MR. INCORRIGIBLE FOR ANIMATOR BRAD BIRD, 'THE INCREDIBLES' IS THE CULMINATION OF A CAREER SPENT REFUSING TO COMPROMISE.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

EMERYVILLE, CALIF. - Brad Bird is a little sensitive about revealing his age. Ask him when he was born and the man who spent eight years as an executive consultant with ``The Simpsons'' will throw out quips like, ``I was born when time began. I am timeless.'' Or: ``I have erased the memories of these things. I'm going back in time. I'm actually going in reverse.''

When pressed, Bird simply won't say how old he is. (For the record, he's 48.) And it's not like this energetic, baseball-hat-wearing (the better to conceal the receding hairline) father of three has some dark, deep secret to hide. But after spending some time with Bird and watching his new movie, ``The Incredibles,'' you understand why he wants people to look at him and see a blank slate.

``The Incredibles'' is a little bit different from anything that Pixar, the animation studio with the unblemished record, has ever done. It's Pixar's first PG movie. It's nearly two hours long. It's about a family of people (albeit people with extraordinary powers), not about fish or toys or ants. And it's directed by Bird, the first time Pixar has allowed an outsider to helm one of its pictures.

But what nobody - including Bird - really knew was just how personal ``The Incredibles'' would turn out to be. Not that this is an anomaly in the Pixar world. One reason the studio has been so successful - five movies, five mega-hits - is that it's a director- and story-driven studio. Creative founder John Lasseter's fascination with playthings manifested itself in the ``Toy Story'' movies. Andrew Stanton's concerns about being an overprotective father came out in ``Finding Nemo.''

But with ``The Incredibles,'' the personal connections are deeper, the themes darker. Or not. As John Walker, Bird's friend and producing partner, puts it: ``You could go to this and enjoy as a fast-paced, whiz-bang movie about a family of superheroes and that would be fine. Or ... ''

Or you see the movie that some at Pixar took to calling ``the Bergman film.'' You could notice the cracks in a family whose members, thanks to some petty, frivolous lawsuits, must suppress their extraordinary abilities and fit in with the rest of us schleps.

Mom, the one-time Elastigirl, stretches in a hundred different directions to keep her family together. Daughter Violet is 13, body-conscious and wants nothing more than to disappear (which she can do). Ten-year-old Dash is a Ritalin child capable of incredible speed. And the baby, Jack Jack, drools a lot. Who knows about him?

Dad, aka Bob Parr, the former Mr. Incredible, works as an insurance adjuster, a logical career path for a man accustomed to saving people. But Bob's company really doesn't want to help anyone - that would cut into profits. So he's stuck in a horrible job that goes against every fiber of his DNA, all the while yearning to break free and soar and show the world the gifts that he has been given.

In other words, he's Brad Bird, before Brad Bird made the critically acclaimed 1999 animated fable ``The Iron Giant,'' before Brad Bird came to Pixar the following year and began work on ``The Incredibles.''

``I think this movie is metaphorically autobiographical for Brad,'' says Teddy Newton, a character designer who has worked with Bird on both ``The Incredibles'' and ``The Iron Giant.''

``I know he suffered tremendous frustration working in studios that did not fully appreciate the value he brought to them,'' Newton says. ``It takes so much effort to make something great. And often the mediocre stuff is what's highlighted.''

Or, as producer Walker puts it: ``That it's taken this long for Brad to get a couple of movies made is almost criminal in my eyes.''

Which is probably why Bird hedges on the age thing. Here's a one-time whiz kid who made his first movie when he was 14 (a retelling of Aesop's ``The Tortoise and the Hare,'' recasting the turtle as the bad guy), worked at Disney when he was a teenager (his mentor was Milt Kahn, one of Disney animation's legendary ``Nine Old Men'') and won a scholarship to the animation program at California Institute of the Arts, where his classmates were Lasseter and Tim Burton.

So what happened? Why is Bird's resume so light on credits? Sure, there's the eight seasons with ``The Simpsons'' (Krusty the Clown episodes were his specialty) and a celebrated mutt story, titled ``Family Dog,'' for Steven Spielberg's TV anthology ``Amazing Stories'' in 1986. There's a co-writer credit for the forgettable 1987 fantasy ``*batteries not included.''

And there are about a dozen great ideas - a musical, a Western, a political comedy among them - that were mired in development hell during a long, unproductive decade when he had various projects in development at different studios. None of them came close to being made.

Lasseter says his old classmate was ``like a thoroughbred horse harnessed to a broken plow,'' adding that in the past, ``Studio executives ... had taken his passion as being negative.''

Bird, who is definitely passionate, fearlessly opinionated and more than a little stubborn, doesn't want to be cast as a martyr.

``I don't know that I felt misunderstood or underappreciated,'' Bird says when asked about the long, frustrating stretch of years where he couldn't get any of his projects going. ``Sure, I've had my battles. There's always someone who wants to soften the edges or dumb it down or take away the truth of the thing that you've worked so hard to achieve.

``And so maybe that's a part of the film. I wasn't consciously thinking about it. Twelve years ago, when I came up with the idea, I was a new father and I wanted to get movies made. And 'The Incredibles' came out of the anxiousness of wanting to be a good filmmaker and wanting to be a good father and feeling like if I succeeded in one, I'd fail in the other. And I didn't want to fail in either of them.''

Bird moved his family - he and his wife have three sons, ages 16, 12 and 10 - to the Bay Area four years ago when he came to Pixar. Most every night for the past four years, he'd leave work in the evening to have a couple of hours to connect with his kids while ``they were still conscious.'' Now, he's looking forward to having a little more free time with his family, tackling the towering stack of books in his den and re-engaging with pop culture. (He hasn't watched ``The Simpsons'' in years.)

Then he wants to get back to work. He still wants to make that musical, that Western, that political comedy, maybe for Pixar, maybe somewhere else.

``I'm fairly early on in what I hope is a longish career,'' Bird says. ``There's so much that I want to do. It's like when John (Lasseter) brought me up here, he was like, `Relax, get comfortable, take your time, and some day you'll come up with an idea.' But I already had an idea. Ideas aren't my problem. Getting somebody to make them ... that's another thing.''

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

Dressing the Incredibles

The members of the Incredibles family may be super and all, but the film's most memorable character stands all of 3 feet tall, has a pageboy haircut and possesses no extraordinary abilities apart from a fabulous sense of style.

Superhero costume designer Edna Mode (``E'' to her friends) came from ``Incredibles'' director Brad Bird asking a basic question: Where do crusading crime-fighters (caped and otherwise) get those cool threads?

``The costumes are such a part of these characters' identities, but you never saw where they came from,'' says Bird, who supplies Edna's voice in the movie. ``Or they'd have the scene with the superhero quietly sewing, and I didn't buy that.''

The fabulous Edna is a half-German, half-Japanese dynamo who not only designs the Incredibles' clothes but also functions as the film's answer to ``Q'' in the ``Bond'' movies. Given that the characters' outfits each have unique parameters - the dad's must repel bullets, the mom's needs to fantastically stretch, the girl's must disappear and the boy's not burst into flames under great friction - Edna needs to have more on the ball than Calvin Klein.

She's certainly up for the challenge. In fact, since the superheroes were forced to go underground, Edna has been wasting her talents in the ordinary world of fashion. ``Supermodels! Ha! Nothing super about them!'' she says with disdain.

The only thing Edna dislikes more: capes. And not just for aesthetic reasons.

``Let's just say that capes are an occupational hazard that we explore in the movie in a way that should have been addressed a long time ago,'' Bird says. ``You know ... it's the Isadora Duncan problem.''

- G.W.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) IT'S INCREDIBLE

Pixar's animated family fantasy stretches the idea of who is a superhero

(2) no caption (Brad Bird)

Ric Francis/Associated Press

(3) Elastigirl voiced by Holly Hunter

(4) Edna ``E'' Mode voiced by Brad Bird

(5) Syndrome voiced by Jason Lee

Box:

DRESSING THE INCREDIBLES (see text)