Brad Bird’s “Ray Gunn” is nearly here.
The project, which pre-dates Bird’s modern classic “The Iron Giant,” is finally coming out courtesy of Skydance Animation and Netflix, with the futuristic film noir arriving in select theaters and limited 70mm exhibitions on December 4 before hitting Netflix on December 18.
That’s right – you’ll get to spend Christmas with “Ray Gunn.” Watch the trailer, moodily scored by the Sneaker Pimps’ hit single “Six Underground,” below.
In “Ray Gunn,” Sam Rockwell stars as the title character, the last human private eye in the futuristic city of Metropia. Soon enough Ray and his partner Eyera (Tom Waits) are embroiled in a mystery involving a tempestuous pop star named Venus Nova (Scarlett Johansson), conniving record company executives and shady underworld figures (voiced by Matt Berry and Kathryn Hunter, among others). “Ray Gunn” is perhaps the only film to be openly influenced by both “Chinatown” and “Flash Gordon.”
This being a film by Bird, who directed “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles,” there is an impeccable sense of design and placemaking, with the “Ray Gunn” world taking place in a future built from pre-World War II architecture and sensibilities.
“The buildings were based on designers that I loved and other people love from the period – [industrial designers] Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes and [architect] Hugh Ferriss and futurists of the ‘30s,” said Bird.
Ferriss, in fact, he admitted, was working in the 1920s and was “imagining gigantic buildings that were several city blocks wide at the base,” while Bel Gettys and Loewy were designing cars and planes and furniture that were “all future-looking.”
But of course, this being a film noir, there’s a dark underbelly to a society that seems so sunny. “We’ve seen the dystopian version of the future. What if you had a utopian version of the future but there was still corruption?” Bird added. “I thought that was an interesting idea.”
Still, with a movie with so many ideas, Bird admitted it was a narrower tightrope to walk. And this is a man who made a beautiful, moving, emotionally ambitious movie about a rat who loves to cook.
“It’s easier to fall on this movie than other movies,” Bird admitted. “There are scenes that are emotional and they’re not the usual animation scene. How do you make them animated? Two people sitting in a car talking doesn’t sound like an animation scene. And yet it can totally be that.”
He said the challenge of “Ray Gunn” was “the menu of the film.” By this Bird meant that “you have dessert, do you have something beforehand, I wanted to have a wide menu of things that you could watch, so that was the goal. And it was harder to hit than you would imagine.”
What was the hardest element on “Ray Gunn?”
“Getting people to care and be worried about a character. Worry can be physical worry or it can be worry about their mental state,” Bird explained. “It sounds ridiculous, because you’re talking about artificial everything. But if you can get people to care about the character’s well-being, then you’re in a good place.”
In terms of inspiration, Bird said that he was inspired by the way that Michael Curtiz, who directed “Angels with Dirty Faces” and “Casablanca” (among many others), would stage his scenes. “There’s this muscular feeling of moving the camera, and the dynamism of that, and things blocked in a way that are visually draw you in,” said Bird.
He also looked at the work of legendary American director John Huston.
“John Houston built ceilings for ‘The Maltese Falcon,’ and that sounds strange to people, but most movie sets don’t have a lot of ceilings, and he did it and would shoot up, and it gave a size to everything, along with a graphic intensity,” said Bird. “When he shot Sydney Greenstreet, he put the camera low with a wide angle lens that made Greenstreet’s belly look like the size of Cleveland.” (Berry plays a Greenstreet-coded alien hood named Slugsy.)
Other filmmakers that Bird looked at for “Ray Gunn” include David Lean, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, which you can definitely feel in the trailer – every shot oozes atmosphere. “I tried to follow some things that they did a little bit,” said Bird.
He was so far as to use 70mm lenses that were “spherical but still widescreen,” to get the grandeur of the wider frame but without the aberrations and distortions typically associated with anamorphic lenses. And you can actually enjoy the movie in 70mm in select theaters when “Ray Gunn” is released this December.
And the release really is cause for celebration. This is a movie that Bird has been thinking about for decades, that hopscotched across different studios and distributors, until finally landing with Skydance Animation and, eventually, Netflix. He said “Ray Gunn” was an example of a good idea that he just couldn’t let go of.
“Some people go, ‘Oh, he’s had that project forever, just some old thing sitting in a box. It’s like, ‘No, it was a good idea then and I think it’s a good idea now,’” said Bird.
We wondered what he’s feeling, now that the movie is finally coming out.
“I want people to see it. I want them to see it in a fashion that does it justice, which inevitably I’d like it to be on the biggest screens possible with a great sound system,” said Bird. He said that he did an amazing Dolby Atmos sound mix, that he’d love people to hear. (The legendary Ben Burtt did the sound for “Ray Gunn.”)
Bird continued: “I want them to see the image as big as they can, because we put in all the details, and if you see it on a phone or something, you’re not going to see any of that. You’re not going to feel it the same way. Otherwise, I’m just excited to have it out in the world.”
“Ray Gunn” arrives in select theaters and in 70mm engagements on December 4 and on Netflix on December 18. See the gorgeous new poster below.
