September 24 - Brad Bird

On this day, in 1957, Phillip Bradley Bird was born in Kalispell, Montana. Since his grandfather was CEO of the Montana Power Company and his father was in the propane business, you might have thought that Brad would have had leanings toward a career in energy. You would have been wrong. Brad decided pretty early in life what he was going to do with his and it had more to do with using electricity rather than producing it.

On a family trip at the age of 11, Brad was taking a tour of the Walt Disney Studios when he met Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's Nine Old Men. This meeting prompted him to turn to his family and announce that he would be part of Disney's animation team some day. For most 11 year olds, that would have been the end of it. Brad returned home and actually began working on a 15 minute animated film. And it only took him two years to complete it. By the age of 14, Brad was getting mentoring from another of the Old Men, Milt Kahl. It's no surprise that Disney would eventually give him a scholarship to the California Institute of the Arts. It's also no surprise that one of the people Brad made friends with at CalArts was a student by the name of John Lasseter.

After graduating, Brad of course went to work for Disney. He contributed to The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. Then he got fired. But that was okay, it happens to the best of us (right Tim Burton?). Brad moved into television animation. He did an episode of Amazing Stories. He co-wrote the movie *batteries not included. Then, in 1989,  he started working at a little animation studio called Klasky Csupo. One of the first assignments Brad got was taking these one minute filler animations on The Tracey Ullman Show and developing them into a full half hour stand alone program. For the first eight years of its life, Brad helped develop the look of The Simpsons and even directed a few episodes. Some might also recognize that Klasky Csupo was the company that produced The Rugrats. Brad was an animator for the pilot of that show as well.

In 1999, Brad's feature directorial debut, The Iron Giant, was released by Warner Brothers. The movie was a huge critical success (it still has a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and a huge box office failure (it only managed to earn 31 million dollars on an 80 million dollar budget). Because Warner had decided they were getting out of the animation game, the studio basically did the equivalent of heaving Giant out of a moving car and squealing off. Zero marketing, zero caring, zero anything. Which of course meant that Giant would become a cult classic. Nevermind the fact that it's also a great movie. Again, the movie's financial woes were okay: that's when Brad made the move to Pixar.

The first project Brad pitched to his old friend now new boss, John Lasseter, was a superhero flick. It would be the first Pixar film to be mostly populated by human characters, which are much harder to animate than animals or toys. Brad got the go ahead to write, direct and act in the movie, so he wrote, directed and did voice work for his second feature film, The Incredibles. This time around, Brad achieved both critical and box office gold. And like any good director, he saved (in my opinion) the best character for himself, Edna Mode. That's right. Edna is voiced by a guy and yet she's still fabulous! You may have also noticed that Mr. Incredible looks a bit like Brad. Supposedly, he didn't realize the animators had done that until too far into production to change anything. Supposedly.

After The Incredibles, Brad went on to write and direct another Pixar hit, Ratatouille. He became part of the senior creative team at the studio, overseeing such gems as Up, Toy Story 3, Brave, Monster's University, Inside Out and Coco. At some point in there he got the opportunity to direct his first live action film, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol for Paramount. That led to a second live action movie, Tomorrowland, this time for Disney, which he also wrote, produced and did some design work. Then, earlier this year, he finally released The Return of Edna Mode, more popularly known as The Incredibles 2. It was worth the 18 year wait.

Brad's work has earned him numerous Annie Awards, Oscars, Golden Globes, Saturn Awards and BAFTA Film Awards. He reportedly has several project ideas in the works. I'm pretty sure that whatever the future brings for Brad, he's going to need more shelf space in the den.