Tales of the Rat Fink

The life and times of famed hot rod & custom car designer Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. Ed "Big Daddy" Roth was a Beat-era custom-car designer and graphic artist whose hot rod creations and antiestablishment cartoon characters (especially the anti-Mickey Mouse, Rat Fink) made him a 1950s and '60s counterculture icon. Director Ron Mann chronicles Roth's life and work with an appropriately irreverent documentary that eschews the talking-head formula in favor of lively, original animation; cool narration by actor John Goodman; a punky soundtrack by garage-rock band the Sadies; and, most innovatively, the vocal talents of Roth fans Ann-Margret, Jay Leno, Brian Wilson, Tom Wolfe, Matt Groening, Robert Williams, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Paul Le Mat, and the Smothers Brothers, who all provide the voices of Roth's actual cars. “Roth has kept alive the spirit of alienation and rebellion that is so important to the teen-age ethos that customizing grew up in. He's also the most colorful, and the most intellectual, and the most capricious. Also the most cynical.” (Tom Wolfe)