Stanton was profoundly influenced by silent comedy. Since WALL-E has next to no dialogue, the story had to be furthered in another way. "We went and watched one Buster Keaton and one Charlie Chaplin movie per day," he said. "What it did was confirmed our gut [instinct], which was that there's nothing you can't get across if you ripped away everything and could only do it visually. Those guys, through staging and edition and pantomime can convey anything. It gave us the courage to say, 'There's gotta be a way to get this across.'"