Roller Boogie (1979) on Netflix
Bobby James skates the Venice boardwalk. Terry Barkley, a Beverly Hills flautist, wants him to teach her to skate for the Roller Disco contest. A mobster developer wants Jammer's rink.
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- IMDb4.7/102,246 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes0%
Trailer
Plot summary
Bobby James and his friends Phones, Hoppy and Gordo skate the boardwalk at Venice Beach. There Bobby meets Terry Barkley, a classical flautist from Beverly Hills who has driven to the beach with her friend Lana, and she spurns his advances. They meet again at a rink called Jammer's, where Terry wants to hire Bobby as her skating teacher for the Roller Disco contest. Terry has been set on playing classical flute at Juilliard, and her mother is shocked when Terry says she means to give that up. Meanwhile, Thatcher, a mobster land developer, is pressing Delany, who owns Jammer's, over the sale of the rink. Bobby and Terry find out about the deal and ask Terry's father, who is a lawyer, for help, but he turns them down.
Cast
- M.G. Kellyas D.J.
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Roller Boogie (1979)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Roller skater Jim Bray was hired on Roller Boogie as a stunt double but was cast as the lead, Bobby James, and paid about $20,000; he never appeared in another film despite becoming a teen-magazine pin-up.
- To keep costs down, Roller Boogie was shot as a non-union film, and producer Irwin Yablans' initial $400,000 budget ballooned to $1.5 million by the time filming finished.
- Skating trainer Barbara Guedel tested over 300 young skaters and picked fifty to fill the rink crowds, giving them three weeks of training; many of them later appeared in Xanadu (1980).
- Linda Blair did much of her own skating in Roller Boogie and developed bursitis in her hip during the shoot; two stunt doubles handled the Venice street chase and the trickiest dancing stunts in the competition.
- In August 2006 American Apparel played Roller Boogie in its New York City store windows and, on a whim, turned lamé fabric into leggings that took off, its fashion media director Matthew Swenson said.
- A scripted scene in which Bobby helps Terry escape her bedroom after she is grounded by her parents was shot for Roller Boogie but cut, surviving only in publicity photos of Jim Bray on a ladder.
