When Jerry Seinfeld met with Steven Spielberg for lunch roughly five years ago, Seinfeld thought he had a good idea for a movie title – Bee Movie.

“There’s never been a movie about bees,” Seinfeld said during press roundtable in Chicago several weeks ago. “Bees are the only animals that make something people want. Chickens do not think they are laying eggs, they think they are making chickens.”

At the time, Seinfeld only had the movie title in mind. But the story, characters and computer-generated images followed in the next four years.

When co-directors Steve Hickner and Simon J. Smith heard about the project, both looked forward to working with Seinfeld.

“He hadn’t done a project in nine years, and the fact he was going to make a movie became very important,” Hickner said. “I was attracted to the project because [Seinfeld] was writing it.”

Seinfeld’s involvement with Bee Movie remained constant over the four years of production, enabling Seinfeld continual interaction with the movie’s team.

“Many times, the writers write the show in an office and pass the script on to the director to interpret and then tell the actors what to do,” Seinfeld said. “The secret weapon of the TV show and now the movie is I was there…I was there when we shot it, I was there when we edited it, and I was there we finished it.”

Seinfeld said compromising an original comedic idea can destroy the funny aspects of a movie.

“Comedy is a very fragile little thing. [Jokes are] just like little cheese puffs, not a big deal, but if you screw it up, no one wants it,” Seinfeld said.

Unlike other computer-generated movies,Bee Movie was shot with multiple actors present. In previous films, such as Shrek, actors recorded lines separately and the production team combined the tracks later.

“We recorded a lot of the scenes together, with Jerry and Renée [Zellweger] or Jerry and Matthew [Broderick], and you can feel it,” Smith said. “It’s not literally manufactured by lifting [audio tracks] together from different times. [The shooting] is more organic.”

Seinfeld’s characteristic “observational humor,” which fueled the success of Seinfeld, defines the comedy of Bee Movie. Seinfeld said Bee Movie’s humor takes advantage of people’s everyday reactions to the world around them.

“Everyone thinks the same things about everything. All the things that you think, everyone thinks,” Seinfeld said. “What I do as a comedian is I feed on that. I pickpocket your brain. I know you’re thinking what I’m thinking, and so I use that against you to make you laugh.”

Although Seinfeld enjoyed making the movie, he said he remains unsure about any future big-screen projects. Nevertheless, stand-up comedy will remain his primary and favorite performance genre.

“I loved making the movie, but it’s not as great as getting on stage. I won’t be in the theater when people laugh. I won’t feel it,” Seinfeld said. “To me, it’s the purest connection to an audience that any artist ever gets…I would never give that up.”