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There were two movies in 2006 that dared to tell unexpectedly subversivestories through movement.
Both films are masterpieces.
But its Olympics season, so lets focus on the one with the hand chalk.
She doesnt want to be there despite her illustrious talents.
In fact, shed rather go to military school.
That intrigue dissipates fast, however, when The Man gets involved.
Its about them, for them.
Theyre done being obedient to an archaic and broken system.
How does it feel knowing youve made the only great gymnastics movie?Its very gratifying.
Its wonderful to see younger gymnasts imitating some of the jokes and seeing its influence in gymnastics culture.
But also it moved the needle on the conversation early on.
Judges had to know aboutStick Itif theyre in the gymnastics space.
Its the only movie.
Stick Itrevolves around Haleys personal metamorphosis until the third act transitions into deeper systemic issues.
How did you arrive at this idea of a player revolution?
InBring It On,the villain is socioeconomic inequality.
The sense of unfairness is the villain.
Its the tyranny of small preferences thats very narcissistic and picayune.
Theres something so petty there.
It encompasses all the fears, and yet these women transcend it and get out there.
It requires a lot of blind faith.
And yet this great human endeavor is assessed by bureaucrats.
Its so funny when you think about it.
Its a funny contrast.
What were they nervous about?I remember my producer partner, Gail Lyon, was on my side.
As youre shooting a film and something starts to seemingly not work, you want to kill the writer.
In that case, it was me.
We didnt know if the bra-snapping moments were too overblown.
That was a real concern.
You dont know if its too small or too big because youre blowing it up for the screen.
If something is too big, it could be cartoonish, and yet it has to deliver.
It helps that Missy has a little bit of a rebel naturally in her and she delivered that line.
When the rebel is healing, they become the renegade whos acting for the greater good.
The studio didnt understand it.
We found that out because we had a mole who was giving us a heads-up.
When the executives at Disney had divested, they behaved horribly in ways that would get them canceled now.
Female executives were behaving incredibly defensively.
It wasnt our fault that they were undercapitalized on thosePiratessequels, stop punishing us.
There was a very problematic culture at Disney at the time.
I was shocked by all those people operating that way for so long.
That rarely happens, and the Disney executives were so shocked.
Everyones jaws dropped that she would be so toxic and negative on the heels of such an overwhelming success.
You dont get those kinds of scores from focus groups often.
Thats what we were dealing with.
But its kind of perfect in a way, when you think about it.
The bureaucrats at the studio, maybe they were responding to the idea of being villainized in the movie.
A film executive is kind of like a gymnastics judge.
But the creatives and actors have all the risk.
Are you kidding me?
It really hurt and sucked to watch people misbehaving like that.
Its like they lost their humanity.
I wasnt willing to play that game.
Im not going to kiss the ring if theres nothing to kiss for.
Why did this petty technicality make the most sense to accelerate your commentary?
Did you play around with other scenarios?We discussed undergarments bras or underwear as options.
We really only had two options: The panty line or the bra strap.
And this was coming from a former judge herself.
You cant expose your humanity as a woman in all this.
The fact that they thought they had permission to say something like that is nuts to me.
Go, America, I guess.
I liked that symmetry from a storytelling point of view.
She comes in a brat very much in the Charli XCX mind-set and shes healed by the end.
Shes taking it back.
Look at what happened to Simone Biles at the Tokyo Games.
Its the worst, and as a former gymnast, I hated it.
Running full speed toward an immutable object is psychotic.
You want to overcome that resistance.
It wont move, its just there.
Your inner tyranny is so well-embodied by the vault.
It represents that nagging piece of all of us that were trying to overcome.
Its the simplest piece of apparatus.
The bars are most complicated, the floor is all yours, and the beam is the scariest.
The vault is just like,Ugh.
The ones who succeed have that ability to trust and have faith in their coaches and the process.
I think the culture has improved a lot since the Nassar story broke.
My hope isStick Itwas a proxy for the gymnasts to see the power of collaborating like that.
I would love it if somehow theres a correlation.
Im also curious about the judges themselves.
A couple of great things have happened since the movies release.
Theyve gotten better at scoring and describing the code of points with the difficulty and execution elements.
They show you the green, yellow, and red scores and what it means.
So I think theyve come a long way in terms of trying to be more accurate and fair.
Content is king, but context is God.
Contextualizing gymnastics scoring for an audience is a very big bite for judges, audiences, and gymnasts.
Did the movie make these judges self-reflective?
I dont have an answer for you.
Id instead say that some gymnasts become judges, and I would hope theyre the most compassionate.
I do hope it raised some awareness.
Are you hoping this might be prophetic in the future for gymnasts?
Its terrible, and of course we wish that on no one.
