101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (*so far)

It’s hard to overstate how, well, incredible it is to follow up a hit as massive as The Incredibles with another giant, commercial, critical smash as different and special as Ratatouille. That’s back-to-back Oscars for Best Animated Feature, and a film that has become part of the animation firmament in a way few have. The gourmand Parisian rat Remy dreams of becoming a world-class chef and eventually pierces the impenetrable heart of the deadened legendary food critic Anton Ego. The project was originally conceived by Jan Pinkava and Bird was thrust into it late, on a tight timeline. He told Collider in 2007, that the whole process was like, “driving down the freeway the wrong way and just trying to live and make a movie that made sense and fulfilled all the possibilities of Jan’s brilliant premise and just survive.”