Among Other Things: Another Brad Bird Success

It wasn’t all that long ago that prize-winning Hollywood film director Brad Bird was a high school student spending summers on Bird Point in Polson.

His aunt, Virginia MacDonald, says a good share of that time he enjoyed drinking those thick, creamy milkshakes at the fountain in Eddie’s Rexall Drug. So did a lot of other folks, myself included, who probably sat next to him not realizing that the Corvallis, Ore., teenager would soon become a celebrated director of the animated films “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille.”

His latest achievement is as director of his first “real people” movie, the big budget, adventure feature “Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” starring Tom Cruise. The movie ends a six-day run in Polson at the Cinema’s Showboat theatre, Thursday, Feb. 2.

This is the fourth in a series of Mission Impossible features. Various locations at which scenes in Ghost Protocol were filmed include the world’s tallest skyscraper, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, 2,715 feet tall. Cruise’s character scales the structure Spiderman-style. To get the action shots, Bird had some windows removed from the 123rd floor so cameras could dangle outside!

Wikipedia reports that reviews gave the movie a 4-star grade and a PG-13 rating. Since its release in December, financial returns have been most gratifying.

Brad Bird was born in Kalispell, Sept. 24, 1957, but spent most of his early years in Corvallis, graduating from high school there in 1975. He and his wife Elizabeth Canney have three children.