Posts Tagged ‘Robert Kaylor’

Derby

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

tn_derbyI meant to put this review up months ago when DERBY was new on DVD, but I lost it or something. I bet you didn’t know it came out or that it existed anyway so let’s pretend it’s real timely.

DERBY is a 1971 documentary that you think is gonna be about roller derby. In the locker room team captain Charlie O’Connell talks to a young guy who wants to join the derby and keeps bragging that he can do a handspring on skates. The young guy is Mike Snell, 23 year-old of Dayton, Ohio, father of one, wearer of sunglasses, seems to think he’s James Dean. The cameras follow Mike to his wife, who is very supportive of his plan to quit his job at the tire factory and head to San Francisco for 6 weeks of training that he has to take before he can even try out. Obviously this is gonna be like THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS, he’s gonna pull himself up by the rollerskate straps or whatever. Or at least it’ll follow him as he learns the ropes and at the end he’ll try out and we’ll see if he achieves his dream or not. (more…)

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Derby

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

If you manage to find a video of this obscure 1971 documentary, you might think it’s gonna be a behind-the-scenes look at roller derby. Which is a phoney sport they used to have, kind of like pro wrestling, Harlem Globetrotters, American Gladiators or Olympic ice skating. What the sport was, I think, was people rolling around in a rink with rounded walls, then they knock each other over and start getting mad at each other and that type of shit.

What you really get though is a little slice o’ american culture, focusing on this one particular dude who decides to quit his job at the factory to pursue roller derby. He goes back stage to talk to one of the pros (you’re not sure if the filmatists set this meeting up or not) and then tells his wife he’s gonna do it, he’s gonna go to a school and train and give it a shot. And she says okay, if that’s what you want to do. She’s real supportive.

Which is why it’s kinda shocking about halfway through the movie when we go along with this dude and his buddy on a double date and the buddy brags about how this dude once had three mistresses without his wife or any of them knowing about each other. Turns out he’s a real scum bag, and the poor wife kinda realizes it, so there is a scene where she and a friend go to one of the mistress’s houses and they all bitch each other out. In 1971 this stuff was done in documentaries because there was no television programming to fill this gap.

There are scenes at the derby, and one scene in a car with a couple of female pros in a car on the way to a game, talking about how people look at them funny because they’re white girls with afros. But you never see this training school the dude is talking about, or find out if he makes it into the derby. It ends kind of abruptly but it’s real fascinating while it lasts, getting a peek into this guy’s life while he waits to get started. (more…)

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Carny

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

A little while back I saw a real good documentary called DERBY which on the surface was about a guy trying to become a professional roller derby artist but really was about how he was cheating on his wife and there was a dude with no shirt on reading playboys, and other weird stuff. I don’t know how to describe it man read that review if that’s what you’re interested in. get off my fuckin back, jack.

Anyway there’s a reason I bring this up, it has to do with this review also. The director of that picture was Robert Kaylor, who according to amazon.com presents the internet movie database only did three other movies, and of those three this here CARNY is the only one in print. So I watched it.

And it’s a pretty good one. It stars Gary Busey, Robbie Robertson and Jodie Foster, in one of those young, good lookin, kill the president for me type of roles she could do in 1980. She plays your typical young, abused gal tired of her small town and she even has the line “I swear if I had the money I’d get on a bus and get out of here” and of course this means she’s gonna run off and join the fuckin circus. Or carnival or whatever.

Busey, everybody’s favorite horse toothed nutjob, plays “the Bozo”, a clown in the dunk tank who spews abusive comments out a loudspeaker in a Popeye voice, pissing everybody off so they’ll pay for more balls to throw at him. Robertson is his partner Patch, a tough guy who sells the baseballs but also walks around and oversees all the other games and cons going on in the show. (more…)

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