VIEW FILM STILLS: Ratatouille
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READ MORE: Ratatouille review

On his web site, pattonoswalt.com, comedian, writer, and actor Patton Oswalt describes in great (and hilarious) detail the harrowing experience of running the gauntlet at his first-ever press junket in support of the Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille. As the voice of the film's star, Remy, Oswalt faced the kind of mindless questioning that makes actors squirm in their seats and other journalists contemplate a career teaching English in a foreign country.

Now, having survived it all, Oswalt finds himself back on the press frontline in support of the release of Ratatouille on DVD, which is a testament to just how completely and sincerely he loves this film. The DVD also allows the actor to revisit his alter ego Remy in one of the disc's myriad special features, such as the funny and informative animated "documentary" called "Your Friend the Rat," which proves once again that Pixar's throwaway material is better than most others' feature work.

Perhaps buoyed by the film's critical and commercial success, Oswalt happily sat down to field our (hopefully not quite as mindless) barrage of questions.

Brad Bird, Patton Oswalt, and Brad Lewis on the set of Ratatouille Courtesy of Pixar/Disney

So has your tolerance for junkets increased?
[Laughs] No. I try and make them as fun as I can, but it is really weirdly repetitive. You know, the person interviewing you, they're not bad. They have a job to do. They have an editor who goes, "You've got to get this quote…" And everyone's trying to do their best. It's just a bad situation.

Are they worse than, say, being a guest on wacky morning radio shows?
No, because at least at a junket I have time to go back to my room. Wacky radio shows — you've usually been driven to some transmitter building on the outskirts of town and you are trapped there. If your ride leaves, or if they decided, "Hey, we decided to keep you here the whole two hours!" You're like, "No.." "Oh, yeah! C'mon!" That's always brutal.

Were you surprised by the success of Ratatouille, since it's hardly your average kid fare?
Yeah. It wasn't so much surprising as it was gratifying. But it's not a kid's movie. It's not a kid's movie at all. It's an adult movie with stuff in it for kids. And it was so cool to see that everyone just sort of rose to the occasion. It was gratifying just knowing the work that the animators and [director] Brad Bird had put into this project and to see, "Oh, wow, a quality film that isn't full of desperate pop culture references and actually takes its time." There's something really great about that. It gives you hope. It was also hopeful that so many of the film critics and film columnists and journalists that I talked to, they were grateful. They were beyond happy, they were like, "Thank you so much for this movie. You have no idea how bad it's been out there."

For a movie that relies on comic timing, was it tough to be alone in a recording booth for most of the time?
Even though I was alone in a booth, I was alone in a booth with Brad Bird. And Brad Bird as a director — he can summon up any of the other characters. He can be Brian Dennehy, he can be Pete Sohn, he can be all these people. So you felt the other personalities and presences in the scene. Always. So that was never a problem.