More photos and a new poster has been unveiled for Drew Barrymore’s roller-derby-dramedy “Whip It” which is set to debut at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
The film centers on Bliss Cavendar — played by Ellen Page in her first post-“Juno” role — a typical small-town Texan teenager who is an aspiring tomboy who is comically misunderstood by her parents and made to compete in beauty pageants by her faded debutante mom (Marcia Gay Harden).
While visiting nearby Austin, Bliss spies a couple of wild-looking women on roller skates delivering flyers for a local roller-derby night. With her best friend, the saucy-but-kinda-nerdy Pash (Alia Shawcat), Bliss crashes a world far from the pageant crowd, a rocking underground punk scene infused with beer, hellcats, fishnets, short skirts and bodychecking – the world of roller derby, the seventies sexploitation sport now transformed into a grassroots phenomenon sweeping America’s female population.
Before long, she’s leading an exhilarating but risky double life along with fellow derby girls Kristen Wiig as Maggie Mayhem and Barrymore as the accident-prone Smashlee Simpson in their team, the Hurl Scouts who must front up to rivals, the Holy Rollers led by Juliette Lewis as Iron Maven and her teammates Eve as Rosa Sparks and Zoe Bell as Bloody Holly.
The film also features Jimmy Fallon, Daniel Stern as Page’ father, musician Landon Pigg who plays Page’s love interest and music by the Section Quartet who were revealed to be the film’s scorers replacing Mark Motherbaugh who has hired-and-fired despite ironically being the frontman of the band Devo who had the 1980 hit single, “Whip It.”
Barrymore’s “Whip It” is due to hit theaters October 9th. [TIFF]