That little orange fish did it! Congratulations to Andrew Stanton and everyone who worked on the movie. I'd especially like to thank the story crew. That crew helped write, pace, gag, plan, test, whittle and create that movie in the most substantial way a story crew can. I'm not even talking about drawing storyboards yet. That's people in the trenches going through that movie over and over and over and over...and over again--to come up with the moments you see on the screen. All done with the liberal helping of backing from a studio who knows not to put layers of executive regard and reams of mindless notes on the process so that the best possible story gold can be mined from it.

A great bunch of storytellers a guy could have the privilege to work alongside.

Bravo and take a bow: Jason Katz, Jim Capobianco, Nate Stanton, Bob Peterson, Bruce M. Morris, Joseph "Rocket" Ekers, Peter Sohn, Jamie Baker, Matt Luhn, Dan Jeup, Rob Gibbs, Courtney Booker, Max Brace, Kevin O' Brien, Rachel Raffael, Blake Tucker, Romney Marino, Adam Bronstein...the list can go on and I'll forget names but we remember--comrades in arms.

To Editorial. You all rock.

To the Art Department. Rockin' as always.

Animation...gods amongst us.

I'm getting verklempt.

Just keep swimming...

...and another thing... Unsung, story crews are easilly overlooked because their work doesn't quite show on the finished film. And it doesn't help that the popular notion of doing story work--though we insist that it's called "STORY DEPARTMENT" for a reason--is that we DRAW what is written (some in the Writer's Guild feeling that we step too close to their dog dish had growled and wanted the title reduced to "Story Enhancers")

This story crew had the huge benefit of having Andrew Stanton. A storyteller. He told us this story and that crew told him his story back. Words, pictures, mime, gags, toy theater and yes, drawing. We don't type our work into Final Draft and call ourselves writers. We pull ideas, notions, phrases, pacing, texture and what not from the ether and bounce if off each other and then we draw it to put it into reels.

So, if the main definition of doing storyboards for features is that one draws what's written then this crew is not that. If the main definition of a screen writer is to type our work into scripts then this crew is not that. We are happy to be called the STORY department (not Story DRAWING department) and know our contribution to be what it is--as storytellers.