Andrew Stanton on Finding Nemo

Pixar's Finding Nemo has smashed the all-time box office record for an animated feature set by The Lion King and, according to its writer-director, Andrew Stanton, they've done it by not thinking about the audience. "We're very selfish filmmakers and we write the movies for ourselves. But I guess we're just juvenile enough that it works for the children's demographic as well," he laughs.

The fact that animation is still widely perceived as a children's medium in America irritates co-director Lee Unkrich. "It's really frustrating for us because we're making the films, as far as we're concerned, for the adults." In Japan, "animation is seen as a viable art form right alongside live-action film. We would like to be judged in that same way."

Finding Nemo raises the bar for computer animation, setting its action in a medium (ie water) that a few years ago was - like the fur in Monsters, Inc. - considered impossible to animate realistically. Stanton denies, however, that they deliberately set themselves challenges. "We don't even think about it. We always want to see a world and characters and a situation that we feel we haven't yet seen in film, and that invariably means that you're going to have to create something that hasn't had to be solved yet. So it's just a by-product. I think it always will be."

As Pixar's star rises, stories about growing tensions between the animation house and Disney, who markets and distributes its films, have been hitting the trade press. Pixar's bid to be viewed as a separate corporate entity in Europe apparently supports the rumours of a growing rift. So what is going on?

"I wouldn't say there's any tension, certainly not creatively," claims Unkrich. "The only real issue is about who gets what share of the money that's being made on these films. In terms of the push to get Pixar known, you can imagine it's frustrating for us to be the ones actually making these films, knowing that the perception is that Disney's making them."

Stephen Applebaum