BDSM RTV MEDIA NEWS!!!!


07 october 2009


Drew Barrymore 'all for bondage'


Source: www.brisbanetimes.com.au - Brisbane Times -Australia


"Well, I'm all for bondage," Drew Barrymore says, a big smile on her face.


Sit down with Barrymore for a conversation and it is likely she will offer up a colourful quote or two ... or 10, even when she is suffering a horrid case of flu.

It has been a busy month for the actress-producer and now director.
Barrymore has been travelling North America promoting her new comedy-drama, Whip It, the 34-year-old's directorial debut, and somewhere along the vast media tour she picked up a bug.

There was talk that this interview in a Manhattan hotel would be cancelled, but Barrymore, keen to spread the word about Whip It, a film she spent the last three years making, is battling on.

She has a black and white striped woollen scarf wrapped around her neck and a litre cup of fruit juice in her left hand.

"I always wanted to direct so this is a very wonderful moment for me," Barrymore says.

"I've found something very personal and got to put my whole heart into it.
"So, right now I'm just focused on this and I hope to fall in love with something in the future that I love nearly as much as I loved this.
"I spent every day of my life for the past three years making it."

The bondage comment came up when the conversation turned to whether someone walking into a theatre without doing research may presume Whip It is about whips and leather. If they do, they will be disappointed.
The only leather that audiences see in Whip It are on the boot rollerskates laced to the legs of Barrymore and her mostly-female cast, including Oscar-nominated Ellen Page, Juliette Lewis, Saturday Night Live comedian Kristen Wiig, rapper Eve and New Zealand stunt woman-turned actress, Zoe Bell.

"No, 'whip it' is a roller derby term," Barrymore explains, hopefully ending the confusion.

"It is when you grab one girl and whip her around the track."

It is not a surprise the phenomenally successful Barrymore, whose 50-plus films as an actress and eight as a producer have made more than $US2.4 billion at the box office, chose Whip It as her directorial debut.
Based on the novel and screenplay of Shauna Cross, a roller derby star in Los Angeles, Whip It lives up to the girl power theme of Barrymore's recent projects and the focus of the film production company she started in 1995, Flower Films.

Page stars as Bliss Cavendar, a teenager stuck in a truck stop town in Texas and forced by her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) to participate in beauty queen pageants.

Her life changes when she finds a flyer promoting a roller derby league in the nearby city of Austin.

Cavendar tries out for the league, shows plenty of talent, is given the moniker Babe Ruthless and becomes the new star of the league.
"It is a film about roller derby," Barrymore says.

"It is a film about family and friendship.

"It is a mother-daughter love story and the journey you take in trying to find out who you are."

Whip It made its debut last month at the Toronto Film Festival and the critics have largely applauded Barrymore's direction.

"The movie is miles more intelligent than most of the cream-of-wheat marketed to teenage girls," America's best known film critic, Roger Ebert, wrote.

"Funnier, more exciting, even liberating. In her debut as a director, Barrymore shows she must have been paying attention ever since Spielberg cast her when she was five (in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial)."
Page, the 22-year-old Canadian actress best known for her Oscar-nominated role in the 2007 comedy Juno, also receives plenty of plaudits from critics. Barrymore says she had her eye on Page for the role of Bliss three years ago.

"She was always my dream to play the part," Barrymore says.
"I actually asked her to do it before she did Juno. I always knew she was the person and I was just fortunate she agreed to do it.

"We became like soul mates through the process."

Barrymore also became close to the other cast members during months of rollerskating practice to prepare for the role.

Most had not been on skates since their teen years.

Barrymore was keen to avoid using stunt doubles, which meant plenty of bruises and spills for her cast who lived up to their roller derby monikers.
Barrymore's character has the nickname "Smashley Simpson", Bell was "Bloody Holly", Lewis "Iron Maven", Eve "Rosa Sparks" and Wiig "Maggie Mayhem".

"We had several injuries and thank God we were able to get up and walk away from them," Barrymore says.

"It is a tough, dangerous sport and you have to admire what these derby girls go through, but we really wanted to learn the sport so we could film us doing it.

"I just hate when you see a bad wig, a bad stunt double and a bad edit. It looks and feels fake.

"That is really us out their skating our tails off."
The prize for best skater went to the diminutive Page, who as a Canadian, grew up on ice skates.

"Zoe Bell is an incredible athlete, Juliette Lewis sold it like nobody's business, but Ellen trained for three months and became better than some of the derby girls on the track," Barrymore says.

"She really is someone you don't want to mess with on the track.
"I tried the best that I could.

"I trained the best that I could. I skated as fast as I could. I took the falls the best I could. It's up to the viewer."

As the latest famous member of the Barrymore acting dynasty, Barrymore's life, which has involved multiple stints in drug rehab and a suicide attempt, has been covered daily by the tabloids.

It was Steven Spielberg who launched Barrymore to stardom, casting her in ET as Gertie when she was five years old.

The fame, coupled with a rocky home life with father John and mother Ildiko, led her to smoke cigarettes at the age of nine, drink alcohol at 11, smoke marijuana at 12 and snort cocaine at 13.

While countless other child stars failed to emerge as successful adults in Hollywood, Barrymore has become one of the industry's most powerful members.

She earned a reported $US15 million for starring in the 2007 comedy Music and Lyrics and produced and starred in the two Charlie's Angels films in 2000 and 2003, which went on to earn a combined $US510 million at the box office.

Barrymore knows why she has survived and blossomed while others in her position self-destructed.

"I just think it is a matter of discipline, making it happen for yourself and not expecting everything to fall in your lap because it doesn't," Barrymore explains.

"You really have to go out there and create your own destiny and do all the work it takes to do that.

"I've approached everything with a sort of discipline and 1,000 per cent.
"Giving your life over to something is what it takes to make something."
Whip It opens in Australia on October 8.

AAP