Jerry Seinfeld came to Philadelphia a few weeks ago to generate some early “buzz” for his new animated film from Dreamworks, which comes out soon! It’s a personal project that Jerry has been working on for the past four years and it’s called Bee Movie! Jerry’s mostly known across America for his hit television show, Seinfeld, which made America laugh for nine seasons. Now, he’s bringing his comedy to the big screen with his very first animated film. Not only did Jerry write this movie…he also produced it and starred in it! Or at least his voice was used...

In the movie, Jerry plays Barry B. Benson, an ambitious bee who wonders what life is like beyond the hive. Barry ventures out on his own and encounters some sticky situations. He also beefriends Vanessa, a Manhattan florist, while buzzing around town.

As Barry’s relationship with Vanessa blossoms, he makes a stinging discovery on a store shelf—jars of "stolen" honey! Outraged, Barry decides to take on the honey industry and end the exploitation of bees…once and for all. Jerry was involved in writing every line, song lyric and scene in this film, which may be why it took him four years to complete. “I don't know if I’ll ever do something like this again, so I wanted to really give it everything I had,” he says.

It seems that Jerry’s hard work may pay off big. “There’s something in this movie for everybody,” he says. “You can take an 8-year-old or you can take a 78-year-old.”

How did Jerry’s labor of love come to “bee”? He says the idea for Bee Movie began to take shape during dinner with famed director Steven Spielberg.

“I had called Steven Spielberg to direct this thing I was doing—I think it was a commercial for American Express,” Jerry says. “I asked him if he would do it, and he said no. We live in the same neighborhood out in Long Island so he said, ‘Why don’t we have dinner?’ So of course I said yes.”

The day of the dinner, Jerry says he got very nervous. “I’m Jewish. I grew up on Long Island. Having dinner with Spielberg is like having a second bar mitzvah,” he says.

Jerry says he sat in the same chair all day and waited for dinner time to roll around. Finally, after hours of anticipation, he and his wife, Jessica, left for the restaurant.

“We’re sitting at the dinner getting along very well, and as dinners can go when you’re with new people, sometimes a conversation can stall,” he says. “There's a little lull and, I don’t know, I had a thought the night before. I was performing in Nashville, and I had this thought that it would be funny to do a movie about bees called ‘bee movie.’ That was it—it wasn’t, ‘I want to make this movie.’ It was nothing. It was just a funny idea for a movie title.”

After telling Steven his movie title idea Jerry says that Spielberg looked at him and said, “That’s a movie. You have to make that movie.”

“The next thing I know, I’m on a plane out to DreamWorks in California, and DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is dazzling me with this unbelievable technology that they have,” Jerry says. “I thought, ‘This is a new sandbox to play in...I wonder if I could be funny in this kind of medium.’ I started to get excited about it.”

When the movie began to take off, Jerry says all he had was a title. “I didn’t have anything else,” he says. “I had to fill in the movie because we already had the name.”

Jerry asked three Seinfeld writers to help him create a bumblebee world, complete with rules like, “No buzzing after 6 p.m.”

“We sat together in a room, and we just made up this universe,” he says. “When you make one of these movies, there are no laws. We asked, ‘What do the bees know or what do they have? Do they have cars or do they fly everywhere? Or do they walk?’ You’ve got to make all that stuff up, and it was really fun.”

If Jerry had the chance, he says he’d like to impose a few new rules on humans. “I feel like sometimes these technologies kind of happen to us before we figure out, what are the rules of this thing?” he says. “The BlackBerry, for example, is a fantastic device, but there are no rules.”

Jerry’s perplexed by people who check their BlackBerrys while they’re in the middle of a conversation. “People go into BlackBerry comas,” he jokes. “They just go, ‘I think I'll go elsewhere.’ And they just leave you.”

In Jerry's world, cell phone users would also follow new rules. “Caller ID and star-69 and caller ID block…remember there was a time like the phone would ring and somebody in the house would go, ‘I’ll get it.’ I haven't heard that in 20 years,” he says.

Although he likes to complain, Jerry says he has learned to appreciate life’s little pleasures, like a good meal or his wife’s brownies. “As cranky as I am, at the same time, I enjoy life,” he says.

Jerry says he didn’t need to look very far to find an actress to play Vanessa, Barry B. Benson’s human crush in Bee Movie. From the beginning, he had his sights set on his neighbor, Academy Award-winning actress Renée Zellweger. “She’s so sweet, and I thought, ‘That’s a good match for a bee,’” he says.

Jerry has nothing but praise for Renée’s talents. “She has got one of those amazing voice gifts that she can put her whole performance into her voice,” he says. “It comes on that screen, it’s just, like, boom. It’s like the character comes to life. In animation, the hard part is to make this thing seem like it’s alive. She brings life with just her voice, and not a lot of actors can do that.”

Comedian Chris Rock makes a cameo as Mooseblood the Mosquito, while Will & Grace star Megan Mullally plays it sweet as a honey factory tour guide. John Goodman gets animated as a larger-than-life lawyer, and Ray Liotta plays…himself!

Bees may be busy, but they still watch the news! Broadcast journalist Larry King brings the headlines at “Bee-N-N.”

Jerry also improvised his scenes with Chris Rock. “I said, ‘Why don’t you come in tomorrow? I’m recording. Let’s fool around. We’ll make up a character for you.’ So he came in and we just ad-libbed most of his stuff,” Jerry says. “I just interviewed him as a mosquito—so, what’s it like out there as a mosquito? And he started saying all this stuff, and we put it in the movie. That was the fun of performing with the people.”

As he waits for Bee Movie to land in theaters, Jerry admits he’s a little nervous. “It’s like you bought a present for somebody that was way too expensive. You can’t return it. And now they’re going to open it,” he says. “It’s an awful moment because there’s a chance they’re going to insincerely go, ‘Oh, this is lovely.’”

Now that he knows what it’s like to obsess over every line of a movie, does Jerry feel fulfilled? “Yeah, I do,” he says. “I did something different and I had to learn to do new things, and that’s been great.”

During filming Jerry says he had to cut back on his stand-up comedy shows—but he is ready to get back on the stage. “That’s really my life. These things happen to me and I do the best I can with them, but my life is being a comedian. That’s what I’m good at.”

Although he loved making the movie, Jerry says something very important was lacking from the experience. “There's something about the intimacy about the contact with humanity that you get with an audience. I’m thrilled I was able to make this movie, but it’s not an intimate interaction with the public. It’s more of a gift that you kind of leave at their door,” he says. “I love feeling the life and the warmth and the unpredictability. I love audiences.”