Barrymore’s voice catches with emotion as she talks about Juvonen. “Here’s the part where I lose it,” she says. “Nan’s the love of my life.” Both big sister and sounding board, Juvonen is a pragmatist who isn’t afraid to dole out tough love. Barrymore has unending energy, she notes, and a “compulsive” work ethic to go with it. “Drew’s not casual at all,” Juvonen says. “She gets hyperworried and intense about things.”
Whip It, their 10th film together, cost about $12 million and was filmed in just 10 weeks. Before agreeing to let the perpetually tardy Barrymore direct, however, Juvonen insisted that she learn to be on time. “For years I said, ‘You need to show me you can do this,’” Juvonen recalls. “She had no parents; no one said to her, ‘These things matter.’” As the director, says Juvonen, Barrymore had to learn how to “step in as the leader, and not as the famous person who everyone says yes to. And, boy, did she ever.”
Whip It is about a 17-year-old girl (played by Ellen Page) breaking free from her mother’s small-town values to find her place as part of a roller derby team. To Barrymore, who costars as derby girl Smashley Simpson, it’s about “finding your tribe,” and another mother-daughter love story with personal resonance. An avid photographer and cinephile, she included images opposite every page of the script to help the actors and crew understand the “tone” she was after. (The references run from William Eggleston and a rabid Old Yeller to Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.)
Her first lessons in directing came from Spielberg, on the set of E.T. She remembers giving him a story she’d written about a mother and daughter that he later nicknamed “Terms of Endrewment.” “Drew and I were like dad and daughter, and this was four years before I had any children of my own,” says Spielberg, who became her godfather. On his set she discovered, briefly, the structure and familial ties missing at home. “I came to the profound understanding that I had found my place,” she says of her first “tribe.” “So I wasn’t going to let it go for anything in the world. For me it was survival.”
Recently Spielberg gave her notes after she showed him a rough cut of “my first child,” as she refers to Whip It. “I don’t want to sell out the moment because it’s so personal and private,” she says, suddenly drawing a line. “It was very emotional for me. I was like, ‘This is who I became because of your guidance.’” Spielberg considers the film a self-assured debut. “I was not surprised that she knew exactly where to put the camera,” he says, “because at six years old she was telling me where she thought I should put the camera.”
