Wall-E director and Pixar stalwart Adam Stanton attributes his film’s meteoric success to behaving like a free-range chicken.

No jokes, at a recent press conference, which we were surprisingly invited to, he actually said: “When we were making this movie there was no one checking up on me, so I was basically a free range chicken left to do what I wanted.”

You heard it here first.

And so it’s just as well he didn’t cluck it up.Wall-E is a bona fide summer smash. It may be a little soppy for some but what would we expect from an egg-laying director with a high-stepping past.

“Yes, I was in Hello Dolly in high school. I played Barnaby,” revealed a slightly embarassed Stanton.

It’s not surprising then that the Broadway smash features heavily in the movie, with a lot of the narrative based on some of the songs.

In fact, it has been such a hit, Broadway producers are already rubbing their hands with glee over the amount of cash they could make out of a Hello, Dolly revival. So that’s something to look forward to then.

Keen to get in on the jazz-handed act, Ben Burt – creator of the ‘voice’ for Wall-E and R2D2 amongst others – was also enjoying the Broadway vibe:

“You know what helped create Wall-E’s voice? It was the voice in that opening song, that Hello Dolly vocal that appealed to me in a way that just connected. I just couldn’t forget that damn song.”

The sound design legend, who has collaborated with Hollywood heavyweights like George Lucas and Ridley Scott, worked on the film for three years, unheard of for a sound artist:

“It’s not like other films, I’ve never been asked to give a motor noise more pathos or make a switch cuter before.”

Sigourney Weaver described herself as a ‘happy hitchhiker’ given her minimal part in the film.

Just as well really, the star of Alien, Working Girl and, ahem, Heartbreakers has been nothing but a well meaning cheering section in these latest PR jaunts.

The wallpaper probably gave juicier quotes.

But we can’t hold that against her. It’s a great movie from a great production team and a doff of the cap probably wouldn’t go amiss.

[story by Tom Henry]