Interview (Written): Brad Bird (“Tomorrowland”)

/film interview with Brad Bird, co-writer and director of Tomorrowland.

What are your earliest memories of going to Disneyland and Tomorrowland in particular?

Well, what separated Tomorrowland from… well, first of all, I loved going to Disneyland. It blew my kid mind that such a place could exist and that you could have a African jungle just around the corner from the Wild West, which is just a way, little, you know, turn down a few corners and you’re in Tomorrowland or Tomorrowland or Fantasyland. I mean, that all of this was in one spot just kind of blew my mind. I also remember going into Pirates of the Caribbean and seeing this kind of large, but normal building and then you go inside and now you’re in the bayou and it’s night and the clouds are moving in front of the Moon and there’s fireflies and a guy playing on a swamp. And suddenly you’re going down a waterfall. And now you’re in a cave with a bunch of skeletons and there’s lightning and a storm. And now you’re in the middle of two, you’re in the middle of a land and sea battle. And then you come out of the building.

Now how the hell did they make all of that? I saw it. I know, I was there. How does this happen? So Tomorrowland specifically was hypnotizing to me because it wasn’t just fantasy. It was done under the idea that all of this is coming. It’s actually coming. We’re gonna see this stuff in 10, 20 years. You know, it wasn’t just Martians, you know, attack you and, you know. It wasn’t fantasy. It was all about this is going to happen.

In a way it’s almost science fact.

Yeah. And I think that one of the things that I liked about that is by presenting it as coming as a coming attraction, coming to reality near you, that it kind of had a hand in making it happen. Because it removed any roadblocks people had to allowing it to happen. The fact in those wonderful shows that Disney did in the late ’50s with Ward Kimball, mid to late ’50s, they were all presenting Going to the Moon as if it was a done deal. And went beyond that and talked about alien species of life and presented them in great Disney animation. And I think it also had a small probably unacknowledged hand in making the pursuit of the Moon by the end of the ’60s a viable thing. Because it was presented as something attainable.

A couple of featurettes about Tomorrowland

For the rest of the interview, go here.