editor of Collider.com, to describe the movie for the crowd. “It’s desperate characters and sort of an alternative future.
“You know, this stuff is kind of hard to explain, especially because it’s a mystery,” he continued. “Why don’t we just show the first seven minutes.”
Cue shouts of joy from 6,000 fans as the Hall H lights dimmed and the clip began, the opening music reminiscent of the theme to the late ’50s private eye TV series “Peter Gunn.”
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Here’s what we know now: Rockwell, as the title character, is a private eye on a case. Waits is his one-eyed green alien sidekick – we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore. Johansson, who wasn’t seen in the clip, is Venus Nova, a pop star caught in a scandal yet to be shown.
The movie is scheduled to open on Dec. 16.
Here are other highlights of Bird’s time in Hall H.
What Milt Kahl, his Disney Legend mentor, taught him: “He had this very intense kind of stammer and he kind of swore more than what you’d think of someone from Disney. But he would say, ‘Well, you didn’t didn’t even explore the possibilities.’ And that’s what it is. If you’re approaching something, explore the possibilities.”
Why it took “The Iron Giant” time to find its audience: “I think there’s a thing called marketing that if you don’t do it, it really hurts your film. So I was really happy on the next project, ‘The Incredibles ‘; it got marketed. But I can’t really complain about it because people did catch up to ‘The Iron Giant.’”
What it was like coming to work at Pixar: “The thing is, they were shocked when I took notes [from Pixar leadership]. They were like, ‘He took the notes. He didn’t mind the notes.’ I don’t mind notes if they’re not stupid.” [Laughter] But if you ask me to do something I think is stupid, I’m gonna speak up, you know?”
How Pixar asked him to take over making “Ratatouille”: “They [called] me on vacation. I really wanted that vacation. We were driving around with the family, and they said, ‘You could pull over.’ So, we pull over. The family gets out of the car. Apparently my youngest son said, ‘Is daddy gonna lose his job?’ And my wife said, ‘I think it’s the opposite.’”
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Would he ever consider a TV series? “Yeah, I have a project that would lend itself to multiple episodes, and it has to do with the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. The problem with it is the more you research that time, the more amazing it is, and the stories that are happening are insane. The deeper I dig into it, the more stuff I was like, ‘This has to be in it.’
“But it has to be big like a movie. It can’t just be this little thing. It was kind of like you were packing up stuff for a balloon and you’ve got everything you want in the balloon. And you go, ‘OK, let’s go,’ and it doesn’t lift off. So you start chucking stuff out of the balloon, and pretty soon you’re starting to get lift off, but all the stuff that you love is on the ground. You’re going away from it.”
What it was like to direct Tom Cruise doing his own stunts for “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”: “There was one time we were filming it, and I was dead asleep in my hotel. It’s like 4 in the morning, and suddenly I go ‘Ahh!!’ and I realized my star is swinging around on this little wire a mile up into the air. And what am I doing? This is insane. But he’s the producer, so you can’t tell him no.”