Tagline: Whip it be your own hero.
Whip It movie storyline. For years, Bliss Cavendar (Academy Award nominee Ellen Page) has been dreaming of escaping her tiny, truck-stop of a town Bodeen, Texas. Unfortunately her devoted, beauty pageant obsessed mother (Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden) is convinced that Bliss can only succeed in life if she wins the crown at the local Miss Blue Bonnet Pageant, but the awkward outsider knows there’s something bigger and better out there. When Bliss sneaks off to the big city of Austin with her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) she discovers a world unlike anything she could ever imagine: roller derby, with its girl-power-meets-punk-rock spirit and its liberating celebration of wild individuality.
Inspired by the likes of Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), Bliss secretly tries out for a spot on the Hurl Scouts, a rag-tag team of scrappy underdogs. Soon she’s trading in her gowns and crowns for skirts, skates and scrapes becoming her alter ego, Babe Ruthless. Leading a precarious double life, Bliss may be a waitress at Bodeen’s Oink Joint by day, but by night, she’s becoming the fastest thing on eight wheels. Now she’s doing things she never dreamed of — fearlessly facing off with bad-ass rivals like Iron Maven (Academy Award nominee Juliette Lewis) and falling for a boy in a band (singer / songwriter Landon Pigg) — while trying to be a heroine to her new friends and teammates. But when her secret gets out, Bliss will face her toughest fight yet: to take control of the future… on her own terms.
Whip It is a 2009 American sports comedy-drama film directed by Drew Barrymore in her directorial debut and written by Shauna Cross, based on her novel Derby Girl. The film is co-produced by Barrymore and Barry Mendel. It stars Ellen Page as a teenager from the fictional town of Bodeen, Texas, who joins a roller derby team. The film also stars Barrymore, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Daniel Stern, Carlo Alban, Landon Pigg, Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Wiig, Zoë Bell, Eve, Andrew Wilson, Juliette Lewis, and Ari Graynor.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2009 and was theatrically released on October 2, 2009 in the United States by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It received generally positive reviews from critics but did not perform well financially, having made $16.6 million worldwide against its $15 million budget. It received two WIN Award nominations for Outstanding Actress Feature Film for Page and Barrymore. Whip It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 26, 2010 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Woman on Wheels: Bliss Cavendar
The first challenge facing the WHIP IT team was finding an actress who could fill Bliss Cavendar’s Reidells. She needed to be smart, offbeat and authentic – but she also needed to be willing and able to whip around a track at fearless speeds. Right from the start, there was just one person who seemed to embody the humor, courage and authenticity of the character: Ellen Page.
“Ellen is such a beautiful creature and has a vulnerability and sexiness that is also tomboyish. I was determined to show every aspect of her as Bliss,” says Drew Barrymore. “I didn’t want Bliss to be the cliché of a geek who becomes a badass by the end or the ugly duckling who turns into a swan. Ellen understood that and you watch her transform very subtly. At the beginning, Ellen gives Bliss a pigeon walk and tentative body language, but by the end she has a different physical possession. You watch her grow from a small-town girl into this rock `n roll world where she truly fits and flourishes.”
Barrymore and Page chatted long into the night about Bliss, the way two friends might analyze all the trials and tribulations of another. “We talked about the things that start to change her and that empower her, such as the moment she goes from wanting to tell her mother `I love this’ to actually saying it out loud. We both really wanted to get inside not only Bliss’s world,” explains Barrymore. “We wanted to capture the levity and the complexity of all these different types of relationships Bliss has. Including friendships, teammate camaraderie and first loves.”
Before she ever tied up her laces, Page knew she was in for perhaps the wildest ride of her young career. “This has been one of the craziest journeys I’ve gone on in a movie,” Page admits, “because it is a mix of different genres and worlds and energies and it seems like every moment is so crucial to Bliss’s growth and development. What’s great about this film is that it’s got this rock n’ roll, cool, sporty aspect to it but behind that is an honest story of a young woman going through a lot of changes. The challenge was molding all that together and Drew did it brilliantly, with her high energy and positive spirit.”
Playing Bliss was as physical as it was emotional, throwing Page into a mad pursuit of derby skills. “I am Canadian so I skate,” laughs Page. “But I wasn’t good by any means, and my skills definitely had to improve. Everyone had faith and trusted that I would train hard and have that moment when it would all come together.” Come together it did as she endured months of rigorous, even perilous, training and then threw herself into the ring, jamming with the Derby Dolls in Los Angeles for real-life practice. “I was absolutely terrified,” she says of the experience. “It was like the first day of school. No matter how much I’d practiced, it’s a daunting thing to have people wanting to rip your head off while you’re doing it! But when you get it, it’s such a fantastic feeling.”
Page got further inspired by the big changes that shake up Bliss’ life when she first sets eyes on the spectacle of derby – changes that will challenge her to make a tough, but redemptive, bid for her independence by finally telling her mother the truth. “I think Bliss has been trying to figure out a way to be able to express herself comfortably for a long time,” observes Page.
“She knows that the beauty pageant scene is not it; she knows she’s always been a little bit different; and she knows she does not want to stay in this small town of Bodeen forever. So when she meets these derby girls and sees the way their differences are being celebrated and the way they are so individual yet they all come together, it’s a thrill. She’s never experienced anything like it. It’s the first time she’s had a chance to actually like who she is – and that’s when she realizes she’s going to have to fight to keep this feeling alive.”
The spirit of roller derby seems to be just what Bliss is looking for. “I think sometimes when things are cool or hip it can feel contrived, but there’s something about the derby world that is very sincere and authentic and that is what’s so incredibly exciting to Bliss,” says Page. “Derby is all about passion. Girls who have never played sports before, who were hated in that realm in school, put on the skates and learn how to be empowered women. One of the beautiful things about it is that anybody can become good at it — if you feel strongly about it.”
But Bliss’s secret entry into the world of derby is not without consequences. On top of lying to her parents, Bliss finds her very best friend, Pash, slipping away as she moves into this new phase of self discovery. And then, the most unlikely thing of all happens. Bliss falls in love. For Barrymore, Bliss’s fast-moving romance with the ultimate foil – a boy in a hot indie band — was another key to her story.
Confesses the director, “I think when you fall in love with someone who has all the cultural and emotional ideals that you do, who loves all the same music and movies, it’s easy to lose your footing and just get so wrapped up in it. That’s what happens to Bliss, and it raises a lot of questions for her. It’s fun and sweeps her off her feet, but then things take a turn and she learns about who she is and what she really wants. I think it’s a rite of passage that every girl has to go through.”
Page adored the love story’s spectrum of real emotions – the impatience, uncertainty and downright chaos of being knocked down by feelings that don’t always make sense. “I like that this story shows two individuals falling for each other in a really authentic way and that it doesn’t end up the way you necessarily expect,” she says.
By the end of production, Page was nearly as in love with derby as Bliss. She even began contemplating one of the most important elements of every derby girl’s identity: her skate name. While Bliss Cavendar chooses “Babe Ruthless” as a reminder to herself to show no mercy, Page has her own moniker in mind. “I like `Hurt Vonnegut’ because Vonnegut’s one of my favorite authors,” she muses. That said, Barrymore chose the derby name `Small Newman’ for Page and calls her that to this day.
Bliss Cavendar loves her mother – but struggles with her mother’s overriding dream for her, to win a local beauty pageant crown as the stepping-stone to a satisfying adult life. To play Brooke Cavendar – who is hiding a strength and passion that rivals Bliss’s behind her carefully cultivated façade – Drew Barrymore chose Academy Award winner and recent Tony® Award winner Marcia Gay Harden for her unique ability to simultaneously reveal humor and vulnerability.
Harden, whose real life daughter, Eulala Scheel, plays Bliss’ younger sister, came at the movie with her own point of reference on how mothers and daughters battle each other, misunderstand each other and ultimately see themselves reflected in one another. “To me, WHIP IT is a mother-daughter story,” says the actress. “It’s also a roller derby story and a sports drama and a romantic comedy but the heart of what goes on is between Bliss and Brooke – the tension between Brooke having a hard time letting her daughter express herself and needing to let go and Bliss needing to go through that journey of figuring out her own identity.”
She searched for just the right tone for Brooke, walking a fine line between empathy, realism and wry humor. The bottom line, she says, is that she always saw Brooke as being true to what she really believes, no matter how quaint it might seem. “Brooke sees pageants as a launching pad and for someone in a small town where there are few options, being a pageant winner maybe gives you a certain stature, a certain gliding ease, when you go out into the world, and that’s what she dreams of for her daughter,” she says. “Drew and I talked a lot about never poking fun at the character but still letting the audience enjoy the largesse of this situation where beauty pageants and roller derby clash.”
Harden also is sure that Brooke relates to her daughter’s rebellion far more than she can ever reveal. “I can’t imagine there’s a parent who doesn’t relate to her child’s rebellious spirit,” she remarks. “The problem is that you know your kids will hurt themselves and I think that’s where Brooke is having a hard time. Roller derby is a world she doesn’t understand. The girls are intensely sexy with strong personalities, wild costumes, uncompromising attitudes and funky nicknames. They sport their bruises like badges of honor. She sees why this is intoxicating to Bliss, but she’s scared. Deep down she knows she can’t live her daughter’s life for her and she has to reconcile with that.”
Helping Brooke do that is her husband and Bliss’s laid back dad, Earl Cavendar, played by Daniel Stern, known for his knack of seamlessly mixing comedy and drama in a wide variety of roles. Earlier in his career, Stern starred in one of Drew Barrymore’s favorite movies and an inspiration for WHIP IT – the coming-of-age classic BREAKING AWAY. “This film really does have a lot of the same elements: it gets dramatic, it gets funny as hell and at the end you’re standing on your feet yelling `Go, go go! Win the race!’” says Stern.
Earl, an ex-football player, admires his daughter’s need to push the envelope, even as he tries to play peacekeeper. “Frankly, to Earl, becoming a roller derby star sounds like a heck of a lot more fun than the Bluebonnet Pageant,” laughs Stern. “The challenge is for Earl to try to convince Brooke that they should be allowing Bliss to do what she wants to do. That part interested me – the question of how a man deals with making peace in a household full of women and making himself heard when the women don’t necessarily want his point of view.”
Stern also liked being involved in another sports drama – albeit this time involving a wholly alternative sport. “I love sports movies because I love underdogs going against the odds,” he says. “With its tough chicks and its rebellious spirit, roller derby is the perfect place for someone to prove her mettle – and Bliss is a great character to have the chance to do that.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Whip It (2009)
Directed by: Drew Barrymore
Starring by: Drew Barrymore, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis, Zoe Bell, Ellen Page, Daniel Stern, Barbara Coven, Eulala Scheel, Carlo Alban, Douglas Minckiewicz
Screenplay by: Shauna Cross
Production Design by: Kevin Kavanaugh
Cinematography by; Robert D. Yeoman
Film Editing by; Dylan Tichenor
Costume Design by: Catherine Marie Thomas
Set Decoration by: Meg Everist
Music by; The Section Quartet
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content including crude dialogue, language and drug material.
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: October 2, 2009
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