Drew Barrymore's roller derby movie, filmed in Ypsilanti.

Reference: IMDB.

In the news

• ypsi and austin come to blows over whip it, Mark Maynard, July 2008

Folks in Texas, it seems, aren’t that happy about Drew Barrymore’s roller derby movie “Whip It” being filmed in Ypsi instead of Austin, where the story is supposed to have taken place. The “Austin Chronicle” just ran an uninspired piece of satire on the subject, basically saying that their state legislators, by not giving film companies competitive incentive packages, were killing the industry in Texas.

• On Ypsilanti Roller Girls and Inverse Proportions, Austin Chronicle, July 2008

The uproar over Texas' film-incentives package reached a fever pitch recently with the news that Whip It!, the Drew Barrymore-directed adaptation of Shauna Cross' semi-autobiographical novel Derby Girl – about a teenager in small-town Texas who joins the Austin Roller Derby revival of the early 2000s – would not be shooting in Austin but rather in incentive-rich, Roller Derby-poor Ypsilanti, Mich., the home of such cinematic landmarks as Eastern Michigan University, the Sauk Indian Trail, and Willow Run Airport, at the Belleville Road exit off I-94