Pixar Director Mr. Andrew Stanton

AS: Well, I think all you ever try to do is discover what the truth is at the moment. What’s most honest about it. How to convey what’s honestly happening. And a lot of the time you’re looking at life and it’s an equation, “somebody does this a couple of times and it makes me feel like that”, and you try to learn from the equation and then you weigh them. It’s all about human observation even though you may be using a fish, or a rat to tell it, you’re basing it on observations that you’ve made in your own life of other people and relationships you’ve had, so when it’s cemented in truth then I think that stuff just comes through.

RR: I think you’re absolutely right. I never thought that I’d be able to watch animation film and be so drawn to it and be so excited by it. All of us that have grown up with animation know that there is both an adult and youthful message.

AS: Absolutely!

RR: When I began my research for the film, the tagline “ A robot..” When I think of a line like that, I think of everyday human beings having dreams of their own-- but somewhere along the line they find that that’s not what they were supposed to be doing and then they end up finding out what they were meant to do. Has that happened to you and if so when did ?

AS: Well, I think, you couldn’t have worded it better. That’s exactly what I was tapping into with this little guy. The minute I heard that we came up with this idea in 1994, “the last robot on earth, doing the same thing forever.” It made me feel like, Wow, there are people that feel like that. You can certainly reach that time in your life or miss that point you feel your life was supposed to be about. I think this is where you could relate to this little guy and you hope that he’ll break out of it in time before he shuts down. I think we all want to hope that for ourselves, that we’ll live our lives knowing that we’ve fulfilled our purpose.