If you are like me and wonder how Pixar can pull off one creative blockbuster after another, here is an interesting peek behind the scenes of the studio.  In an interview the writer and director of Finding Nemo and Wall E, Andrew Stanton, intimates that Finding Nemo did not work as a film until very late in the production process when creative team figured late in the production process that they needed to change the personality of Memo of give the film its captivating dramatic force.  Pixar movies, we learn, are not the superb product from day one, but gradually improve. Wall E took over a decade from the initial conception to the completed film. The finished product is yet again a masterpiece. Unlike previous Pixar films, Wall E has a dead serious subject. Planet earth is a post-apocalyptic rubble field, inhabitable by humans.  The only creatures left behind is the little robot Wall-E and a cockroach that roam what appears to be the greater New York area.

(I wonder if a trip into the Bronx may have given Stanton the inspiration for what a metropolitan area could look like after a life-ending disaster.) For the first 20 minutes not a single word is spoken. We watch Wall E go about his solitary life cleaning up the trash humans have left behind and collecting fun gadgets.  But then a stunning-looking robot arrives from outer space. Wall E falls in love, setting up a marvelous journey.  What I found most amazing about the film is how they directors identified the very basic emotions that make us fall in love with a particular human being. By giving Wall-E the ability these basic dispositions, they are able to convincingly turn a robot into a quasi-human being. I watched the firm with a large group of 10 to 12-year olds who seemed to have no trouble connecting with the grave message of how human beings are destroying the planet on which we live and still have fun. Don’t miss Wall E.