Drew Barrymore drops in for a surprise visit to a 'Whip It' audience in New York City

Drew Barrymore at the AMC Empire 25 in Manhattan

Drew Barrymore sure likes to surprise people. On the evening of October 1, I was among the approximately 400 to 500 people who were watching an advance screening of Barrymore’s roller-derby/coming-of-age film "Whip It" at the AMC Empire 25 in midtown Manhattan. After the movie was over and while the credits were rolling in the still-darkened theater, I noticed an entourage of people standing near one of the room’s hallways leading to the exit. And among that group was Barrymore herself. Was she there to secretly watch the audience’s reaction to her directorial debut? Was she there to talk to the unsuspecting crowd?

It turns out that she was there to do both. As the credits continued to roll, two director’s chairs and a poster display of the movie were brought to the front of the room while someone announced to the audience that we should stay in our seats because a special guest would be there. I’m told by sources at Fox Searchlight (the movie studio behind "Whip It") that Barrymore’s appearance was so last-minute that many people at Fox Searchlight didn’t know it was going to happen until shortly before Barrymore arrived at the theater. So in an impromptu Q&A moderated by WABC-TV reporter Sandy Kenyon, the lights went up, and Barrymore stepped out of the shadows to a standing ovation by the cheering audience, which included many real-life roller-derby women. Barrymore didn’t take questions from the audience but she opened up in the Q&A about her "Whip It" experience.

With all the movies you’ve produced, why did you decide this was the one you wanted to direct?

For me, I have to make something that I have a real personal connection with, whether we’re producing films like "50 First Dates." I just want to believe in that someone would put in the effort in every day and make them fall in love over and over — whether it’s "Charlie’s Angels" with girls who can kick butt and have fun while doing it … You go into different things with different intentions, but I always think it starts with that personal connection. I have wanted to direct my whole life, and I finally found this project and I rewrote the script with the writer [Shauna Cross] for a year and a half.

It just has the metaphors and is emblematic of a person’s journey that I identified with so incredibly personally. I’d gone through so much with my own mother and the pain and the amount of energy and guilt and love that we have in our hearts for our families. And we try to have them accept us for who we want to be, rather than who they want us to be, and to find that honesty. And not do it in a Hollywood way, where things resolve themselves immediately and overnight as they do in films sometimes. It’s that journey …

I’ve always wanted to find my tribe … The pageant [ in "Whip It"] was a really interesting metaphor. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pageants. I’m so shocked that it’s parodied so comedically and cheaply in films. That said, there’s a metaphor about being a certain type of person or perfection or being able to check a certain box. And I’ve found that Hollywood can do that very same thing to you. And I simply can’t conform to that box of perfection. I’m deeply flawed, and I have to be myself. And I am more of a dirty girl than a pageant girl. I identified with that.

I think in life, the most important thing — other than the struggle to gain honesty and acceptance and respect within your own family, whether it’s the one you’re related to in blood or the one that you create in this life; that’s why I put "Find your tribe" on the poster — everything in life is about finding friends to do the things you want to do alongside with, especially in an empowering, celebratory supportive and honest way.

I also like comedy and action and love and friendship. And I love music. And the films I loved growing up … I wanted to put my heart into something for the first thing I directed. So that was how it was born.

Drew Barrymore at the "Whip It" Q&A session at the AMC Empire 25 in Manhattan

Was there a point when you thought you couldn’t get the actresses in "Whip It" to do their own stunts?

I always knew that we could. I learned the value of it in producing the "Charlie’s Angels" movies [and] how important it is. I think you react as an audience so differently when you see the actual person doing the actual stunts. You just believe it; you just enjoy it more. There’s nothing worse than a bad cut, like an away-cut shot, and then you go to the back of a really bad wig and then another cut and it’s the actor again. And you’re like, "Wait. Did they really think I was fooled by that?"

When I was training with the girls on "Charlie’s Angels," we’d be in so much pain or we’d hurt ourselves and we’d support each other through it. When you’re doing something and you learn a skill, everybody’s cheering for you. There’s great camaraderie, and you develop this great chemistry. This film is a lot about the team too. You can really sense when actors walk on the set the first day and pretend like they’re friends versus these girls who went through months of training camp, learned these skills, cheered each other on, sported each other, became friends, hung out on weekends.

So by the time they were ready to start shooting, there not only was that natural chemistry or camaraderie that you can’t buy or fake, and also you get so excited to go out there and show off the skills that you’ve learned, you have this vivaciousness when you get out there, rather than an intimidation. So I just find that people doing their own stunts is an actual vital part …

Can you talk about the scene where Ellen Page jumps over a bunch of roller-derby players?

Yeah, there was a point where we had to [decided to] do wire work and how would we figure this shot out, because I wanted to clear these girls and then knock into a wall and get thrown down and really hurt, as girls do in derby. It’s a really dangerous sport. And I wanted to show how much camaraderie and comedy and action and coolness and individual style. And also I wanted to take a moment to show how dangerous it is, how fearless you have to be in order to play it.

So when it came to that stuff with Ellen, what we did was we trained for months and months for it. So there’s no wire work, there’s no trickery. I purposely made it so there was not one edit in that shot. She clears those derby girls, four feet in the air, lands, knocks into that wall and goes down all in that one shot. And that’s all Ellen.

Sandy Kenyon and Drew Barrymore at the "Whip It" Q&A session at the AMC Empire 25 in Manhattan

So you and the other actresses really got in there with real cuts and bruises?

Absolutely! It’s the derby community. Who wants a bunch of actresses going in there and looking like a bunch of wimps? You’ve got to celebrate this sport. You guys have incredible skill, a great deal of fearlessness, total bravado. Celebrate the fact that there’s a competitive nature and sisterhood, go out there and go against each other as teams and make it exciting for yourselves and high stakes for the people watching, but there’s a lack of backstabbing. People hold each other up.

I hung out with so many girls. They go help each other move when a boyfriend breaks up with them. You know, there’s a real family nature created there. So I wanted to stay as true to not only the athleticism but also to the lifestyle of derby girls. And there wasn’t one minute that we wanted to undersell that.

You talked about the "aha" moment when you found the "Whip It" story, but what about any "oh no" moments when you were doing the movie? Was there anything that really scared you?

No. I had some big fears going on when I was trying to shoot the three weeks — we shot the three weeks of derby first, because we’d been training ... and I thought, "Get right in, fresh out of training." To shoot derby is a difficult thing. You tell little stories within each game, and you continue a little further along with each story. It’s not like hockey or basketball or football, where you pass a goal line. There’s a lack of tradition in storytelling in derby.

So to create stories in the game, keep the comedy going, keep it alive, keep it fresh, I shot with techno cranes, doggie cams, the skaters had a camera, almost so you could feel like it was to be in the middle of the pack. I shot on dollies, I shot on scissor lifts, I shot from the audience perspective. How do you show the start of the jam, passing all the girls while Jimmy [Fallon’s emcee character] is talking, and land on the jammer and make it cinematic that way … I was always trying to figure out fresh and new ways to tell a cohesive story and make it fun and shot in an entertaining way. I think that was one of the biggest challenges.

But one of the most important things for me was performance. I’ve acted my whole life and I loved working with the directors I’ve worked with. To me, performance is everything. I worked right next to the camera. I don’t work off of a monitor. I love the improv. I love to tweak the performances right then and there without cutting. I loved saying to the actors — there’s not thing more fun than saying — "Surprise me," and see what comes out of that.

So as many challenges I was faced with, I tried to meet them as best as I could. And I also tried to never forget that the most important thing that’s happening is what’s being put on that camera … and the actors, so they got to go home every day feeling like they got to triumph.

Drew Barrymore at the "Whip It" Q&A session at the AMC Empire 25 in Manhattan

How did you handle being an actor, producer and director for the same movie?

As a producer, you have to learn how to balance an emotional hat versus a rational hat, because as actor, you have to be able to laugh and cry and dance and sing and perform, like a capuchin monkey, and working on all cylinders. And as a producer, you can go off to the side and hear there’s a major nightmare going on, like an actor’s gotten sick, there’s insurance, or the studio wants to cut that scene. You just want to tear your hair out. A sudden crisis is going on and you have to put on your problem-solving hat and not approach it emotionally and think about how you can fix this and make this work. And then you’ve got to go back to the emotional side and capuchin-monkey out in front of everybody.

But what that taught me is to keep that drama — which is always going happening every day on the set; there’s always going to be something — away from the crew and the cast … and make the most nurturing, safe environment so that they can fly as high and free … as they can. The stuff that goes on in the sidelines is not caught on film. What’s caught on film is the joy and effort and inspiration when the cameras are running. You have to learn how to problem solve and compartmentalize.

Was doing that high-flying shot with Ellen Page as fun as it looked?

Oh, yeah! Absolutely.

Did you do it in one take?

Yeah. We had one take, three cameras. We had a very small budget. We tried to put every penny that we could on that screen. And we didn’t have the money to afford … several takes. Like the [swimming] pool scene. We only had one chance to get Landon [Pigg] and Ellen [Page] into the water. When you work in that environment … it actually breeds a sort of familiarity and joy that you have that kind of excitement that you have that one chance. And I think that enthrallment ends up on film, which is really exciting. As opposed to a big budget, where everybody goes back to their trailers, there’s a big re-change and the energy kind of gets sucked out. Those are fun too, but it’s a very different environment.

You’ve talked about "Whip It" and called it your "piggy bank" that you’ve broken and spread the contents out for all to see. Can you elaborate on that?

I feel like I’ve tried to go around and collect knowledge my whole life, whether it’s all the museums I’ve seen around the world to the many bands I’ve listened to for the last 35 years of my life [to] the friendships that I’ve made. My friends are the loves of my life. They’ve been honest with me and they’ve given me tough love and they’ve made me believe in myself and that I could do these things. I love film, I love cinema, I love things that can transport you to another world. I love love and I love to laugh and I love to celebrate life.

Photo credits: Marion Curtis/StarPix