DivaLea: Oscars II: (Brad) Bird's the Word

© Pixar/Disney
The Incredibles, know at my house as "Movie Precious" because of my unholy love for everything about it, was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Animated Film, Achievement in Sound Editing, Achievement in Sound Mixing, and Best Original Screenplay.

The Incredibles got no original screenplay Oscar. (I was soooo hoping, because its screenplay was as precise as Mr. Huph's watch.) I just found out at the Oscar site, it did get Sound Editing, so King loses points for not waking me up for that. (As previously noted, I slept through Hollywood's big kissy-face valentine to itself.)

It did win Best Animated Feature, which is sweet relief, because the Academy voters do make bizarre decisions like nominating "Beauty and the Beast" for Best Picture (no you di'nt), and musical smarm like "Kiss the Girl", "Under the Sea", "Hakuna Matata", for Best Song, while ignoring great but hard-to-hum pieces like "Heaven's Light/Hellfire" from Hunchback of Notre Dame, or "Son of Man" from Tarzan. It was always possible the award could've gone to Shrek 2, which just wasn't in the same league. And, really, there wasn't any animated film released anywhere in 2004 that wasn't better than Shark Tale? Are we shitting the Diva?

I'm not thrilled to bits about the Best Animated Feature category, it's the Oscars' Kid's Table at Thanksgiving, but it beats no recognition at all, which is where we'd be otherwise.
Observe: Surely Aladdin deserved a Best Picture nod. Didn't, following the Beauty and the Beast logic (1991 nominee for Best Picture, in spite of its fugly ballroom, scary poor last few minutes, and painfully flawed script), Hunchback of Notre Dame also(in spite of its slight resemblance to the source) deserve a nod? Shoot, the best Disney films of that period, A Goofy Movie and Toy Story, certainly deserved the recognition.
But, A Goofy Movie didn't get a single cough (and it was full of songs as good or better than Aladdin and Hunchback), and Toy Story's three nominations (Song, Score and Original Screenplay) yielded zero wins. (The Best Song nomination was for Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend in Me", not as wrenching or as textured as "I will Go Sailing No More").
No, wait, Toy Story got a win in 1995: a Special Achievement Oscar given to John Lasseter "...for his inspired leadership of the Pixar 'Toy Story' team, resulting in the first feature-length computer-animated film." Ah, the Nicest Kid in School Award.

Likewise, Cats Don't Dance, the beautiful and brilliant red-headed stepchild of Warner Feature Animation circa Space Jam, also with Randy Newman score and songs, got a big bunch of nothin'.

© Warner Bros.

So, my opinions on animation, The Incredibles, and Oscar are now exhaustively- if not well-articulated. What Brad Bird thinks is found within an interview of Bird by Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age author Michael Barrier, in which Bird talks about The Incredibles and its four Oscar noms. Bird expresses a frustration familiar to graphic novelists fighting for recognition of their works as "real" books:

"But for a filmmaker who works in animation, when you work so hard to realize a moment, draw the audience in, and tell a story as well as you possibly can in a medium that's very difficult to master—you feel like it's the thirties and you're in the Negro Leagues, or something. You may play some of the best ball, but you're never going to get to the World Series."

Bird says something else about animation that applies equally to comics:
Bird: [But] let's not let animated filmmakers off the hook. I think many cater to that [prejudice [about animation being for kids]] by continually talking down to their audience. When I say that I'm not talking about the good stuff. I'm talking about the majority of animation.

Barrier: You're saying that animation's problem is that it has been conceived as being for a juvenile audience.

Bird: Of course. And many filmmakers do nothing to fight that conception.

There's a lot of good stuff in that interview, and in Barrier's piece for The L.A. Times that was built from the interview. I take issue with Barrier giving credit for the emotional and storytelling success of The Incredibles to the brilliance of its CG imagery (and not nearly enough to its storytelling with script, well-observed and subtle animation and voice acting). It seems weird that an animation historian would see the picture in such a fractured way, but Barrier does take the time to examine Bird's influences and talk about why the Rankin-Bass look of the characters works, so it's worth a read.


P.S.: Of course, Bird saying filmakers aren't fighting the prejudice begs for me to post this:

Booth babe promoting The Incredibles at Comic Con International 2004. From gonzouniverse.homestead.com/MAIN.html, © Eric Gonzales

A spandex and silicone CCI booth bunlet (the sort of thing Edna Mode would sniff at) doesn't exactly demonstrate that Disney/Pixar care about maturity, either. Kind of makes one hope Bird saw them on the CCI floor and got on a phone to Disney marketing and said, "Thanks for the big fucking vote of confidence."

Me, I saw the boothbun pics after, and felt pretty much like:

© Pixar/Disney

(Link to Barrier's article originally found at Cartoon Brew.)