Spring of ’02 and my friend “Roxy” called me up to tell me about the new guy she was dating, a roller derby emcee who she’d already dubbed with the moniker “Big Boy.”
Roxy and I had become best friends at first sight when I was 17 and we worked together at Thundercloud Subs. I later moved into her cozy house in South Austin, and we both moved on to even lower paying cool kid jobs; I pedaled books at the indie Bookpeople, while she worked next door behind the Whole Foods deli counter.
By the time Roxy started hanging with Big Boy, we no longer lived together, but were still close.
“I like him,” Roxy told me. “We have a good time and I don’t care if he’s kind of loud and does inappropriate things like fruit baskets when he’s emceeing at the roller derby.”
“What’s a fruit basket?” I asked, not sure that I wanted to know.
“He turns around and moons the crowd, and then shoves his whole package between his cheeks and yells, ‘FRUIT BASKET! FRUIT BASKET!”
“Oh my,” I said.
When I met Big Boy myself, I quickly realized the “fruit basket” was one of his more demure moves. 6 “6 and perhaps 260 lbs, with spiky blonde hair and a signature wife beater, Big Boy had a mouth that made this former firefighter blush and was eager to show me a very personal photo he’d recently sent into a website called www.ratemypoo.com. (Whatever you do, don’t go to the webpage!)
The roller derby emcee played by Jimmy Fallon in Drew Barrymore’s pitch perfect directorial debut Whip It–released in theaters Oct. 2–is much more hygienic and less scatological than Big Boy; but the film doesn’t suffer from the constraints of its PG-13 rating, which forced a toning down of other aspects of the sport as well.
In the film, it’s Barrymore wearing a Whole Foods apron in a supporting roll as a roller girl on the derby team, the Hurl Scouts. Ellen Page (Juno) stars in the film as the believable small town Central Texas girl yearning to escape the fictional Bodeen, where football is king and her mother’s desire that she participate in pageants stifling. She finds her own passion and a gang of hardcore and supportive older gals through sneaking off to Austin to skate with the Hurl Scouts.
The film, a beautiful coming-of-age story about finding friend love and one’s own place of belonging, manages to be slightly edgy, campy, and wholesome all at once. And the well-crafted screenplay rings true, perhaps because written by Shauna Cross, former roller derby diva and author of the novel “Derby Girl.”
Oftentimes there’s resentment when local counterculture hits the mainstream. But there’s little to object to in the movie’s Do It Yourself (DIY) roller derby message, “Grab some skates and be your own shero.” And I think most local derby gals are pleased.
Case in point: a couple of weeks ago I ran into my friend Cliona Gunter (skate name: Sparky), a former Lone Star Roller Girl. Cliona can often be spotted keeping up with cars as she boldly skates down Lamar Boulevard in helmet and pads.
Cliona Gunter (Sparky) laces up her skates.
“Hey, lady” I said, “I saw a preview the other day for a roller girl movie.”
“WHIP IT!” Cliona yelled, clearly ecstatic that the film will likely encourage women across the country to pull out their old Barbie skates and hit the pavement.
NOTE: To see Big Boy, real name Matt Looney (derby emcee name Huge Jass), and a great true story of roller derby in Austin, watch the roller derby documentary Hell on Wheels produced by Austinite Werner Campbell.
oh my, some legends never die