“I collect all the interesting details I find in life, jokes, funny things I see on TV, on the street, and I put them all in a database. That’s my toolbox. So when I make a new film, I first come up with the idea, and then I start digging in the toolbox to see what I can fill the film with. This is all recycled gear which we give new life, which is also the subject of Micmacs.
     Indeed, the misfits that adopt Bazil make their living off of fixing things that society throws away. Their cave is built from scrap metal. “It’s a symbol of protection from the outside world, like a castle that a kid builds. Maybe I project my own wish to be protected from the real world. My protection is films, because they are not the real life.”
     This opposition to real life (that is to the life of disillusioned adults that grind the mills of society) is evident in one of Jeunet’s recurrent themes: childhood. Children are always present in his films, in one way or another. “A part of me has always stayed a kid,” Jeunet says. “Every kid grows up as a poet, but only a few remain poets. Of course you need to be an adult to make films, but I am also a bit of a kid. I continue to play. I know it’s not a very good definition of an intellectual filmmaker, but a film is a toy for me. My excuse is Orson Welles, who once referred to his films as toy trains. Well, movies are my toy boxes. And in these boxes there is the dialogue, the costumes, and all kinds of other toys that I build movies with. It’s a pleasure to play.”