Everyone loves M-O. The adorable, tiny, cleaning robot (or Microbe-Obliterato) on the Buy N Large Axiom in Andrew Stanton's Oscar-winning film WALL-E was a breakout character for his determination, charm and of course that voice. "Mo." While the film was in production, Stanton's team had a real life statue of the character and one day, on a whim, took him to Sears to get a bunch of family portraits taken. That was years ago and, since then, the photos have remained safely on Andrew Stanton's iPhone. Nowhere else.
Then at last weekend's Hero Complex Film Festival (read the full recap here) Stanton told the above story and said he'd send out the images for the world to see. He has and they're awesome, as you can see above. If you're a Pixar fan, this gallery is insane. Check it out below.
Stanton had a ton to say about WALL-E at the event, here's my roundup of the fun facts.
WALL-E – Q&A With Writer/Director Andrew Stanton
Andrew Stanton apologized that most of the stories he was going to talk about had been out for years, such as the fact he wrote the first part of the movie using the structure of the first Alien movie.
Almost two years of production were wasted on a plot that had big blobs landing on Earth after Eve left. The reveal would have been that's what humans have become: masses of Jell-O. It was ultimately deemed too silly and scrapped.
Production on Wall-E began right after the iPod was invented and ended when the iPhone was released, kind of foreseeing the human tendency to want the latest toy that's in the movie.
During an early screening of Wall-E, Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney, was talking toSteve Jobs and Jobs commented about people's attraction to technology in the movie. Iger retorted, "Whose fault is that?" To which Jobs shrugged and laughed.
Part of Pixar's commitment to excellence, in Stanton's mind, is that no one there ever plans on leaving so they're invested in every story. The regular development time of one Pixar film is longer than the shelf life of a studio head.
The Blu-ray has a geek commentary track that features three super nerdy Pixar people dissecting the science and references in the film.
Pixar artists once took a life-size Mo to Sears and did a full photo shoot of baby pictures. He might put it online in the near future at herocomplex.com (EDIT – And he did.)
It took about 10 months to get Fox to let Pixar use Hello Dolly.
"I'm sure you'll see other sequels to things" – Stanton on upcoming Pixar projects.
He's do a Finding Nemo sequel if he comes up with the right idea, and he's always thinking.
The success of Finding Nemo gave Pixar carte blanche to make a series of really out there movies like Wall-E, Up and Ratatouille.
Stanton hates when animation is pigeonholed as a kids genre. "We're not making it for your kids, we're making it for everyone."
Wall-E losing his mind at the end was Brad Bird's idea.
