>Bird has a hard time talking about the allegations against Lasseter. “These times are not good for nuance,” he says. “You’re either 100 percent for something or you’re 100 against something.”
>He tells me a story about Lasseter coming to bat for him when Michael Eisner and Steve Jobs didn’t want to give a movie to the guy “who just did this flop The Iron Giant,” referring to Bird’s 1999 box-office misfire. They were told their script idea was too much like Spy Kids—”which is beyond me”—and didn’t have enough fantasy elements, “like little blue fish or blue monsters.” Basically, they wanted Lasseter to direct another movie instead.
“John kind of flung his body between us and the executives and said I think these guys are onto something and let’s give them a little more time to develop it,” Bird says. “By the time we finished our story reels, that guy was gone and the reels spoke for themselves. He stuck his neck out in a way that few in Hollywood are willing to.”
>“I don’t at all put John in a category with Weinstein,” he continues. “You’re navigating a world where men have acted a certain way for thousands of years. Way too late, but all of a sudden, they’re expected to change that on a dime and it’s necessary and it’s right. But it’s a little bit a gray area. It’s not as hard of a cut as people want to make it. I’m an old friend of John’s and I don’t see him in black and white. I see him as a person like anyone else. He was a person who was very protective of us at a time when we needed it. So my feelings are a little bit more complicated.”