Whip It

Seen at: Metrolux 14, Loveland, CO on Sun. Oct. 25

On the way back from Cheyenne after seeing Inglourious Basterds, as I drove south on I-25, the last shards of light from the setting sun were sprinkled across the mountains to the west. After such a fun visit to Wyoming, I wasn't quite in the mood to head home yet, and it seemed like a nice evening to make it a double feature. So when I got to the Harmony Road exit in Fort Collins, I kept going on the highway.

I pulled off the highway nine miles further south at the junction of US 34 east of Loveland. Being hungry, I searched out one of my favorite Waffle House franchises, only to discover that it had been shuttered during my year-long absence from Colorado. I had to make due with a Taco John's instead.

Going to the Waffle House always reminds me of the South and Texas. It gives me good feelings. As such, it would have been a perfect set-up for Whip It, which I wound up seeing later at the Metrolux 14, the big sparkling multiplex visible from the Interstate at the cloverleaf. It anchors the giant Centerra lifestyle center that was built about a decade ago, and which became the bane of so many locals who detested this kind of development. I always feel a little icky going to the Centerra, but sometimes it just can't be avoided.

Most of the movies at the Metrolux play simultaneously at the Cinemark in Fort Collins, so it's usually not necessary to go there. But Whip It was an exception, so I took this opportunity to cross the Metrolux off my list in my Radius Project. Now I don't have to go back there, unless I feel like it.

The Waffle House would have been a good set-up for Whip It because the movie, written by Shauna Cross and the first to be directed by Drew Barrymore, is not only set in Austin, Texas, but embraces certain aspects of Austin culture in a way that made me more than a little homesick for the city where I once lived.

The story is about a high school girl named Bliss, played by Ellen Page of Juno, who lives in a small town in Texas, works at a diner, and is bored out of her mind while being pressed by her traditional-minded mother into participating in pageants. By chance, during a trip to nearby Austin, she discovers the local roller derby scene, filled with the kind of free-spirited women she wants to become, and falls in love it.

The obvious conflict will be between Bliss' desire to immerse herself in Austin roller derby and her mother's desire to cultivate Bliss as a traditional pageant star in her own image.

But if you read my write-up of Love Happens, you know about my latest insight about film---to create narrative tension, use deception. Whip It is a perfect example of this. By itself, the conflict I described would make a good indie film. But it is not enough for Hollywood. To make it worthy of a wider release, we need to add the spice of deception.

Thus the conflict will be driven by Bliss' deception in pursuing her roller derby career. As such it follows a fairly standard trajectory:

1. At first the deception works, in that the protagonist reaps immediate rewards and happiness.

2. Eventually the deception starts to cause problems that make it increasingly difficult to maintain the deception.

3. The character has several chances to "come clean" but declines to do so, because of the pain involved and because the deception is still seen as leading to happiness.

4. At a moment of truth, usually on the threshold of some major achievement as part of the deception, the deception is revealed (not by the protagonist but by another agent, or by accident), resulting in public disgrace and bringing down the entire house of cards.

5. The protagonist, in the short run, is worse off than at the beginning, often because of the loss of friendship of others invovled in the deception.

6. The process of coming clean actually clears up the conflict and the character not only resumes the trajectory, now openly, but with increased happiness.

This isn't a perfect outline of the deception paradigm, so I will probably be refining it over time. Nevertheless I think it captures many aspects of it. If you go to Hollywood movies, you will see it over and over and over.

The paradigm will work so long as the story is fresh enough, and the characters are compelling. Whip It is a pretty good example about how to do it. The concept (Austin roller derby) is original enough to make the movie interesting even though the trajectory of the paradigm pretty much could have written itself.

Thematically, the movie is one of the strongest statements I've seen that follows the Postmodern thesis about "strong women, weak men." The females in this movie---from the traditional mother, to the tatooed roller derby members---are all built out of steel. They are independent and driven by strong wills. Barrymore seemed to be making a love letter to the power of the fairer sex.

On the other hand, the men in the movie are universally weak. The pattern is unrelenting: Bliss' boyfriend does not cheat on her, but in his weakness, he doesn't protect a special item of clothing. This enough is to earn our scorn of him, and to show him as unworthy of the heroine.

The weak man is also the sexually frustrated man. Jimmy Fallon of Saturday Night Live makes a fun appearance as the emcee of the roller derby league, and hosts the after-game parties. But instead of being a sex symbol he should be, he is reduced to making hapless and pathetic passes at the (lesbian) players, and to pleading for sex openly in front of the crowd. Let's get ready to bumble!

Even the good men don't have any backbone and can't exercise power. The strongest male character, Bliss' father is still quite flawed and hides from the world rather than engaging it (how awesome it was to see Daniel Stern again!). Likewise, the male roller derby coach is unable to convince his power female players to execute the plays he draws up.

Bliss' boss, a young Hispanic man who is honorable and honext, but who can't even control the nicknames given to him, is in love with Bliss' best friend. At a moment of truth, they are alone and face to face in the back room of the diner. It is an obvious moment of connection, when a kiss is appropriate. I wanted to yell out: kiss her, damn it. But that's not what happens. Instead, it is the girl who grabs the guy and kisses him! I nearly burst out laughing in the theater, it was so much the opposite of what I thought would happen. That's just the way things are done these days. It was characteristic of everything in the whole movie.

By contrast, the only truly unlikable female character is one of Bliss' teenage pageant rivals, a point that is lessened by the fact that Bliss doesn't even want to compete in such pageants. Moreover, this mean girl rival attacks Bliss through control over the rival's weak-willed but thuggish high school boyfriend. Part of the "coming of age" aspect of this story is that this meaningless "immature" rival is replaced by a meaningful "mature" rival on the roller derby stage, a "mean girl" who skates on one of the other teams (Juliette Lewis, doing a very good derby villianness). But it turns out that this mature rival is actually honorable, and furthermore we get to understand her point of view, and her antagonism towards Bliss, in a critical scene towards the end of Act Two.

Postmodern sexual politics aside, this was a fun story, and a well-crafted (if fairly standard) narrative. As a movie, it showed some hallmarks of a first-time director, to be sure, but I thought Barrymore made a pretty good start in this regard.

And yes it made me miss Austin, even if the part of Austin culture it showed was not my particular cup of tea most of the time. Ironically, most of the movie, outside of some location shots of Ellen Page on South Congress Avenue, was not shot in Austin itself but in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Nice job, Miss Barrymore. This former Austinite bought it all.

Verdict on movie: an entertaining Austinesque story with fun original concept, slightly raunch in tone and based around a standard deception-driven plot.