You take a lot of narrative risks in "Waking Life" that would scare the pants off the likes of Pixar.

The big underachievement of animation is that you have storytelling and imaginative possibilities you don't even have in live action, and yet people don't go there because it's too weird sometimes. Also, just the cost of making something like "Monsters, Inc." means they have to appeal to a family audience. We didn't have that. So not only are we not a family movie, we're a challenging adult movie.

How on earth did you pitch the film?

I said, "It doesn't make any sense on paper but it will be an interesting experience. I don't have a title and I don't have a script but here's 50-pages of notes", and these suckers gave me the money. I still can't believe it.

Why did you want to do an animated feature?

It's not my first way of thinking but this kind of animation, where you shoot your actors live and then paint them on a computer, really appealed to me because it had its basis in the real world. The film could not have worked as live action. You've got to take the viewer's brain to that imaginative level where the film takes place, which is: inside someone else's brain, in that part where dreams and memories are processed.

Unlike most animated films, yours features a dazzling array of different styles. Was that the original intention?

Yes. The artists all brought their own styles to it and basically used the existing imagery as a basis for movement. These people aren't computer animators, they're visual artists, painters, and illustrators. My primary concern was that each scene interpreted the person correctly. Once I'd signed off on the design, they were given a lot of freedom. Sometimes they would be a little too interpretive and we'd have to reel them in, but mostly they were dead on first time.

Would you like to make another animated feature?

Yes, I found this extremely satisfying in a creative sense. Technically, you could do any movie animated, but I think the story, the animation, and the technology have to be in sync. I have another story that does that same kind of challenging reality/unreality thing, but in a futuristic, science-fiction type of context. It's probably a little more typical of what people would think, and yet it's still very much a character piece.