That’s an actual line of dialogue in David Soren’s Turbo, which doesn’t bat an eye at the absurdity of its premise, which has said snail supercharged by a nitrous oxide hit and defying nature itself to compete against humans in speeding cars.
By contrast, Soren – a Toronto native and Sheridan graduate who co-wrote Turbo and shepherded it through years of development – knows exactly how crazy-bananapants his movie is. And he’s more than happy to talk about it during a press day at the Park Hyatt.
I’m glad you didn’t try to give a scientific explanation for how a snail can compete in the Indy 500.
Right [laughing]. There’s no good reason why he should ever be able to pursue this dream or become fast.
But how did you pitch it to DreamWorks in the first place?
It took a lot of art. The art helps a lot, honestly. A picture says a thousand words, and there were a lot of questions early on: “How’s it gonna work without having any arms?” “How does the snail go fast? Is he in a car? Is he driving a little car?” People just couldn’t get it. And then you do some drawings, you do a painting or two, you do a little bit of a storyboard and suddenly it’s like, “Oh, okay.”
You just mimed a snail turning a little steering wheel, but of course snails don’t have arms.
It’s very clear. I mean, you put the picture of him with arms up and you put the picture of him without arms up and it’s [immediately] like, “Okay, it’s creepy with arms. We’re not going that way [laughing].”
But the characters do use their eye stalks as arms at certain points.
Yeah! It forced us to be more creative about how they move around, and embrace the limitations.
Was it difficult to get the voice actors to play their roles straight, without winking to the audience?
I wouldn’t say it was a challenge. It was just my approach to directing them. And it was a deliberate choice in some cases to hire people who hadn’t done animation before, because I didn’t want that kind of broad, wacky “I’m in a cartoon, so I have to act like I’m in a cartoon” approach. We just tried be in the moment and make it feel authentic. If it’s more of a dramatic situation and it calls for some earnestness, then go there. But don’t ham it up, don’t wink – you know, none of that stuff. Just get inside the characters.
Interview Clips
David Soren on the development process, and learning to stay true to his own vision:
Soren on having cinematographer Wally Pfister (The Dark Knight Rises) as a consultant:
