Now Patton Oswalt's in the Janeane Garofalo chair. Sweet.

How long did it take to record Remy?

It took about two years. It was weird to fight the instinct 'cause every other animated thing I've done is you figure out a character and you do a voice, and this was me and Brad Bird and he's like, "Just talk the way you talk." And I said, "Okay ..." But luckily, I was working with Brad Bird, and when you work with Brad Bird, you're working with the whole cast, because he's got the whole movie in his head. He's got all the other characters; he knows their hearts and everything. So you are reacting to Brian Dennehy or Ian Holm.

So, you didn't get to meet Peter O'Toole.

No. All his stuff was recorded in London. But.. I've met the animators on this movie. I know them all, not personally, but I'm an animation geek, so they to me are like the way you would meet George Clooney. So they were playing me ... remember the scene where Anton Ego goes, "So how can it be ... POP-u-lahh?" Remember the way he said it? So, when they played him saying that, they hadn't animated it yet, and I asked, "How excited are you guys to animate him saying 'POP-u-lahh?'" And they said, "That is like the Glengarry lead for us." Whoever does good work on this other stuff, that's the prize, is you get to animate him saying "popular." It was just, oh God. It was animator's heroin. They were just like, "Please ... please let me do that."

There's such a variety in the casting: Linguine was a P.A. ... no, a production designer?

He was one of the production designers. It's like people like Lou Romano, who is Linguine, and Pete Sohn, who is Emil [chuckles] -- awesome Emil -- they were laying down scratch [temporary] tracks and it's just the genius of Brad Bird and the other animators; they listen to everyone... [For] people with really unique voices, like those two guys, they'll go, "That, I can really match that to a character." So, even though they laid down scratch tracks and [said], "Let's go look for celebrities to do this," it came down to the exact same thing that happened in The Incredibles: Brad Bird laid down that scratch track for Enid, and it eventually got to the point where they were like, "You do Enid. This is Enid."

So how did you get involved?

I wish I had a better story for you guys, but Brad Bird was driving along and a radio station was playing my first CD and he just said, "This is the guy. I want this guy." Because I'm just like Remy, I'm enthusiastic about things that the bulk of the population are like, "Then, okay, really? That's important? Okay, fine." So, that kind of enthusiasm and sort of nonjudgmental excitement about things that I like, you know, like, not worrying about the things that I like.

Like what?

You know, food. I am a big foodie ... 'cause I follow celebrity chefs like other people follow rock stars, really, 'cause these guys are nuts, these guys are f---ing crazy. And then, you know, just comic books and film noir, and just stuff like that. I have very specific interests.

Were you a fan of The Incredibles?

I'm a big fan of Tim Story, I think he's a good director, but The Incredibles is basically what The Fantastic Four should've been. It took all the themes of like The Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, but then also married it to kind of suburban angst, teen angst, family tensions, stuff that everyone can understand, but they just happen to be superheroes. Just like when you watch The Sopranos, they just happen to be in the mob, but it's still like, "I yell at my mom" and "I have an uncle who's a dick."

Have you seen the DVD? It's ridiculously in depth. They have like dossiers for heroes that we never even see.

Pixar, they map out an entire world ... they do background stuff that is not in the movie, but it's there for them. Someone pointed out to me in Monsters, Inc., if you notice, the world of the monsters, because it's powered by kids screaming, so, the world looks like that post-World War II sort of bullet-nose design ... They realized, well, that post-World War II was the baby boom, and that's when there were the most babies being born on the planet, so those were their boom years, when they got the most money. So, that's when they designed everything. That detail is just there for the background. And they're doing the same thing with Ratatouille, the rats were going to be very French early on, from what I saw in the designs, and then they realized, when they researched rats, rats are probably the most mobile mammals; they really do hop on ships ... So, over all these years and years they just would develop no accents; they just talk normally, because they never stay anywhere that long. Again, this is all subtle, it's just there, either you put it together or you don't, but it's there for them. I love stuff like that. That's what's so genius.

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