Roller Boogie - Development

Development

Roller Boogie was written by Barry Schneider with Irwin Yablans, who is credited with creating the story. Yablans' Compass International Pictures, founded with Joseph Wolfe, would distribute the movie. Compass International Pictures had unprecedented success the previous year with John Carpenter's slasher Halloween. In between Halloween and Roller Boogie, the company would distribute three other titles, Nocturna, Fyre, and Tourist Trap, the latter the most successful of the three.

Almost undoubtedly made quickly before the roller-skating fad of the late-1970s and early-1980s ended, the film was originally led by Linda Blair and Canadian actor David Kennedy, with whom Blair was dating at the time. However, when Kennedy and Blair ended their relationship Kennedy was dropped from the picture, rumors stating at Blair's request. Several other actors were considered for the character Bobby James, including Peter Galagher and Albert Insinnia; who would actually play the character Gordo in the finished movie. Jim Bray, an American amateur roller skating champion who had won over 270 awards for his skating talents by the age of eighteen, was originally cast as the stuntman for the uncast male lead. When producers had difficulty finding someone to fill the role, Bray was given acting lessons and cast in the role.

In an earlier version of the script, Bobby James' primary interest was song-writing. In the movie, Bobby and friends were trying to write a new song by humming into a tape recorder. Once he meets Terry she assists him in scoring it using her musical abilities. By the end of the movie, Terry leaves for her music scholarship whilst Bobby pursues his musical career. There is no mention of the Olympics in the earlier version. Another scene that does not feature in the movie that was present in the script comes where Bobby helps Terry escape from her bedroom after she is grounded by her parents. This scene was shot, however, since there are photos in various publicity items with Jim Bray peeking through a window on a ladder.

All of the skating sequences and the dancing sequences were choreographed by David Winters and were instrumental in the success of the movie. Prior to the production of the picture, skating trainer Barbara Guedel tested over 300 young skaters, finally selecting fifty that would make up the skating crowds in the picture - many of whom would also feature in another skating-influenced picture, Xanadu (1980). The ensemble were then given three weeks of training before the photography began, and, at the behest of their managers/producers, the principal actors were only on roller-skates for short periods of time. However, Blair did much of her own skating for the picture. Two stunt doubles were used, one for the skating chase around the streets of Venice - Barbara Guedel would perform the trickier dancing stunts in the competition sequence. Blair would develop bursitis in her hip during the making of the picture.

The film was shot in eight weeks through the Summer of 1979, mostly on the Venice boardwalks but also in Beverly Hills and, for the final competition sequence, at The Stardust Ballroom in Hollywood. At the end of principal photography, Blair had to return to Florida for a court appearance (from her arrest, in 1977).