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" Popular Mechanics: Why did you decide to put an inventor in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs? You could have made the scenario a government experiment gone wrong, or something like that. Chris Miller: A lot of [disaster movies] have a scientist who&amp;#039;s the expert on everything, who knows that the problem is coming and is the only person who can solve it. And we thought it would be interesting if [Flint] was the guy who created the problem in the first place, and then throughout the movie became the only guy who could solve it. It seemed like a natural progression, from [using] classic action-movie archetypes and then trying to turn them on their ear a little bit. PM: Well, we loved the idea because every year, PM does a story called Backyard Genius about inventors who are creating really cool stuff in their shops, and Flint is totally that kind of guy. Philip Lord: We looked at a lot of that stuff actually. CM: There are these inventor societies, and other things that we were researching online. PL: There&amp;#039;s a version of the story where--what&amp;#039;s the thing that&amp;#039;s on all the light bulbs?  CM: Underwriters Labs. PL: Yeah, Underwriters Labs. There&amp;#039;s a version of the story where that&amp;#039;s what [Flint] was going for, he just wanted to get that seal. There were a bunch of things like that.  CM: We have a friend who is a rocket scientist ... PL: He worked at JPL, and he would tell us how plausible some of this stuff is. CM: And we&amp;#039;re like ... &amp;quot;Not that plausible!&amp;quot; But the hallmark of this type of movie is pseudoscience, so we wanted to make sure we included a healthy dose of that. PM: When Flint is explaining how the machine works, there&amp;#039;s a lot of scientific jargon. Where did you guys come up with that? Did you look it up? PL: It&amp;#039;s this weird little mishmash pastiche of different hot topics in the sciences. CM: It&amp;#039;s like nanotechnology! Nanomutation! Genetic! Superdynamic!  PL: There&amp;#039;s one thing that&amp;#039;s actually right. It&amp;#039;s the Jell-O thing. We looked it up, and that&amp;#039;s what Jell-O actually is. Elastic polymer made of polypeptide chains. What we really wanted to do was to write the lingo wrong on purpose so it would sound like it was movie science. So it would sound fake and the filmmakers knew that it was fake, instead of it sounding fake and the filmmakers [trying to make] it sound like it could be real. CM: There&amp;#039;s a lot of extra scientific jargon that you can only see on little screens and such. But we are nerds ourselves, so we like that type of stuff. The funny science lingo--we love that. And then there was the frankenfood element of it--genetically engineered crops. This was all genetically engineered superfood. What happens when that gets out of control? [This is] sort of the B-movie version of the terror of over-genetifying food. PM: Another little touch I loved was the Rockstar Scientist posters all over the walls in Flint&amp;#039;s childhood bedroom.  CM: The idea was that all of his heroes would be like Michael Jordan, the way you&amp;#039;d have those posters in your room.  PL: We wanted to position math and science as hip and cool by portraying this real nerdy guy as the hero. CM: In the third act of the movie--I don&amp;#039;t know if you can tell, because he&amp;#039;s so skinny--but his T-shirt says &amp;quot;Science Is Awesome.&amp;quot; And it has a little rainbow on it for some reason. Part of our agenda was: Science is awesome, guys. PL: We have a pro-nerd agenda.  CM: And the whole emotional arc of the movie is about how progress in science is sort of like being an artist. Flint&amp;#039;s dad, who is an old-school, blue-collar kind of guy, doesn&amp;#039;t understand it--basically, being a scientist is akin to being a ballerina, but then he realizes that maybe some progress can be made with the help of science.  PM: Have either one of you ever invented anything? CM: Oh yeah!  PL: Did you actually invent a real thing? I have a lot of good ideas for food. I&amp;#039;m trying to remember my real inventions. I&amp;#039;ve definitely had some inventions that haven&amp;#039;t--well, they can&amp;#039;t be talked about, because they&amp;#039;re super top-secret. CM: I had a magnetic sealer for cereal boxes. PL: Oh, that&amp;#039;s a good one. CM: Like a classic ziplock-type baggie. And I tried to ... I sent a letter to Post and General Mills, and they did not respond.  PL: No, they sure didn&amp;#039;t. They didn&amp;#039;t ask you to sign a release or anything. CM: This was, by the way, last week, and I still haven&amp;#039;t heard back. Or possibly the sixth grade. PL: We have a lot of food-related inventions. Didn&amp;#039;t we discuss--and I just want to see this happen--I want someone to make butter in the form of a giant glue stick. CM: Oh yeah, so you can put it on corn and stuff. PL: But the biggest trick is that it gets covered with bits of toast, and corn bits. CM: Guess what! There is a thing called a corn boy, which I have, that is basically--you put butter in the thing, and you twist it ... PL: And it works? Well then. Okay, well my invention is going to be like a cigar cutter on the end of it so you can slice off the corrupted, covered-in-corn butter tip. Copyright 2009, Phil Lord. CM: What about breakfast cereal? PL: Oh yeah, that&amp;#039;s an idea that we had, that we wanted to get out there. CM: It&amp;#039;s a breakfast cereal that has different things you eat for breakfast. Marshmallow eggs, crunchy bacon bits, hash brown-flavored flakes.  PL: And little rice pancakes! Things like that. CM: It&amp;#039;s like breakfast for breakfast! PL: If 3M reads your magazine, I would like them to call me. I&amp;#039;ve got good ideas. Really good ideas that are possible to execute. All I need are some supersmart people to make it work, and it&amp;#039;ll be fine. I have an idea for a flying car. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a4532/4331133/>