Can a Robot Love Story Make You Cry?

If you're Pixar fan Courtney Mault, then even the trailer for WALL"¢E makes you cry. Having seen the film myself, I'll admit to tearing up -- twice -- at emotional (well, robo-motional) moments in the story. So what's the story here? Well, Mault posted a video of herself crying during the WALL"¢E trailer -- in the video, she becomes overwhelmed when WALL"¢E first speaks his name. Mault's video got back to Pixar, and inspired the WALL"¢E team, who were in the last months of production at the time. Mault became known inside Pixar as "The Crying Girl." Here's the rest of the story from Mault's boyfriend:

After a few months, she started to get trickles of emails from people at Pixar who said they had seen her video and really appreciated it. It was all sort of under the radar -- mostly code monkeys, and they were sort of circumspect about the subject. ... Then, last month, she received another barrage of emails from Pixar. ... They were having the wrap party for Wall-E in San Francisco, and wanted to know if we wanted to join them. ... Before the movie began, the producers and the film's director, Andrew Stanton, came out and gave a very heartfelt speech about the making of the film. ... Then he said this: "Six months ago, when the first trailer for Wall-E came out, we were only halfway done with the film, and we weren't exactly sure how we were going to get it done. We were exhausted. And then, one day, a movie showed up on YouTube showing a girl watching the trailer for Wall-E. And every time she watched it, she would cry on cue. When we saw that, we knew we were on the right track."

Read the rest for a tale that could only happen in our online age. See also: photos of Mault's Pixar visit, her boyfriend's original post on MetaFilter, and a TV news story on Mault -- including an interview that delves into the reasons behind Mault's tears.

So: did WALL"¢E make you cry?

(Via Pop Candy.)