Roller Skating
Roll Bounce
Rollerball
Well, dear readers, the temperatures are rising and so are the lengths of skirts and shorts everywhere. Because even though Summer doesn’t officially begin for another month, it feels a lot like Summer for most of the world right now. I’ve explained my complicated feelings on this season before, and it is likely the least cool thing about me—that I prefer to be cool, temp-wise. Ideally, the temperature in my dwelling is below 70 degrees, but if it’s the dead of Summer, well, I’ll push it just about as low as Austin Energy will let me. Don’t get me wrong, I love to soak up the sun, to a certain degree. I sometimes love being in or near a body of natural or chlorinated water, I like a cold beverage, armed with the most sunscreen and bug spray my skin can handle. Summer is one of the best times of year to people-watch, and when I’m visiting my sister in Venice Beach, I love watching the punks skateboarding and surfing and roller skating. Roller skating has always been a slick, swift way to move, but a few years ago, roller skating really became en vogue again. When COVID hit, it’s like everyone everywhere either bought a new pair of skates or the supplies for a sourdough starter. Me, personally? Well I bought a Squarespace domain and began putting my writing out into the ether—but that’s beside the point. I am not the best roller skater, in fact, I haven’t even put on a pair since I was a child, but my mom is a stellar skater, from a long line of other skaters, and I love to watch people roller skate all the same. The inventor(s) of the first prototypes of roller skates is unknown, but in 1760, a man named John Joseph Merlin created a primitive inline skate with small metal wheels, which then started popping up everywhere around Europe. People began more regularly-wearing roller skates in 18th century Europe, where they were mostly used in plays and stage productions, possibly to simulate ice skating. Roller skates became more widely used in the 1840s, when waitresses in beer halls would wear them—which is, I assume, where Sonic got the idea. In the early 1900s, cities in Europe, Australia, and North and South America began to see skating rinks pop up, and in the 1930s-50s, the hobby of skating was booming. This was actually considered the Golden Age of Roller Skating, but as with every pastime, its popularity ebbed and flowed. The 1970s is probably the most iconic era of roller skating, as the world saw a major rise in this activity—mostly due to the dance culture that was inspired by disco music. In 1983, the Ghoul in Chief Ronald Reagan even declared October to be National Roller Skating month. It is a universally-beloved skill, and it’s a thrill that one should experience for themselves at least once if they can. But if not, I’ve learned that there’s always plenty of interesting roller skating representation in the movies. On this blog, specifically, I watched the roller derby classic, Whip It, but there’s also Kansas City Bomber, Roller Boogie, Skateland, and Skatetown, U.S.A. My favorite roller-skating-centric film, though, is a classic known as Xanadu—and I’d like to imagine that Olivia Newton-John is roller skating with her fellow muses in heaven right now—but of course this film came from the 1970s. And while roller skating has been around for centuries, both of tonight’s films are severely, undeniably, proudly 1970s.
Let’s begin with a film that my best friend, Sophie, has been begging me to see for years, a colorful film from her unsupervised childhood that she put me onto and I’m so glad that she did—this is Malcolm D. Lee’s 2005 film Roll Bounce. Roll Bounce transports us to 1978 Chicago, where 16-year old Xavier, or “X” for short (played by Bow Wow), and his friends are enjoying a group skate on the last day of their neighborhood rink, the Palisade Garden. X and his skate crew—which consists of Brandon T. Jackson, Marcus T. Paulk, Rick Gonzalez, and Khleo Thomas—are unstoppable out on the rink, but with the closure of the Garden, the boys wonder what they’re supposed to do all Summer. They have no choice but to leave the “hood” and visit the bougie Sweetwater roller rink, where there’s loads of white people and music they’ve barely even heard of, like the Bee Gees. Sweetwater is practically an amusement park, with an arcade and refreshments, and a place to rent skates that’s run by stoner Casanova, Be-Nard (Nick Cannon.) I was worried that Nick Cannon was a main character because he’s heavily featured on the poster for this movie, but thankfully I didn’t have to acknowledge him or his desperate sperm too much. The greatest attraction at this rink, though, is a man who goes by the name of Sweetness (Wesley Jonathan.) He’s not only the hottest, best skater in town, he’s got a crew of his own—which seems to be led by a blaccent-talkin’ Paul Wesley. They all wear matching outfits and have a posse of women surrounding them, and X and his skate crew just watch in awe as this group commands the whole rink and does moves they’ve never seen before. Sweetwater is advertising a $500 skate competition, which these skaters are immediately intrigued by, but X already has a lot on his plate this summer. His mom passed away less than a year before, and he’s had to take on way more feelings and responsibilities with his younger sister and his dad (Kenneth “Chi” McBride.) On top of this, two young women enter his life and shake things up: Tori (Jurnee Smollett), a cute new neighbor, and Naomi (Meagan Good) an old childhood friend who’s really had a glow-up. For all of its genuine laughs and teenage buffoonery and unbelievably iconic music—I mean literally every. single. song. was an earth-shattering banger—there was wayyyy more drama to Roll Bounce than I’d anticipated. The dead mom of it all really hangs heavily over this whole movie, which makes sense, but it was still incredibly sad to watch little baby Bow Wow endure all of this. Additionally, X’s dad experiences so much racism and classism, even a very accomplished engineer like himself struggles to find a job. There were also, unfortunately, a few accidentally hilarious lines of dialogue in this film, most notably, when X’s sister is asking about their mother. X says she was always an angel, and his sister says, “a Black angel?” to which X responds, “Yeah, I guess so.” It occurs in one of the most tender and poignant moments in the movie, and my corrupted, brain-rotted self couldn’t help laughing. The drama of this dramadey didn’t put too much of a damper on things, though, because the music, the movement, and the heart of this film are impossible to ignore. I, of course, loved every single song—from “Boogie Oogie Oogie” to “Flash Light” to “Hollywood Swinging” to “Lovely Day” to “Barracuda”, I couldn’t help smiling with each needle drop, and can only imagine how large the music budget was. I loved all of the characters in this film, and how distinct each group of skaters was. I also loved how the young women in X’s life were not pitted against each other, but held completely different roles. It’s rare to see such pure and believable male-female friendships in movies about young people, and I thought it was so sweet that Tori acted as a friend, and even a wing-woman, for X. This cast of baby-faced icons also includes Kellita Smith, Mike Epps, Charlie Murphy, Wayne Brady, and DMC, and everyone really performed well, but there was something particularly memorable about Bow Wow and Jurnee Smollett’s performances. As far as I can tell, everyone did their own skating in this film, and Bow Wow in particular did some truly, spectacularly-fancy footwork, which was captured beautifully with various clever camera angles. Seriously, between the intense synchronized choreography, considerate camerawork, and sleek editing, I was downright mesmerized as I watched all of the skating sequences. I honestly would’ve loved even more of these joyous skating sequences and less drama, and the same could sort of be said for tonight’s next film, although there is little-to-no joy involved in this one.
Next I watched Norman Jewison’s 1975 film Rollerball—another 70s dystopia that at least has better furniture than the dystopia we’re currently living in. Rollerball is rated 16+ which means there’s titties and violence, but these are already just a staple of 1970s cinema. The screenplay was adapted from William Harrison’s 1973 short story in Esquire titled “Roller Ball Murder”, and is centered upon the fictional sport of rollerball—which blends elements of roller derby, hockey, football, motocross racing, and judo, all taking place in an arena that feels like a giant pinball machine. The lights slowly begin to turn on in the darkened arena, Bach’s Toccata in D Minor bellows, and the ambience is immediately ominous as preparations are made for this event—even though the font of the film’s title and the rollerball uniform lettering has the cutest and grooviest font. Rollerball takes place in 2018, where a rugged athlete named Jonathan E. (James Caan) is the team captain of the Houston Rollerball team. As he preps his team and asses are smacked in the locker room—as with any other male-dominated sport—we see a VIP booth of white men in suits, each one of them an important “executive.” The stadium is directed to “please rise for our corporate anthem”, further signaling that—like our current dystopia—this version of the future is a corporatocracy. The opposing team from Madrid takes their positions, and Jonathan and the rest of the Houston team follows shortly after, eyes focused and brows sweating from the anticipation of the release of the rollerball. The object of the game is to score the little metal ball into the hole, but just as this movie keeps proving, there is much more to this sport. The Houston team is violent, relentless, and unafraid to do whatever it takes to score—which can, at times, mean killing their opponents. They’re all clad in rollerball jerseys, helmets, black leather pants, and spiked gloves, just to add brutality at every turn, and the skates they roll on are also, of course, utilized as effective weapons. After Houston wins, the team celebrates in the locker room, and stiffen up slightly when an executive walks into the room. He applauds them, congratulates them, praises them for their meanness and sharpness and viciousness. But the next day, at the top of a sinister-looking corporate building, the very executive who was patting veteran player Jonathan on the back, tells him it’s time to retire. After 10 years of victories and triumphs and record-breaking television, this corporate slimeball is ordering Jonathan to quit. “The team depends on me", Jonathan pleads, but this suit doesn’t care, he just vaguely expresses the necessity of social order and comfort in the form of sports. He explains how there’s no more poverty, no sickness, no more tribal warfare, and that, “Even corporate wars are a thing of the past. Corporate society takes care of everyone, no one can ever go against it.” If this weren’t enough to elicit bad vibes, Jonathan E. also reveals that his wife was taken by a corporation, simply because an exec “wanted her”, and now rollerball is pretty much all he has. But the corporation who owns the team, the town, and ostensibly, the man himself, doesn’t care, and suggests that Jonathan just enjoy his many privileges, like his secluded ranch. He takes a trip to his ranch, rides a horse or two, but he can’t get these troubling thoughts out of his mind. Jonathan wants to at least finish out the season, as there are only two games left, but this doesn’t appear to be an option. Even more troubling, is the fact that as Jonathan asks more questions and digs deeper into the history of these corporations, the target on his head grows. And while it may be hard to tell amidst the violence of a regular match of rollerball, it feels like someone wants him dead. Rollerball is an immensely bleak yet heart-poundingly-thrilling ride—or skate—through the evils of modern, corporate society that kept me on the edge of my seat and left me breathless. To me, the best dystopian films play like a long episode of The Twilight Zone, where every element of the story feels self-contained yet plausible, and Rollerball certainly fit this criteria. It didn’t hold back on the cruelty of contact sports, the transactional nature of sex and relationships, and most disturbing of all, it masterfully showed how the self-centered indifference of humanity can lead to the dismantling of our communities and our true connections. One of the most unsettling moments of this film that had nothing to do with the carnage on the court, occurs when Jonathan wants to read some history books and the informational clerk tells him that his books have already been transcribed and summarized for him. He cannot get access to the actual, original record he is looking for, and is only given the censored, truncated version. This felt terrifyingly-prescient, as our current government regime seeks to censor and rewrite history, and as humans become more comfortable with tools like AI—that is often designed to present certain versions of information, but not necessarily the whole truth. For all of its disquieting details, though, I would’ve loved if Rollerball had expanded the parameters of its perilousness even further. It likely wasn’t in the budget or the time constraints, but I wanted to know even more about this futuristic hellscape—how it got to be the way it is, and what the consequences of going against the corporations would be if you weren’t strong or tough like James Caan. What was shown and explained, was thoroughly upsetting, and I would’ve liked even more of it, because I’m a sicko. What they did pull off, though, is extraordinary, as Norman Jewison and his design team had to make a vaguely-written idea of a sport tangible, plus Rollerball was the first major Hollywood production to give screen credit to its stunt performers (Which is kind of insane it took that long.) Despite negative reviews at the time of its release, Rollerball inspired several video games, a remake, and a song by Devo. And apparently this fictional sport was so realistic and tantalizing that the cast, extras, and stunt personnel played it between takes on the set. After the film’s release, Howard Cosell interviewed Norman Jewison and James Caan on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, showing clips from the film and with the two of them explaining the rules of the game. Audiences were so enthralled that Jewison was contacted multiple times by promoters, requesting that the "rights to the game" be sold so that real Rollerball leagues might be formed. Jewison was outraged, as the entire point of the movie was to show the "sickness and insanity of contact sports and their allure." But, that’s pretty typical of human nature—I mean Mr. Beast just made a bunch of people compete in real-life Squid Games. Despite the sometimes depressing and misogynistic nature of both of these roller skating movies, I enjoyed both Roll Bounce and Rollerball quite a bit. They are, at the very least, impossibly groovy and engrossing, which allows me to skate by any of my issues with them. Well that’s about all the time I have this week, dear readers, but thanks for rolling along with me. Toodles!
