Rather than recording voices in a studio, Anderson recorded the actors on location much of the time. "When we were running in the film, we ran, when we were hiding behind bushes we hid behind bushes," explains Wolodarsky. Roald Dahl's widow Felicity is "a wonderful, wonderful woman" according to Bill Murray and if he were going to re-marry he'd "take a chance on her".

Despite Mr Fox's very Clooney-esque personality, Anderson didn't have a particular actor in mind when writing the script with Noah Baumbach. "We were thinking of Cary Grant," he says. Other than a song, Jarvis Cocker only has one line in the film but he hopes people will "sense the preparation and pain that went into doing it". Bill Murray thinks George Clooney's voice work in the film is "some of the best voice work I've ever seen anyone do."

Perhaps the most enlightening moments include Anderson touching on the controversy in the LA Times (of his own accord): "I think I shot this film the same way that I would shoot a live action movie. I think some of the people who are used to working on animated movies were a bit thrown off by it at first, but we found a way to make that work and I enjoyed doing it that way."

Then there's Clooney's admission that he wasn't sure if the film would be easily marketable: "I said to Wes, ‘I don't know who'll see it because it's sort of made for grown ups and sort of made for kids and you don't know how that will play'. He said: ‘Don't worry about it, let's go make the movie and have some fun'."

Oh, and did I mention that Anderson actually IS into Czech animation after all? "That kind of Eastern European animation was one of the inspirations," he says. "I hadn't thought of the political links but Dahl was kind of anarchic and the movie's a sort of Robin Hood story, so it's a bit communist I think. But there's another animated film, a French one called Le Roman de Renard and that was a great influence on us because they used multiple scales, so there are [regular sized] puppets and puppets that are tiny for big wide shots. It's very charming, and that's something we stole from that movie."

So now you know.

But when asked to sum up the message of the film, ER's George Clooney struggles. "Stealing is good?" he offers. "Yeah, it's a celebration of stealing," adds Anderson. "It's honouring thievery," tries Clooney again. "I don't know, what should I say?" A disembodied voice mumbles: "Be true to your animal nature."

"Okay," says Clooney. "Let me try that again. I think we just want to be true to our animal nature."

More overcooked laughter from the press corps. Part one of George Clooney's London Film Festival takeover complete. And a fantastic movie about a fantastic fox successfully talked up by all involved. Apart from Meryl Streep.

By Ashley Bird, Flicks.co.nz

Anderson and Dahl's widow Felicity, at the premiere.

George and Bill.

Opens in New Zealand on January 7.