USA Today has published the first set of photos from “Whip It!“, Drew Barrymore‘s directorial debut.
The film stars Ellen Page (Juno, Smart People), Marcia Gay Harden (Into the Wild), Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis, Zoe Bell, Daniel Stern and Drew Barrymore.
Page play 17-year-old Bliss Cavendar, who is tired of competing in beauty pageants at the insistence of her mother (Marcia Gay Harden). She rebels by joining the Hurl Scouts, a women’s roller derby team in Austin, Texas, and finds her true calling — or, at least, a good place to unleash some pent-up aggression. Smashley Simpson (Barrymore) skates with the Scouts, as does Saturday Night Live’s Wiig and the great Zoe Bell. Juliette Lewis is described as the villain of the piece, an opposing player determined to defeat Page and the Scouts, and the players all have cool nicknames: Smashley Simpson, Maggie Mayhem, Bloody Holly, and so forth.
Barrymore said the tale partly reflects her own, as she was a famous child star that struggled with the transition to adulthood.
“I felt pressures that everybody feels, whether it’s inter-office, in high school or a small town. 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?”
She also told USA Today that she quickly learned how one must call upon a lifetime of experiences when behind the camera:
“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.”
Fox Searchlight will be bringing us “Whip It!” into U.S. theaters on October 9th, 2009.
