JUMPING OUT OF THE FISHBOWL.

Byline: - Glenn Whipp

Pixar filmmaker Andrew Stanton has read about Disney animators who travel to far-flung locales like Paris or China to research their movies. Meanwhile, Stanton, who co-directed ``A Bug's Life'' and had a hand in writing both ``Toy Story'' movies as well as ``Monsters, Inc.,'' had to content himself with smaller field trips.

``With 'Toy Story,' we just went to Toys 'R' Us,'' Stanton says. ``For 'A Bug's Life,'' we went outside and poked around in the dirt. 'Monsters, Inc.' came out of our own imaginations. So we never really got to go anywhere. We kept joking that we'd have to make our next film about supermodels in Tahiti.''

Stanton didn't quite attain that goal, but he did finally make it out of his cubicle. Pixar Animation's fifth movie, ``Finding Nemo,'' is a fish- out-of-water story about a father clownfish (voiced by Albert Brooks) searching for his son, who has been plunked into an aquarium inside a dentist's office.

To get the details right, Stanton (who wrote and directed the film after nursing it along for the better part of a decade) went scuba diving around a tropical reef off the Hawaii coast. As for the dentist's office, he knew that scene from memory.

``When I was a kid, there was a fish tank at my dentist,'' Stanton remembers. ``It was the only thing that made the trip bearable.''

As he got older, though, Stanton started feeling sorry for the fish.

``Nobody should have to listen to Muzak all day,'' he says.

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(color) Pixar Animation's ``Finding Nemo,'' opening May 30.