You’re going to have to get used to saying director Drew Barrymore now because she wore that hat proudly with her directorial debut film WHIP IT and USA TODAY has released some new official images from the movie about girls on roller skates starring Ellen Page, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis, Jimmy Fallon, and Barrymore herself. The plot centers on Page as a petite teenage girl who rebels against her beauty-pageant-obsessed mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and boring Texas town by joining the rough-and-tumble world of roller derby under the name Babe Ruthless, which brings us to the coolest thing about this movie, the Derby names.
Barrymore plays a character named Smashley Simpson and Wiig plays her sister named Maggie Mayhem. She was going to be called Malice In Wonderland but I’m glad they didn’t go with that one. Their team, the good guys, is called The Hurl Scouts.
Fallon plays the derby announcer and Lewis gets to be called Dinah Might, the leader of rival derby team The Holy Rollers, who finds out a secret that could force her tiny new foe from the competition. And badass stunt woman Zoe Bell (Deathproof) is Bloody Holly. Screenwriter Shauna Cross, who adapted her own novel DERBY GIRL, is a member of Los Angeles’ Derby Dolls. Derby was popular in the 1970s, with sexy-tough women knocking one another around on a circular track, competing for points and glory. I didn’t know about this but apparently the sport has made a comeback in recent years.
Barrymore had this to say about the movie and being a director for the very first time…
“It’s about small victories,”
“It’s not about just being No. 1 or the best. I know that feeling like you’re in the right place with the right people is one of the most winning feelings you can have. As someone who was all about fairy tales in her 20s and was obsessed with them and loved happy endings, now I’m more about just finding inner peace and honesty with the people around you. A good day is a good day.”
“Everything I’ve learned throughout my whole life has been going into this piggy bank, and I just smashed it all over the floor for this one,”
“I felt pressures that everybody feels, whether it’s inter-office, in high school or a small town,” Barrymore says. “Everyone relates to expectations others have or what the world thinks. Who am I going to become? What am I going to be in this world?”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I have mad respect for Drew Barrymore. She went through some wild years in her life but then I read once how she would audition all over town to get roles but just couldn’t seem to win one, and so she and her friend started their own Flower Films Production Company that has produced movies like Never Been Kissed, Donnie Darko, Charlie’s Angels, all the way to He’s Just Not That Into You.
I just hope WHIP IT doesn’t fall short like Rollerball (2002)
What would your Derby Name be?
WHIP IT opens October 9th, 2009
