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The A-List

The best from Hollywood: the recent movies, DVDs, CDs, and books that earned raves from EW's critics

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By Steve Daly
Steve Daly
Steve Daly
Steve Daly is a senior writer at EW, and also author of EW.com's Money Shot column

Last Saturday night, a sneak preview of Pixar's new computer-animated movie, Ratatouille (which opens for real on June 29), left gung-ho fanboys (and girls) in rapture. Online message boards abound with excited praise, and no wonder. As it spins out the story of an aspiring chef who just happens to be a Parisian sewer rat named Remy (voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt), Ratatouille garnishes its ingeniously staged action scenes with more omigod camera angles and tracking shots than an Orson Welles movie.

We caught up with writer/director Brad Bird (an eight-year contributor to The Simpsons in the 1990s, as well as the guiding hand behind 1999's The Iron Giant and 2004's The Incredibles) to talk about his new ode to culinary artistry. Here's what he had to say about the ''ick'' factor of rats, the rigors of competing in a summer of endless sequels, how much he chafes at condescending attitudes about animation, and why the term ''brain trust'' gives him the willies.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: It was tough not to be skeptical about this movie based on early posters and footage. The central idea of a rat loose in a gourmet restaurant kitchen is just so inherently repulsive.
BRAD BIRD: Everybody is kind of reacting, Ewwww, who would want to make a movie about rats? Why is Disney doing a rat film? Ugh!

So what did Pixar see in such an unlikely subject?
When Jan Pinkava [pronounced: Yon PINK-uh-va] pitched the idea of a rat who wants to cook, everyone at Pixar immediately recognized it as having a sort of huge [dramatic] tension. Because a rat is death to a kitchen. I mean, they'll close a restaurant that has a rat in it. And a kitchen is death to a rat. So a rat that wants to move into that world? It's the most impossible goal any creature could have. Everybody was very entertained by that. The film was being developed while I was doing The Incredibles, and I'm part of the group [at Pixar and Disney] that kind of goes over all the films and throws their two cents in, as people did for my film as well.

Do you actually call it the ''brain trust''? That's the term I've read in articles.
I'm uncomfortable with that name. It sounds like Dr. Strangelove. It sounds like we have a giant domed room that you have retinal scans to enter. It's a lot more casual than that. But whatever you want to call it, I'm a fan of it, because it's input from fellow storytellers. They're tough, but they also recognize the problems of making a story work. They don't give impossible notes like you get sometimes from executives. You know, like, ''Make it 10 percent funnier.'' Or, ''Make this section appeal a little bit more to the 9-to -12 demographic.'' You don't get those kinds of notes at Pixar.

After you finished The Incredibles, you were asked, in the summer of 2005, to come in and take over Ratatouille, writing a new script and replacing Jan Pinkava as the director after nearly four years of development. What happened?
I was finally on a vacation that summer. Two days into it, I got a call from [Pixar honcho] Steve Jobs. A day later I got a call from John [Lasseter] and Ed [Catmull, who were then running Pixar]. Even though they didn't say, ''Come back from your vacation right now,'' suddenly my vacation was full of worry.

Because they asked you to put on your super suit and fix Ratatouille. Kind of the way John and company fixed Toy Story 2 when it wasn't going so well. What if you had said no?
I don't think that they would have treated me like [they were] loan shark[s] or anything. But I respect all three of those guys tremendously. I think they're visionary guys. You need to do whatever you can to help out, because this little Camelot they've made is a very rare place. They were in a spot, and I felt I could help. And I liked the idea. I thought, This deserves to be on the theater screens.

What was it like adopting another person's cinematic baby?
Sharon Calahan, the director of photography, and Harley Jessup, the production designer, were already on it, with a whole gifted team. They'd already done a ton of research before I got there. I brought Mark Andrews aboard, who was the story supervisor on Incredibles, to help oversee the storyboarding. We did a whole new story reel, and only used two shots from the previous versions. We had to work incredibly fast defining the camera work. It was like a film-school project. Here are your parameters, you have this much time — Go!

NEXT PAGE: How Bird chose Patton Oswalt — and coaxed cuddly CG rodents to walk on all fours


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