As the script progressed more people became involved, but the story development process remained essentially the same for five years. Docter says, "We would take it to a point where we were comfortable with it and we would pitch it to those guys and they would punch holes in it in a friendly way. We'd make it stronger and then when we were all comfortable with it, we would take it down to Disney and present it to Tom Schumacher (president of Walt Disney Feature Animation) and Peter Schneider and they would knock holes in it. We would go back and fix it again and the whole process repeats and repeats for 5 years, and now we are done. You build up thick skin as you tend to take it fairly personally. Nobody means it personally as you're talking about the film, but you really invest a lot of yourself. It's a tough process."

According to Unkrich one of the great things about their relationship with Disney (Disney and Pixar have a 50% partnership) is Disney didn't work on the project on a daily basis so when they were consulted they offered fresh criticism. "We sometimes are too close to our material and we can't see some of the problems. Tom Schumacher is very good at stepping in and giving very good broad stroke notes about things that are and are not working. Another great thing about Disney is that they never tell us how to solve a problem. They just point things out and have trusted us to come up with creative solutions."

A love story?

The biggest challenge throughout the production was the story according to Docter. "I think that will always be the case. At Pixar we place a great deal of emphasis on story and the characters. You can have some really stunning imagery and technical innovation, but after about 5 minutes the audience is bored and they want something more interesting -- story. You're asking people to commit an hour and a half of their life and it better be something worthwhile."

Docter oversaw every facet of the production. One area he found "rather exciting and somewhat nerve-racking" was voice recording sessions. He had gone to a couple of recording sessions on Toy Story, to observe Lasseter working with actors. "What I learned is that my job is to set up as much of the situation as I can, give them all the information that they need and then stand back and watch them go."

Using his improvisational skills, actor John Goodman created the voice of James P. Sullivan (Sulley).	Billy Crystal brought his great comedic talents to the vocal role of Mike Wazowski.

It turns out there is a lot of improvisation on Pixar soundtracks. Also, the script changed from time to time so one week he would tell John Goodman "so Sullivan is a janitor now" and the next month "now he's the best scarer on the floor." Luckily, Goodman "was very patient with us. He rolls with the punches."

He was also delighted to work with Billy Crystal whom he describes as an amazing actor; very clever and really funny on and off screen. "He is like having a team of writers along." He was glad Crystal was recorded in a soundproof studio as Docter would have ruined a lot of takes with his laughter had he not been in the control room. Crystal is the voice of Mike, Sulley's best friend. Mike is the little one-eyed round green monster that you've probably seen by now.