If Ray Gunn sends you digging through old noir movies after you watch the movie, Brad Bird has already put together a great watchlist.
The filmmaker recently talked about the movies that helped shape his animated sci-fi detective story, and his influences cover decades of noir, from hard-boiled classics to Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, and the neon-soaked future of Blade Runner.
I recently attended a screening of Ray Gunn in Los Angeles, where Bird participated in a Q&A after the film. When the conversation turned to the movie’s noir style, he rattled off several films that helped inspire what he and his team were going for.
Bird said: “Those are 2 of my favorites. Absolutely. Big Sleep. Even something like, The Big Lebowski is noir. It’s funny, but it’s noir. It is. And you know, LA Confidential and Blade Runner, both Blade Runners.
“They’re all detective movies and they’re fun to watch. There’s a great one called Out of the Past with Robert Mitchum in it. It’s fantastic. So for all of you, cinephiles out there, see those, check those out. There’s Kubrick’s film, The Killing. which is a really great noir film.”
Bird was responding to the moderator bringing up The Maltese Falcon and Chinatown, two movies he immediately called favorites. From there, he pointed to The Big Sleep, The Big Lebowski, L.A. Confidential, both Blade Runner films, Out of the Past, and Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing.
It’s a solid group of movies to pull from, especially because Bird isn’t limiting noir to black-and-white detectives lurking around dark alleys.
The Big Lebowski may be hilarious and Blade Runner may take place in the future, but they’re still detective stories built around mysteries, strange characters, bad decisions, and people getting themselves into trouble.
For Ray Gunn, Bird also wanted to bring the striking light and shadow of classic black-and-white noir into a world bursting with color.
He explained: “So we were trying to be influenced by all of that and aggressive black and white lighting, but bring it into color. And so we looked at Douglas Sirk movies, which are very melodramatic, but they have really rich technicolor, even though they’re dark.
“Then there’s cinematographers like Robert Alton and, on and on, you know, just there’s so much great work to draw from. And, you know, we pushed each other to see it.”
That combination gave Bird a much bigger sandbox to play in. Instead of simply recreating the look of old noir, Ray Gunn pulls pieces from different eras of filmmaking and throws them into its retro-futuristic world.
The detective DNA is straight out of noir, while the color takes inspiration from the rich Technicolor photography of Douglas Sirk’s films. Mix that with the futuristic influence of Blade Runner, and Bird had plenty of cinematic history to raid without making Ray Gunn look like a copy of any one movie.
If you’re looking for some homework before watching Ray Gunn, Bird just gave you the list.
