Original-Cin Q&A: Blue Mountain, the Cancon Comedy Racewalkers and the Weirdest Olympic Sport
By Jim Slotek
One of the most feel-good comedies Canadians have ever made has been seen to date by plenty of people - just not by Canadians.
That will change when Racewalkers – a comedy set in the world of Olympic level race walking – makes its Canadian debut as the opening night film at the Blue Mountain Film Festival May 29. (Read more about the Festival here).
Variously compared to predecessors like Ted Lasso and Cool Runnings, Racewalkers is a “smartly written dumb comedy” (my description, received with apparent appreciation by co-stars/co-directors and lifelong friends Kevin Claydon and Phil Moniz) about a sport that requires a speeded up walking movement and a clenched butt that the script suggests looks like a hasty bee-line for a bathroom.
Robbie Amell and Kevin Claydon in Racewalkers
With an early 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, raves at the Slamdance Film Festival in L.A. (where they “took meetings” for follow-up filmmaking projects) and an invitation to next week’s Sydney Film Festival in Australia, the movie comes home, still without a theatrical booking. But that will come.
Original-Cin interviewed Torontonians Moniz and Claydon, who play, respectively, an aspiring coach who’s mocked and ignored because of his short stature, and a washed-up baseball pitcher who has the glutes to walk fast. They were joined by Robbie Amell (Upload), who produces and plays Ched, the not-so-bright, villainous favourite-to-win in this all-Canadian underdog story.
ORIGINAL-CIN: So, who was it that watched Olympic racewalking and said, “That guy looks like he needs to take a dump in a hurry,” and saw a movie in it?
KEVIN CLAYDON: You know who that was? That was Evan Landry. Evan’s our co-writer on this and one of our best friends and our producer. And he was the guy who saw Olympic racewalking and came to Phil and I because we were trying to figure out our next project. Phil and I talked to Evan and said, “What would we want to see in a movie about this?” And we kind of went from there.
O-C: And how long was it from that revelation to screening an actual movie?
CLAYDON: Not very long. I’ve got to tell you, man, we probably wrote it in three months. From December to February (2024) and we took it to Collective Pictures (Amell’s and founder Jeff Chan’s company), and then we applied to Telefilm and we’re like, “We should shoot in the fall.” Which was crazy.
ROBBIE AMELL: I think our first meeting was a dinner in March. Jeff and I liked the script, and we had seen (the series) Short Term Sentence, which Phil and Kevin had made together, and it was very funny. So, we were already huge fans, and we said, “Anything we can do to help you make it, we will do.”
And then Telefilm. I don’t know if they’re allowed to tell us this, but they said it was everybody’s favourite script at every step of the process. And they rarely “get” comedies. It was one of those projects where people just kept getting behind it at every turn.
O-C: Robbie, you went from a dark series about a digital afterlife to a light comedy. Was this like a creative palate cleanser?
AMELL: The main thing for me was reading the script and really loving what Phil and Kevin were doing. The script to me was very funny and having seen their work, and knowing what the tone was in their work, I knew It wasn’t going to get too silly, it wasn’t going to punch down.
Feel-good comedy is what we need now. I just wanted to have some fun, and shooting the movie was an absolute blast.
O-C: Phil and Kevin, two guys directing themselves and each other. That seems like a recipe for conflict. Or did you communicate telepathically?
CLAYDON: Y’know, for us, it is just really helpful that we know each other so well that our tastes kind of align. It’s very rarely that we disagree on creative things.
But also, we just kind of have a shorthand where we know how to communicate quickly and efficiently. So, the least difficult part of the process is the relationship between Phil and I creatively.
We’re just kind of on the same page. I don’t know how it would work out co-directing and co-writing with somebody where that wasn’t the case. It would be hard.
O-C: Is it true you guys have been friends since age 3?
CLAYDON: Two or three.
PHIL MONIZ: My parents were teachers who dropped me off at my grandma’s house before school. And she was next door neighbours to Kevin’s babysitter, and he was also dropped off before and after school. Years later, we were students and roommates together.
O-C: How has the movie been received by the race walking community?
MONIZ: Super positive. We were able to connect with a small community. These guys were taught by Stafford Whelan who’s one of the top racewalking coaches in Canada.
And Evan Dunfee, who’s our Canadian Olympian who won bronze in Tokyo, he was kind of consulting. You can see him in the movie as one of our background race walkers - which was one of the most hilarious things that could happen, because obviously you had to make him slow down.
CLAYDON: Anything that highlights the sport is appreciated. They have a great sense of humour. It’s a really hard sport, it’s very serious. But they’re aware that it looks a little bit silly and it’s fun to make fun of a little bit.
O-C: After all that training, what kind of time were you guys able to post?
AMELL: We thought we were fast. And we definitely got faster during the shoot. But on one of our days with Evan, we were like, “Can you show us a little heat?”
So, he was like, “Okay, you guys go ahead.” The rest of our runners were pretty athletic dudes who grew up playing hockey, and they were awesome, and they trained and got their strides correct.
And we’re all moving and think we’re going at a pretty good clip and all you hear is (makes drumming noise on the table) and Evan just goes flying past us. The guy flies.
O-C: They mention in the movie that a typical time is 80 minutes for 20k. That’s faster than most people run.
CLAYDON: The times they put up race walking, they’d finish in the top 30 in the Boston and New York marathons. Walking. That’s ridiculous.