Roller rooter

From cute E.T. girl to kid with addiction problems to film star and producer, Drew Barrymore has been the rare Hollywood figure to follow (troubled) childhood stardom with adult success. Now she dons the director’s cap with Whip It, in which a shy Texas teen (Ellen Page) joins a women’s roller-derby team. “I worked my fucking ass off on it,” Barrymore tells us. Her tireless press tour (last month she raced electric cars with Jay Leno, next week she hosts Saturday Night Live) stopped at Smart Bar one recent midweek morning.

Time Out Chicago: So why are we in Smart Bar?
Drew Barrymore: I just wanted to, like, not be in a hotel room. I just find them so sort of…what’s the atmosphere?

TOC: Stuffy?
DB: Stuffy and—oh, my God, my room smells like cat pee, literally. I slept in, like, a litter box last night. A guest must’ve brought a cat who was in heat and it sprayed all over the room.

TOC: They wouldn’t give you a new room?
DB: I was too busy to move rooms, so I was like, I’m just gonna deal with the cat-pee smell. I find hotel rooms just to be standard and not unique, and this film is so personal I wanted to do it in a more authentic environment.

TOC: And you were just a block south last night, right? Singing the seventh-inning stretch?
DB: Yeahhh!

TOC: How’d that go?
DB: I just hope I did the song justice.

TOC: Well, the Cubs won. You must’ve done okay.
DB: I, by the way, was literally freaking out. I was like, if they lose tonight, I’m gonna feel like a bad-luck charm, I cannot come into this city. They really kicked ass last night, too.

TOC: With Whip It, you’ve spoken about how you relate with Ellen Page’s character, in particular her “mother-daughter struggle and the desire to be accepted for who you are in your family.”
DB: I love rock & roll and I love sport and I love action and I love love stories, and all of those colors are in the film. But the exploration of family is very emotional and very personal for me, and I know I’m not alone. It’s a universal, relatable subject.

TOC: How does that struggle play out for you here?
DB: I was able to inject a lot of personal emotion because the relationship I had with my mother was so tumultuous. Ellen and Marcia [Gay Harden]’s relationship works out quite differently than me and my own mother’s story, but that’s the cool thing: You can rewrite history when you’re making a movie.

TOC: You’ve also said, “I related to a girl who, against all odds, finds her inner strength and believes she can do what boys do.” Have you felt yourself working against the odds in a Hollywood boys’ club?
DB: No, I really don’t, and I actually find those women—I’m like, get that bitter, ugly, unattractive chip off your shoulder. I’m doing what any guy could be doing, and I don’t do it by needing to wear a power suit. Women have made incredible strides; we’re in a really balanced or better-balanced culture, and we should be celebrating that…rather than, like, “Oh, men have all the power.” I’m like, “Oh, boo-hoo, shut up, make it happen for yourself and get over it.”

TOC: You were really rigorous about making sure all the actors knew how to skate: Ellen Page, Juliette Lewis, Eve, yourself.
DB: Yeah, it’s essential. Ellen trained the hardest. She trained for three months. She was better than a lot of the derby girls we skated with. It was amazing to watch her evolution from day-one skating to being able to jump over two or three derby girls and clear them by four feet.

TOC: Speaking of Ellen Page, the Marie Claire photo of you two has been getting some attention. So, the kiss—whose idea?
DB: We just, like, kissed each other, and it was just a moment and it got photographed. There’s nothing to read into it, and it’s hysterical and delicious if people want to. For us, we’re just, like, girls who adore each other, and we’re whimsical and affectionate, and girls are like that. We don’t have hang-ups about it, and we’re just sort of free.

TOC: You’ve been working hard to promote this film, traveling to Toronto, Chicago, Dallas…
DB: Boston, Detroit, San Francisco, L.A., New York. I really wanted to go around the country and bring this movie to people. This is something I’ve been working on day in and day out for three years of my life, and I didn’t want to promote it like any other movie.

TOC: And when this is all over?
DB: I’ll don a really nice bedazzled straitjacket and take it easy for a moment.

Whip It opens Friday 2.

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