The Summer Movie Season heats up with a terrific new animated feature the entire family will enjoy. It’s Rally Road Racers — in theaters nationwide this Friday May 12th. Director Ross Venokur presents an entertaining and moving underdog story with cool visuals and a talented voice cast. Buckle up as we explore this sweet ride. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: I love this movie. Where did your love of car racing begin?

Ross Venokur: My love of car racing, especially this type, began with “Cannonball Run” — a movie from my childhood. I love these old rally movies, like “Gumball Rally” (which a lot of people haven’t seen) and even “Smokey and the Bandit” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”. All these cross country wacky movies where a bunch of people got in unlikely cars on unlikely teams and started racing. I’m a big fan of underdog sports comedies, like “Bad News Bears”. This is sort of a mash-up of all of that. I’m not actually a humongous fan of actual car races but I love car racing movies — the cinematography around the car races. I enjoy the “Fast and the Furious” movies. I like all the high action, high octane fun with cars. So I put it all together in an animated movie.

JM: Yes you did! And it’s coming out the week before “Fast X”. What a jam-packed May for car racing movies in theaters.

RV: (laughs)

JM: We follow Zhi, our main character, a slow loris. He is an underdog. We root for him right away, and he has so much depth.

RV: It was very important to care for the characters, like in any movie. But I also give a ton of credit to our incredible art team. Zhi’s design is so adorable and his eyes are so gigantic. It’s very hard to not be sucked in and care for him right away. The design goes a long way with that character.

JM: And how do you really plan-out these visually striking sequences, like the race right at the beginning of the movie that will get everyone’s attention.

RV: We had a ton of challenges. We didn’t have a lot of the resources a lot of movies would have in our situation because we’re low budget. We’re independent. So we did as much pre-visualizing as we could. We really started with the script and trying to write-out the beats I wanted to see in there. And in working with the board team and artists in cranking out the animatics, we probably boarded ten times as much as you see in the movie. Wacky stunts and jokes and gags — a lot of stuff that got cut because we realized if it didn’t involve your main guy or main villain (Zhi or Vainglorious), you didn’t really care.

We would grind away. And then from there we went into layout and really started putting stuff in CG and blocking it with the cameras. And again, we were a little bit challenged. We didn’t have a proper cinematographer early on, so my production designer Alexei Nechytaylo, who’s super well-versed in that stuff, stepped in to also work on the cinematography side. We hammered away and brought in additional teams as we needed them. But we knew the movie was going to hinge on the race sequences being exciting, especially in a world of cars… in a world where we knew “Mario” was coming out. We didn’t have all the resources but we had the same passion and desire to tell a story the best we could.

Ross Venokur

JM: Yeah. You can tell the passion and heart is absolutely there, and you can also get it through what J.K. Simmons does in his voice performance as Gnash [Zhi’s trainer]. He delivers lines unlike anybody else.

RV: Yeah. J.K., when he said “Yes”, it was a thrill of a lifetime to get to work with him. And sometimes you meet these people and they just over deliver — even better than you would imagine. He’s such a generous actor. He shows up prepared for the work and really excited to do it. We recorded him during the pandemic. We were over Zoom. One of the times we recorded him he was in his son’s bedroom closet because that’s the best sound we could get. His son was running in and out running tech for him. It didn’t hinder him at all. Line after line, delivery after delivery, so good. So funny. Did some ad-libbing to add to the character. What a blessing and a treat to get to work with him.

JM: Good. Gnash has a lot of bumper sticker phrases and mottos of life. Some of them are for comedic effect but you also don’t want to make fun of them too much because some of them are for true emotional effect. You pull that off well.

RV: Thank you. As you could imagine we went through a lot of bumper stickers. We had so many more joke bumper stickers, and you’re right, it started to dilute the power. At some point we needed [them] to deliver some of the messages of the movie. All these great underdog sports comedies have a [Mister] Miyagi in them. He’s the guy you don’t suspect will come through in a pinch. We left in two pretty strong joke bumper stickers and the rest we really went for to deliver on the goods.

JM: John Cleese voices evil competitor Vainglorious. He’s now 83 years old and he sounds as good as ever.

RV: This is the third movie I’ve done with John. Originally that character was Spanish and named Vyragosa. And then we realized that John Cleese would be amazing, so we rewrote him quickly to make him British.

JM: Wow.

RV: And when I spoke to John, and I hadn’t spoken to him for a few years, as he aged he got a little more gravelly in his voice. It had this amazing croakey toad effect. His voice was so perfect. And it’s really amazing because he’s 83 and there’s no sense of the age of our characters. He’s supposed to be 15 years or so older than Zhi. That would make him, logically, in his thirties, [but] it doesn’t read as an 83 year old playing that character. He’s so perfect.

JM: And Vainglorious has these minions. There are a lot of other little characters who pop-in for punchline comedic moments. In some movies it can be annoying. In this case, they are some of the smartest (in terms of timing and delivery) punchline pop-in comedic moments that I’ve seen in an animated movie in a long time.

RV: I wanted him to feel like he’s in charge of this whole company. He lords over people. I came-up with the idea of the Echoes, who basically repeat his lines. And they really became a little joke factory for us. And, like the bumper stickers, it became about less is more. When you found that line and went over it… and they did become annoying… you pull back. You get very comfortable throwing jokes out of the movie.

JM: There’s a sequence involving the song “Take On Me” that’s not just using the song. You were clearly inspired by the music video, right?

RV: Yeah, absolutely. My concern with [Illumination] using “Take On Me” in “Mario” was that they did what we did with the video, which was: We really emulated the video and called-out the look of the video. It’s a really nice and surprising moment in the movie. I’m so happy that they didn’t do that. My whole generation associates that song with car racing because the imagery is so strong. It was in my mind from early on. There are four major races in our movie and what we learned was… I actually picked it up from a MasterClass Ron Howard gave where he was talking about the boxing movie he made [“Cinderella Man”]. They learned very quickly that the most boring sequences of the movie are the fights. You think that’s why you’re there but it’s really hard to keep that dynamic over and over again. So I realized… that each race has to have a different flavor and feel so they stand apart and you don’t feel like, “Oh my gosh. There’s another race going on.” From that came this idea in my mind of a-ha and we went for it. And it became the most complicated sequence in the movie. Now, I love it. We nailed it in the end.

JM: It’s a highlight scene in the movie and a visual treat for fans of a-ha and the music video. There’s a strong emotional factor in this film. There are scenes with Zhi’s grandmother talking to a portrait of her daughter (Zhi’s mother). It’s such a simple but sweet and effective way of connecting to somebody else and reflecting on your life — and asking a little bit out of that person. How did you conceive those beautiful moments?

RV: I wanted some justification for why Zhi is who he is. He’s an oddball — in a world of slow lorises, he’s the only one who’s interested in races. I knew I needed to give him backstory but almost have the backstory hidden from himself. We removed the mother from the movie by not having her be alive anymore. Otherwise Zhi would’ve had those conversations and have known all the secrets. Then you get to a place where “it’s another animated movie where the protagonist’s mother is dead.” My last movie was all about princesses and I’ve heard all that criticism. So we really dug deep and tried to get specific about that culture. Zhi is Chinese. There’s a whole way that culture interacts with their ancestors. I was very lucky to have some people on my crew who are Chinese-American and who really understood that and could coach me through a sensitive way to deal with that so it wasn’t just me making assumptions about how that culture works.

JM: Family members watching over us as we do what we want to do in life. The way you present that is great. You made this movie from [where you live in] Arkansas. You’ve proven that you don’t need to be in Hollywood or New York to make a movie like this.

RV: It’s been a real journey. For the first couple [independent] animated movies I did, my family and I moved to [near] the studios in Toronto… and Montreal. In gaining some expertise I was allowed to remote direct this movie. When I started this, I was in Ojai, California — about an hour and a half from L.A. I would go to Montreal every two to six weeks, but I would also be on Zoom every day. And then the pandemic hit… and my life was sort of pandemic ready. I was working remotely. My wife and I were homeschooling our daughters. So I stopped traveling to Montreal. They cancelled all travel. And we decided to actually go look for a new place to live. We always wanted to have a farm. So we drove around the country for over a year and I directed this movie… basically from the front passenger of a car for a year. We landed in Arkansas. I’m starting on some new projects. And you’re right, I’m doing everything from this little kooky part of the country that most people do not associate with film and television making.

JM: Wow. You directed this movie about cars from a car.

RV: (laughs) Exactly.

JM: What an amazing accomplishment! How do you hope young kids see the theme of finding your dao — your path — your way?

RV: I hope they respond to it really well. As hard as it is to look at… for Zhi it’s his grandmother… and say, “I understand what you want from me but I feel something inside of me that is this voice that’s telling me who I really am”… To empower children to follow that and to know they’re brave enough and that families will still love them… The best thing they can do for themselves is listen to their inner voice. I hope it has that effect on some kids. That would be beautiful.

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Jackson Murphy

Jackson Murphy is a movie critic and entertainment columnist. He is the creator of the website Lights-Camera-Jackson.com, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.

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