Wheeled Wonder Women: Producing and distributing Blood on the Flat Track: The Rise of the Rat City Rollergirls

**Below is the unpublished article written for boxoffice.com**

If you’ve been raised in this country with even a smidge of liberal education you’ve undoubtedly been subject to the ongoing struggle for women’s equality. Those with an even more extensive liberal background have even Majored in Women’s Studies, where one is frequently immersed in intensive essay, lecture, and testimonial inscribing the suffering brought on by the weight of a very male dominant culture bearing down upon the Feminine identity.

But attend one women’s Roller Derby bout, and all those essays, all those testimonials, and all that worrisome oppression becomes a distant memory, if not a questionable and foggy fantasy. Attend one Roller Derby bout and you may very well wind up fearing for the sanctity of your fragile, liberal-educated soul. And like most, you’ll ultimately find yourself reveling in the audacity of spirit, the ferocity of competition, and the raw, uninhibited theatricality of a spectator sport that, for nearly a generation, went into a strange dormancy and was all but forgotten by American Popular culture until a handful of outrageous women, some promoters, some punks, and some savvy business people came up with the notion of revitalizing the sport, hence the inspiration for the Leaky-Sleazewell Production’s recent documentary, Blood on the Flat Track: The Rise of the Rat City Rollergirls.

The rebirth of Women’s Roller Derby and, in particular, the emergence of the Pacific Northwest’s eminent league, The Rat City Rollergirls, has been as fast and as furious as the very nature of the game. So let us thank the gods of modern technology that as this new subculture bloomed, sprawled, and entrenched itself in popular consciousness, that several young documentary film makers had the means, the time, and the inspiration to detail the event from the inception.

“If you’ve ever seen Roller Derby and, especially, if you are someone interested in the spectacle of cinema—how would you not want to film this?” Lacy Leavitt, one half of the Leaky-Sleazewell Production’s duo, who with her co-director Lainy Bagwell, state they saw the potential of a powerful documentary subject within moments of viewing their first Rat City Rollergirl bout, “it’s so big and beautiful an sexy and funny. It was just obvious immediately to both of us that we had to make a film about this.”

But for all the above noted flamboyance of this fresh, new subculture, it is Leavitt and Bagwells’ delicate documentation of the leaguers’ individual stories that enhances the vitality of this community for the viewer, an aspect of Blood on the Flat Track of which many league fans were critical, but as Bagwell says, “You see these women and you figure they must all drink beer and kick ass and take heroin…but this film takes away all that because you get to know them and see what they do for a living and what their families think and the things they go through.”

With the same grit and vigor that so inspired their filmmaking, Leavitt and Bagwell set out two years ago to capture the evolution of this roller derby league with more than one facet to their agenda. Intent on keeping costs and crew to a three-person minimum, they shot, with the assistance of editor and videographer Wes Johnson, over 250 hours of footage with a production budget subsidized by two temp jobs resulting in a very tight, very dynamic 95 minute film. The filmmakers admit their funding was sporadic, “It came from our bank accounts. We worked temp jobs…the nice thing about doing a documentary about roller derby is that roller derby is not the girls’ full-time job; they’re playing and practicing on nights and weekends so we were there nights and weekends.”

Blood on the Flat Track premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 15th, 2007. It was a gala event for the Seattle roller derby community; red carpets, chandelier earrings, shimmering, open-backed dresses revealing a whole tapestry of tattoos, flashbulbs and video cameras galore but sadly, no war paint. Granted, the premiere evening audience was ramped to unconditionally support the film, but even those not deeply indoctrinated into the roller girl community could not deny the documentary was an impressive piece of independent film. Since then, the film has made the rounds to at least eight film festivals nationwide and garnered positive reviews, and even though an independent film producer could not ask for a more eager viewing audience, firm distribution the film is still forthcoming.

“Through working with at IFP (Independent Feature Project) and Film Market,” Bagwell points out; “I’ve contacted several people…there are a couple (distributors) who’ve seen screeners who are interested. We’ve sent it out to some of the larger film industry festivals and are waiting to hear back. Of course, we’d love to have a small theatrical release or DVD release, but if not, we’ll do it ourselves…”

Indeed, not all independent filmmakers would have the luxury of tapping into such and eager and enthusiastic audience, the benefit of choosing such a dynamic community as the subject or your film. Says Leavitt, “Obviously any filmmaker would love to be in the position where they have several people banging on their door wanting to distribute their movie. The only real major concern is having to go with a distributor that’s going to try and sell as some schlocky sex-piece.”

Yet, unlike many other films, Blood On the Flat Track has a very unique fall-back position for distributing their film, “We have potential to tap over 200 leagues worldwide…,” says Bagwell, “You average over 70-80 girls to a league, 200 leagues—somebody in there knows somebody that runs a theater or who works in distribution…We get so many emails from derby leaguers wanting to know he the DVD will be done so they can sell it at their merch (merchandise) tables, but we wanted to wait and make sure we had exhausted all our options before we look into self release.” One wonders why these filmmakers would even hesitate to go directly for the roller derby attendee market, and bypass the whole gauntlet of conventional film distribution.

“The biggest challenge,” Bagwell confides, “is that we are up here in the Northwest without a lot of resources to be traveling down to LA or New York. I think if we were in LA right now, it would be a lot easier to get this done. Right now everything is over email and the phone, but I don’t think is anything that’s insurmountable.”

For updates on film festival screenings of Blood on the Flat Track: The Rise of the Rat City Roller Girls, please visit their website www.ratcitymovie.com.

-Cole Hornaday, January, 2008