How did the idea to use animated graphics to illustrate food come about?
Brad Bird: One of the things I kept saying when I was originally looked at this film was that it’s a tricky film. Because it’s a film about taste and smell, and yet your audience can’t smell or taste anything. What we have is color and movement and somehow you have to use that. We needed to find ways to represent what is this experience of taste so that the audience can understand it. I made that suggestion many, many years ago and no one ever picked up on it. One of the things I did when I got involved was I took my own suggestion. The idea was that Emile has senses but that they’re pretty dulled and just start to awaken. It was meant to be a funny idea, too, but in many ways, it is also related to the way cooks operate. They see texture or experience texture and smell and taste the way painters experience color and light. I just thought we could use sound. So I worked with Michael Giacchino [who wrote the original score for Ratatouille] and said to him, “What would cheese sound like
