“Motorama” ends with Gus back where he started but with seemingly intact memories of his adventures, leaving us wondering how much of the movie was fact and how much was fantasy. The physical damage Gus has sustained is repaired, but the emotional scars on him remain, and we can’t be sure if he is a time traveler, a mythical creature, or just a child with a very powerful imagination.
On the They Called This a Movie podcast, Joseph Minion said that when writing the script for Motorama he wanted to leave the ending open for interpretation. “I don’t know if I’d like to dispel the sense of mystery… I love it when there are some things you can’t really explain.” He even admitted to host Anthony Del Vecchio, “I don’t even get it.” Minion said that the blurry ending was his intended destination for Gus all along, and he went for “some kind of wacky insight from another dimension, one way or another, that would be a bit confusing.”
Despite the thick streak of disconcerting weirdness, at the heart of “Motorama” is a gentle message about kindness, karma, and good intentions. Come watch Flea’s bus tables and Paul Willson (“Cheers,” “Office Space”) whip up the most disgusting pot of Yankee bean soup you’ve ever seen, but stick around to see if Gus learns anything from his wild ride through highway.