Tagline: Defy and Conquer.
Haley Graham (Missy Peregrym) is a rebellious 17-year-old who is forced to return to the regimented world of gymnastics after a run-in with the law where she and two of her skateboard friends accidently cause damage to a development house. A judge sentences Haley to her ultimate nightmare, attending an elite gymnastics academy run by legendary coach Burt Vickerman (Jeff Bridges).
Haley was once considered one of the most talented gymnasts in the US. She made it to the World Championships, but the previous year she walked out of competition in the middle of the finals, costing the American team the gold medal and leaving many people hurt and crushed making her one of the most hated people in gymnastics.
After arriving at the school, Haley has a talk with Coach Vickerman, who convinces her to take up the sport once again at least until she can enter an upcoming invitational competition. Vickerman convinces her that she can use the prize money from the competition to repay some property damage debts she still owes and after that, she can leave gymnastics once and for all. Disliking the sport’s rigid rules and intense training schedule, Haley is reluctant to come out of retirement. Her attitude toward her fellow gymnasts (as well as her past that she avoids talking about) causes conflicts. After getting the cold shoulder the first day at the gym, Haley realizes what she is up against.
Stick It is an American teen comedy-drama film starring Jeff Bridges, Missy Peregrym, and Vanessa Lengies. It was written and directed by Jessica Bendinger, writer of Bring It On; the film marks her directorial debut. It was produced by Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment and was released in theatres on April 28, 2006.
A Commonality Of Uncommon Women
If there is a universal theme to the work of screenwriter/director Jessica Bendinger, it is that of strong young women seeking to make their way in their world. For Bendinger, this may indeed be a case of art imitating life. A former music journalist with Spin magazine and a writer for “MTV News,” Bendinger was also an acclaimed director of numerous music videos prior to her penning the screenplay for the surprise hit “Bring It On,” starring Kirsten Dunst and set in the not-always-cheerful world of cheerleading. Following that, her screenwriting credits included “The Truth About Charlie,” “First Daughter” and the recent “Aquamarine,” in addition to serving as creative consultant for HBO’s “Sex and the City,” as well as writing an episode.
No matter what landscape her central female characters inhabit (high school cheerleading, globetrotting espionage, Gotham journalism), they all share a similar dynamic: they are strong and individualistic, trying their best to maneuver through life in a maledominated world.
Bendinger observes, “Most of my characters are these gutsy, slightly rebellious girls, who often come smack up against a ceiling of some kind. Let’s face it, if you’re a teenage girl and you aren’t content to ‘go with the flow,’ your options are kind of limited. When you get older, you can make your own way—but that’s not what high school is about. It’s about fitting in. I guess you can say the characters I write about—no matter how old they happen to be—are working toward becoming who they will ultimately be.”
It was this theme of self-realization and her personal involvement with gymnastics that fueled her fire to write not only “Bring It On” (cheerleading is as much about gymnastics as it is about cheering), but also STICK IT. She continues, “When I would watch those [cheerleading] competitions that had such great tumbling and acrobatics to them, I thought it was such a visually appealing world to create a movie in.
So when this idea came, I was like, ‘Wow, why not go to the source, to a world I know,’ which is gymnastics. I felt like the timing was right, with the Olympics coming up, and my enthusiasm level was really high. I love the sport, why not? Write what you love. So that’s kind of how it was born—from my life, but also telling this story about a really strong girl set in this sometimes bizarre world.”
Bendinger herself had participated in competitive gymnastics from the time she was nine until she turned 12-years-old, earning a third place state ranking in the floor exercise category. She trained in a Connecticut gym owned by two-time Olympian Muriel Grossfield and was coached by Don Peters, who served as an Olympic coach in 1980. “It was the best you could get, as far as gymnastics training,” Bendinger says. “I went to gymnastics camp, competed, did compulsory routines—it was a big part of my life and I took it very seriously.
It was while she was working on the first draft of “Bring It On” (then entitled “Cheer Fever”) that Bendinger met her future producing partner, Gail Lyon, executive producer of “Peter Pan” and “Stuart Little 2,” co-producer of “Erin Brockovich” and a former executive at Red Wagon Entertainment.
“Jessica and I have a long history,” Lyon says. “I thought ‘Bring It On’ was hysterically funny and authentic and had a great voice. I had just bought an article from The New Yorker that I thought she’d be great for and I hired her as a writer—and we’ve been friends ever since. Though we never worked officially on a project together, we always consulted each other and talked about scripts and her projects. She’d had this idea for a long time to do a movie set in the world of gymnastics. She asked me to get involved and be her producer. And I thought, ‘A movie with Jessica’s great trademark female characters, set in that world, told in her distinctive voice?’ And I immediately said, ‘Absolutely!’”
“Gymnastics is a very weird sport,” Bendinger observes. “Even though it lives in the margins for us, culturally, it’s the top-rated Olympic sport, period. It’s very compelling and upsetting to see such young girls doing such dangerous things, so I think we watch it with a kind of fascination. And I think we watch it at a distance, with a mixture of shock and awe. So one of the things I set out to do while I was writing the script was to allow people to see what a tough sport it is—to take a second look and realize that these girls are as strong, if not stronger than, football players and some of our greatest athletes. And I wanted to show the things that they’re able to do with their bodies, along with their commitment, discipline and the training it takes.”
To further the authenticity of the story, Bendinger, over the course of a few years, meticulously collected print and video clips from all manner of gymnastics events. In October 2004, she edited together a snazzy two-and-a-half-minute compilation of archived gymnastics footage and used it to pitch her project to the studios. The video montage and pitch must have made a strong impression, as a studio bidding war soon followed. Eventually, the project landed at Disney, where Bendinger would make her directorial debut for Touchstone Pictures in partnership with frequent collaborator Spyglass Entertainment.
“I think if you’re going to set a movie in a certain world, it’s important for the story and the characters to be grounded in reality, with details that are organic to that world,” Bendinger says. “So being authentic was really important. I talked to a lot of judges and gymnasts. I was scrupulous about the technical details, because it’s a very confusing, weird sport, with this huge code of points and all these rules that are just bizarre—like an exposed bra strap can get you a uniform deduction, despite the fact that you’re twisting through the air at high speeds. It’s these sorts of rules that Haley really has a problem with, that she questions—and she eventually gets her teammates to question also.
“It’s clear that gymnastics is an incredibly fun, incredibly tough athletic sport, but I think a lot of times, it gets labeled as a poofy girly thing. We hope that people will be awed by the extreme athleticism of these girls and will see the amount of sheer work that goes into it. You cannot argue with the strength and determination of these athletes…most of whom happen to be really young girls. It’s a perfect place for Jessica’s movie,” adds Lyon.
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Stick It (2006)
Directed by: Jessica Bendinger
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Missy Peregrym, Vanessa Lengies, Nikki SooHoo, Maddy Curley, Tarah Paige, Svetlana Efremova, Gia Carides, John Patrick Amedori, Kellan Lutz, Annie Curley
Screenplay by: Jessica Bendinger
Production Design by: Bruce Curtis
Cinematography by: Daryn Okada
Film Editing by: Troy Takaki
Costume Design by: Carol Ramsey
Set Decoration by: Brana Rosenfeld
Art Direction by: Chris Cornwell
Music by: Michael Simpson
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some crude remarks.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: April 28, 2006
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