derby love from Hell!

Hello all my derby pals (and future derby pals)!

Bob Ray from “Hell on Wheels” here. We’re really excited to finally have a DVD available soon. We’ve been working on this film since 2001 and recently signed a distribution deal with IndiePix.

First of all, I’d like to thank the derby community for welcoming us and allowing us to document your sport. In particular, I’d like to extend a special thanks to both the Lonestar Rollergirls and the Texas Rollergirls.

We’re thrilled to be a part of the roller derby community and derby-revolution and love how the sport continues to grow. It’s freakin’ mind-blowing. To think that a group of women from Austin’s music/art/bar/entertainment scene who wanted to play some hard-hitting derby created a sport that has exploded into the 300+ leagues across the globe is a goose-bump inducing experience. Back in 2001, I don’t think anybody expected derby to grow at the pace that it has.

We’re still blown away that we were able to capture and tell the birth-of-derby story, from a fly-on-the-wall’s point of view, and witness these resurrection and subsequent growth of the sport.

On the DVD release, we have a TON of extras. There are trailers, music vids, deleted scenes and audio commentary tracks. There are 40 deleted scenes. We approached the deleted scenes from a historical point of view. Sure, some of them are pretty rough and some don’t have music, but we felt that it’d be best to put them out there so people can see ALL of what went down during the birth of modern derby. And the audio commentary tracks are kick ass too! There’s the filmmaker’s track w/ Bob Ray and Werner Campbell, a track with the former BGGW (Lonestar Rollergirls) Council Members and another track with some of the original Texas Rollergirls leadership. We wanted to give everyone the last word on the film and the events depicted in the film. We did not edit the audio tracks and everyone was free to speak their mind. I’m not aware of another documentary that allows the subjects of the film to have the last word via an audio track, so I think it’s a pretty cool and unique feature.

As filmmakers, we sure were lucky that we latched onto such a great story. Not to dismiss the amount of work we did, mind you (filming 13-17 days each month for a period of three+ years and clocking 60+ hours a week of editing for months and months on end). But we made a great film, so it was all worth it!

Anyway, I just wanted to drop a line and share some of my appreciation for derby and the women who skate and create derby.

Finally, I’d like to ask that if y’all know folks (particularly media folks), who’d be interested in the DVD, we’d greatly appreciate you passing the info along. The entire press release and all relevant info is on our site at: www.HellOnWheelsTheMovie.com/index2.htm. Or feel free to have them contact me at info@hellonwheelsthemovie.com (info [at] hellonwheelsthemovie [dot] com).

We hope that our film can penetrate the general public and reach beyond the derby crowd and, by doing so, bring awareness of local derby leagues to folks who might not yet be keyed in as to how completely awesome it is.

Thanks again, and mad-derby-love to all!
-bob
www.HellOnWheelsTheMovie.com

~ by hellonwheelsmovie on August 22, 2008.