Brad Bird has an Oscar to his name and the crackerjack combo of Pixar and Disney behind his latest movie, but he's nervous. They all are.

Director Brad Bird hopes fans will flock to a movie about a rat who cooks -- complete with a title many can't pronounce. Click photo for larger image. Listen In: Hear Brad Bird, writer/director of "Ratatouille," discuss the film with the PG's Barbara Vancheri : On talk about changing the title On using real-life rats to do research on the movie On his childhood vision of adults Related review 'Ratatouille'

"It's a really crowded summer, and all the titles are big and familiar, and all they have to do is say, 'You know that thing you loved the last time? Well, here's another one' and their work is done."

The makers of "Ratatouille," however, have a bigger challenge.

"We have to explain to people why a rat cooking will be interesting and they're struggling with pronouncing the title, so we're trying to get that out there and we're not taking anything for granted," writer-director Bird said in a recent phone call. "We're hoping word of mouth is in our favor."

"Ratatouille," a charmingly animated story about a rat with a sophisticated palate who wants to be a chef, opens today. But about that title ...

When Bird, the director of "The Incredibles" and "Iron Giant," first got involved with the project more than a year and a half ago, Pixar executives were having doubts about the title, which came with the original pitch from Jan Pinkava.

Pixar had a page and a half of alternate names such as "Remy's Big Day," "Rats!" "Rat Story" and "A Rat Tale." Bird said, "Here's why it should be 'Ratatouille.' It's French, it's food, it's one word, and it's got rat in it."

"Ratatouille" it was.

Bird stepped in to take over the directing reins from Pinkava, a Prague native who won an Academy Award for best animated short with "Geri's Game."

"I was really reticent to do it. It was someone else's baby and I have a lot of respect for Jan, but the truth of the matter is, Jan never had a version he was happy with, either. It was just a very tricky story.

"You probably could have made five different, six different movies that all would be good and all worthwhile from the elements that they were trying to jam into this one movie. ... It was sort of a story about none of them."

When Pixar executives approached Bird, he set aside another project and stepped in "to try to fix this beautiful car that wasn't running at the time, to run."

To help the animators create the furry figures, they welcomed rats -- in cages -- into their offices.

"They're clean little buggers. They're not like sewer rats; they're kind of lab rats. They're sweet, and the animators looked at them and pulled them out and they crawled around our shoulders.

"They have little hands that are almost kind of human-like. They lead with their noses, they kind of sniff the air, and they have a way of moving that we tried to capture in our film, even though our rats are kind of cartoony."

While "Ratatouille" is sophisticated enough for adults and yet funny enough for children, Bird doesn't plot out ways to cast the widest possible net for audience members.

"If you start thinking about movies logically and saying, 'My goal is to make something that everyone all over the world will like three years from now,' I mean, you'll just cower in the corner and you'll never come out of your room because it's too impossible.

"The best way to make it simple is just to go, what kind of movie would I like to see, and make that and hope other people agree with that."

Bird will be 50 in September, but he started animating his first movie at age 11. In February 2005, he won the Oscar for best animated feature for "The Incredibles." The 8-pound golden boy is the smartest accessory in Hollywood, but not for the reasons you might think.

"I think that maybe the most useful aspect of winning awards is not the awards, but the fact that they relax people about you. So much of Hollywood is fear-driven, and it's masked usually as bravado, but it's fear-based stuff, and one of the things that I loved about working with Pixar is nobody's afraid there. ...

"People don't make decisions based on fear. They make them based on passion," Bird says. "We're very critical of our films, but we're critical in a supportive sort of way, not in an antagonistic sort of way that Hollywood operates at, often."

And you won't hear Bird bad-mouthing another animated movie being released this summer that needs no explanation: "The Simpsons." He worked on the show's first eight seasons.

"I have heard nothing but support from my friends on 'The Simpsons,' and I certainly will be first in line to see their movie." In fact, he hoped to find time to animate a Krusty the Clown or Sideshow Bob scene for "The Simpsons" big-screen debut.

"There was no way I could do that. There just wasn't any time. I'm totally rooting for them and I hope they'll come see 'Ratatouille.' "