Will could never compete in the sport he’s always loved: racewalking.
While struggling to find respect as a coach, Will’s fortunes change when he spots a burnout baseball pitcher, Matt, with the most impeccable racewalking stride he’s ever seen. Together, Will and Matt team up, face the challenges of a sport that doesn’t want them, and to try and take down the best walker in the country.
An underdog story that brings to mind such classic sports comedies as Major League and Happy Gilmore, Racewalkers is the collective brainchild of writer and directors Kevin Claydon and Phil Moniz, who also lead the charge as Matt and Will in a film that “offers heart and humour in equal measure.” (You can read the rest of our full review here).
As the film premieres at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, our Peter Gray spoke with Claydon, Moniz and fellow star Robbie Amell about the inspiration behind their story, how much of the comedy was improvised, and if there’s any other niche sport they would like to highlight on screen.
One of the things I really loved about Racewalkers is that, as funny as the movie is with the quirks of the sport, it’s taken incredibly seriously. And it’s done with so much love. For you, Phil and Kevin, was the initial spark of inspiration behind this? And how did that evolve to what we see now?
Kevin Claydon: Well, Phil, myself and Evan Landry, who’s one of our best friends and a brilliant writer, he wrote this with us and produced it, we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do next. We always knew we wanted to do a sports movie at some point. We love movies like Major League and Happy Gilmore, and so Evan basically brought us a clip of racewalking, and was like, “We gotta do something with this.”
So we really started to think about it. What kind of movie would we want to see? What kind of character would we want? And the more it started to develop, the more we really started to fall in love with it, and this world just started to build. We just had a blast writing it. But it really just started from a pretty simple, small seed of an idea, and it grew from there.
And given that you’re both writing and directing here, is there a position that one takes over the other?
Phil Moniz: It’s pretty much an equal playing field. In our writing process and in our prep, in terms of the directing, we (Kevin and I) were very collaborative. We’ve been doing this together for quite some time. Our previous project was a short series called Short Term Sentence, and that was one where it was the same sort of model. Where we both were in it and shared directing duties. It’s just about getting on the same page in the creative process.
We had a great team to lean on (too). If we’re going to argue about creative stuff, it’s all happening beforehand. It’s not one of those things were I’m going to take this and you’re going to take this. We approach it pretty much as a team. When it comes to the making of the actual movie, if there are scenes I’m not in than I am behind the camera more, and vice versa. We just have a lot of trust in each other, and we do enough prep that we know what the other will have their eye on so it’s the same vision.
In these underdog stories, there’s always the professional rival too. And Robbie, I love that your character’s name is Ched. Goes with all the Chads and Jets of the world. How did you become involved with the story? What was it about this character that you thought, “Yeah, I’m going to get a faux-hawk and rock this one?”
Robbie Amell: (Laughs) I had seen Kevin and Phil’s short series, and I loved it. I thought they were wicked talented, and Jeff Chan, my producing partner, who also produced this, he said how we should really keep and eye on these guys and see what they’re doing next. And that’s when the Racewalkers script came over. I read it and it just gave me that nostalgic feeling. Like Kevin was saying, you know, Happy Gilmore, Cool Runnings…movies that I grew up loving that were hilarious, but had a tone of heart and they were so charming.
I had seen Phil and Kevin’s chemistry on and off screen as directors, but also as co-stars in their short series, so I knew that was going to work. Jeff and I, we essentially told them that we were going to try and help them get this made as long as we can. If we hit a roadblock, they could take it somewhere else and get it made, but we hoped that wasn’t going to happen, and luckily it didn’t.
And Ched was just, like…it’s just so fun to play somebody so out there. But I tried to play it as someone who just wants to be in with the cool crowd, but he’s just got such a dick of a father that it never really worked out for him. We had a fun little back story for that side of him. And that mohawk, I was shooting The Witcher, and my wife loved it, so she said that I should have it for (this movie). So, with the hair and the pit vipers, this guy just takes it so seriously and he’s trying to make it really cool. Because this is all he’s got.
I do have to quickly shout out your delivery of “Baseball…court.” For some reason that line really got me. So much of the dialogue feels incredibly natural across the board, but how much of what we see is scripted? And how much is improvised?
Kevin Claydon: I will say, before Robbie becomes humble about this, that was not scripted. So many moments in this movie, (Robbie) just elevated this character to be the biggest turbo. And it was the best thing. Phil and I wrote a lot of the stuff in the movie with Robbie and Greg (Bryk), but we didn’t write their talent. Robbie just stepped up and when he said “Baseball court”, like, of course that was going to be in the final edit (laughs). We benefitted a lot from talented people like Robbie.
Robbie Amell: They created a great place to play as well. They made these characters. Yeah, that (line) was improvised, but most of my stuff isn’t. They created it. This character is this weird guy, and I thought that he would try to make a sports reference, and he would just be absolutely wrong, but he would say it with full conviction. And, you know, getting to watch Greg Bryk, who’s normally a pretty serious dude, just rip comedy for 90 minutes was amazing. And it works because he takes it so seriously. But it all starts at the top with Kevin and Phil, and the tone they built into this movie. I feel like the audience is having a good a time watching it as the people who made it.
Looking at the physicality of these characters and this sport. How do you find that balance in what a racewalker actually looks like, and having fun with that, but not taking it so far that it looks like a joke?
Kevin Claydon: Phil can correct me if I’m wrong, but it was one of the things that we spoke about right at the beginning, that we weren’t going to punch down. It’s too cheap a joke to make, and it’s just not interesting. So we wanted to show that the sport was hard to do, and it is really gruelling. We just kind of learned how to do it properly, and then we just trusted that we didn’t have to exaggerate too much stuff.
Phil Moniz: Kevin and I are lifelong sports fane, and when we started to learn more and more about this sport, like, it’s super hard. The athletic feats they are accomplishing? We had Evan Dunfee, a Canadian record holder for racewalking, on set with us, and we got him to go at full speed, and it’s crazy fast. It’s a really hard sport. Even they would acknowledge that it looks goofy on its own, so there’s no need to really play that up. We knew for the movie to work, it’s funnier if we don’t make fun on it. It’s a serious thing that these people do, it just happens to look like that. I think that was kind of the tone we were trying to strike. We wanted to be respectful of the sport, but also recognize it’s hard. It’s an Olympic sport for a reason.
Kevin Claydon: Oh, when you start to do it, it’s hard man. They’re so fast at it. It’s ridiculous. Robbie and I would complain, showing up to set every single day after doing a day of racewalking, because our hips would be like cement. We had never used those muscles (laughs).
Was there anything about this experience, either through the world of racewalking or just filming in general, that you learnt about yourselves?
Kevin Claydon: That’s a good question.
Phil Moniz: I think, for me, this was affirming in terms of knowing the way that we like to work, and knowing that a huge part of that is working with people that like to work in the same way, Given how the movie’s come together, we’re super proud of it. It was affirming in that you can approach working on set, and if you find the right people to go on the journey with you, it’s extremely gratifying. We suspected that would be the case, but this was our biggest directional project that we’ve done, so to see it has been extremely rewarding.
Kevin Claydon: Also, don’t shoot a scene where I’m not wearing pants in October in an unwinterized garage. I learned that one.
Robbie Amell: I’m okay if I never racewalk again. That’s what I learned. My knees can’t handle it. I’ve never felt older in my life.
And now that you’ve conquered racewalking, for all three of you, is there a niche interest of yours that you would want to explore on screen?
Phil Moniz: I think my movie tastes are eclectic. I think there’s attractive things about a lot of genres, especially working in independent film. Working in independent film you’re always trying to think of ideas that are going to work with the constraints of the type of movie that you’re going to be able to make. I’m a huge nerd, so fantasy related stuff is always right up my alley. And we have some ideas.
Kevin Claydon: Yeah, we got some stuff in the hopper. In terms of super obscure, man, I was watching one of the ESPN channels, and they had the most intense game of, like, frisbee golf going. I’m just saying…
Robbie Amell: Not obscure, but I want to do a hockey movie. Kevin and I have played hockey together. We played on the same team for a couple of years, and they don’t make a ton of hockey movies anymore. So, whenever that time comes, I would love to do a hockey movie. I grew up playing hockey, I have a five-year-old playing hockey…I just built him a rink. I’m kind of a die hard when it comes to that.
Racewalkers is screening as part of this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, running between February 20th and 26th, 2025. For more information on the festival and screening times, head to the official website.
