This article contains a big spoiler for Chinatown.

Ah, the mighty Brad Bird.

But then he went and madeThe Incredibles,Ratatouille,andMission: Impossible Ghost Protocolas well.

Now we have to send chocolates as well.

Heres how the chat went…

But where was your way into the project?

Feeling like alternate realities are that close.

You know how every job you might hold, you come under criticism.

Unless youre a fireman.

But what is the downside of an astronaut?

Its astonishing to me.

What is the downside to it?

Its expensive maybe, but what a great thing to do with people and resources.

The idea that were shutting down going out affects me.

[Theres a very mild spoiler in this answer]

Yeah.

Theres a little bit of that.

But that again goes to reaching out.

It was a way to say that even though shes optimistic, her future is becoming limited.

Exploration phase is over!

I think thats what it is.

Were telling kind of a fable.

Were trying to find a way to be simple, and present ideas in a simple way.

And it cant help but have an effect on them.

We want to say that there are other ways to think.

You talk about young people.

Do you find that?

Do you find it working with a younger cast, that theyre dealing with unrealistic expectation levels?

I think thats true no matter who you are.

Youre in awe of what came before you.

And a lot of the filmmakers go no, we didnt know what we were doing!

We tried this, and that didnt work!

I remember being in a class, a moderated panel, when they were talking about the perfect screenplay.

And they said thatChinatownwas the perfect screenplay.

Which I agree with.

But I got to know Robert Towne who wrote it, and he was no!

It turns out, he was right!

But I didnt know what I was doing.

That was a great comfort to me, because thats more what I feel like when Im making something.

Maybe thisll work, I dont know!

We spoke once before and briefly touched onDie Hard.

The perfect action movie!

Its precarious, you know?

They tried to cut Somewhere Over The Rainbow fromThe Wizard Of Oz.

What are they thinking?

A lot of our favorite moments are precarious things.

Theres this much between them being in and being out.

But without wishing to get pretentious about it, fragility is art, isnt it?

Yeah, I think it is if youre doing it right.

New ideas are like newly born deer.

Their muscles arent strong yet, theyre kind of wobbly.

Cynicism is always very robust.

It comes into the world very quickly and is usually very strong.

But it wont win in the long run.

The great works of art are the ones that survive.

There are a lot of popular films from 1939 that noone remembers any more.

Its all Wizard Of Oz, Stagecoach, those kind of things that survive.

To badly paraphrase a line from one of your own films, people arent that kind to the new.

The new needs friends.

[Laughs]Tomorrowlandneeds friends!

[laughs]

But doesnt any film that doesnt have a Roman numeral after it?

I think thats true to a certain extent.

People are very comforted by the familiar.

But that also can be a limitation.

At one timeStar Warswas a crazy idea that noone understood.

And if you talk to George Lucas, he felt really lonely a lot of that time.

He had something in his mind that a lot of people couldnt see.

And they hadnt seen the film yet.

And its Cameron Crowe.

Hes done some amazing work.

Why not just go to the cinema with a sense of excitement?

You dont know whats going to happen.

It leads me to your decision here to keep as much ofTomorrowlandunder wraps as you could.

I understand why completely…

Yet people are almost angry about it!

But I get and love the why youre doing it.

Can you talk about the difficulty of how youre keeping it so secret though?

Especially given the sheer scale of it?

Well, it isnt easy, and it isnt easy at this budget level either.

The studio want to get people into the cinema to see it.

Theres a tendency to want to watch the coolest stuff in the film.

And theres a desire because everyone has a surprise spoiler in their pocket.

They can ruin something people have spent years on, instantly.

But I think people actually dont want to know.

They say they want to know, but thats a momentary thing.

Its better to wait, I think.

Another book, then.

In the recent Jim Henson biography, it talks about the different between Frank Oz and Henson.

That whereas Oz was and is a perfectionist, Henson would move on when something was right.

Where, then, do you sit on the Henson-Oz scale?

I think I can call upon each if necessary!

You have to do something else and you have to do it now.

In a strange way, working in television prepared me for that.

That got me more in the frame of mind of trusting your instinct, and moving on.

That said, certain ideas have to be perfect.

Other ideas only have to be good enough not to break the spell.

One last question then.

You were once linked with a project called1906, about the San Francisco earthquake of that year.

Is that still active?

Its actually still something Im really interested in pursuing.

Its a big story, and to get it into a movie-sized box has been very challenging.

But I think weve figured out a way we can do it.

So that may still happen [knocks on the wood of his posh-looking chair].

Brad Bird, thank you very much!