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You oversaw Iron Giant from script to screen in about two and a half years. On this one you had more like 18 months. How stressful was that?
I would probably prefer not to work that way, because it's really scary and hard. But I think the film actually benefited from the fact that I had to just make decisions and stick with them. All the time for rumination had been used up.

Did you hesitate to rework another director's project?
Jan is very talented. But at a certain point the curtain is going to come up and you know, it has to be a vision that everyone can feel confident in. It wasn't like Jan ever had a version that he was happy with. He didn't. And he was constantly trying to find it. Look, movies are hard. They're technological, but it's not an exact science...and sometimes it doesn't work out. Rather than shut the movie down, Pixar did what they needed to do to make it happen. No one wants to change [key] people. Eric Stoltz was the [original] star of Back to the Future. And Eric Stoltz is a great actor. But ultimately what they needed wasn't happening, and they had to change to Michael J. Fox. In hindsight, they made the right decision. I think even Eric Stoltz would say that. It's just that weird alchemy. You've got to acknowledge it and deal with it.

But it still must be difficult having to walk in and say, Okay, I'm taking over.
Yes, it was hard. I have a lot of respect for Jan. But I also ultimately have a huge respect for Pixar. They were in a tough spot at a very vulnerable time. They were potentially going to be on their own [if they broke off from Disney]. It was the first film — the only film — that was greenlit by Pixar alone, without anyone else having anything to do with it. It was an important film to get right. So if I could help them, it was the right thing for me to do.

So what sorts of problems did you have to tackle?
When they were [first] developing the film, they were starting to realize people were having an ick factor about rats. They dealt with that by shortening the tails and getting them up on two legs and not making anything rat-like about them. That was one of the things that I wanted to change. But [the CG models for the rats] had all been built at considerable effort to stand on two legs. When we simply dropped them onto four legs, their bodies deformed in weird ways. I was very insistent they be re-rigged. They said, ''This is a really big deal. Are you sure you want this?'' And I said yes. This is about a rat trying to move into the human world. I want to see him make that choice. I want him to physically separate himself from all the other rats.

So you embraced the rat-ness of the rats, except in Remy's case. Bold move.
I think everybody likes it now. But it's a tough sell. We've been sort of surprised at it. There's been more resistance than we expected. People aren't sure what to make of this film. And it's not just the rat subject matter. It's the fact that we're being thrown in with all these yakking-animal films that have come out. If people watch this for even a minute, they'll see it's not that.

The problem is, people make snap judgments. They're conditioned to do that by the whole marketing machine.
Right. Where decisions are made based on how well you can sell them rather than how good they are as a story.... If we had approached this only from the standpoint of marketing, maybe this movie would not have been made. But that's not what interests anybody at Pixar. What interests us is, Does this sound like a great story? Would you hunker down at the campfire if somebody started this story and started telling it well?

How did you go about finding Patton Oswalt to play Remy, your naturally gifted chef?
That was a very difficult character to cast. They had tried a number of people before I arrived, and had done tests with good people who were just not hitting it. Then I was listening to the radio driving and I heard Patton on the radio doing this comedy routine about Black Angus Steakhouse. I just immediately went, That's Remy. That's him. Patton is really passionate and volatile and funny, and he has a very big personality. But it sounds like it's coming from a smaller body, and that's what I needed for Remy.

Is it further proof that comedians make an especially good fit with voice-only acting?
Certainly Pixar has gone down that road before. I think in general, comedians tend to be pretty good at [voice] acting because they're alone on stage with nothing else. No sound effects, no lighting. And they have to grab a room full of people, all from different backgrounds, and make them see things through their eyes.

NEXT PAGE: So, Janeane Garofalo, John Ratzenberger, and Peter O'Toole walk into a recording studio...

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