It’s a movie about commitment to a bit, and the rewards/hardships of doing so.
A few years back, I wrote about my most (and least) favorite sports to watch live, in person. The NFL ranked last, and the Twins were first (of course). But right behind the Twins, I chose live roller derby. It’s got total physical mayhem like rugby, speed like hockey, it’s a great, friendly crowd atmosphere, the athletes are gifted, and the tickets are reasonable. Plus it’s the kind of sport where teams can bang the hell out of each other for an hour and still enjoy having beers together afterwards.
So I was very happy to turn on the radio in July and hear this interview with Dawn Mikkelson, the director of a new roller derby documentary, Minnesota Mean. It’s about one team, the Minnesota All-Stars, and “Minnesota Mean” is their nickname.
I didn’t know Mikkelson’s work before. She’s a Minnesota native (from Lake City, near Red Wing), and she’s been making mostly Minnesota-set documentaries for over two decades. Red Tail was about the Northwest Airlines strike, which Minnesota strikers eventually lost. 2022’s Finding Her Beat was about women who perform Japanese taiko drums (those cool, big, really loud ones), and an unexpected race against time – would a concert that took years of planning get shut down by COVID? (No spoilers here, but if you watch the movie, you won’t be disappointed. It’s on Tubi and at your library.)
Minnesota Mean follows the All-Stars over a full season, as they chase after an invite to the North American championship tournament. So it’s structured like a typical sports documentary. But Mikkelson is more interested in the athletes themselves, and what motivates them to keep training, keep playing. After all, they aren’t paid! And the equipment alone can get pretty spendy.
Do you need to understand roller derby to watch it? Not really, and you’ll pick it up pretty quickly even if you’ve never seen the sport. Here’s a basic intro, if you like:
Basically, there’s two teams of five skaters each, four “blockers” and one “jammer.” They all skate around the track counter-clockwise. The blockers all fight for position in a moving group, and the jammers try to get around them. Every opposing player you lap, you get one point. Blockers try to help their own jammer get past the group, and try to stop/block the other jammer.
Every player has a “roller derby” name, which they pick themselves. So, here we have Hurtrude Stein, Shiver Me Kimbers, Tonya Sharting (the announcers have monikers, too, like Ali Gory and Stalker Channing). And everyone uses their skater name! Even the coaches.
Obviously, there’s an aspect of having an alternate identity, here. Some of these women have day jobs you generally don’t associate with an extremely bone-crunching competition; they might work in health care, engineering, as a radio DJ. Still, as a referee put it in a Netflix short, there’s something appealing about a sport where “we get to hit our friends. On skates.”
(Appealing to some… I’ve never had any serious wish to hit anybody. Except YOU. You know who you are. I’d hit ya.)
And they do get hit! One player described having her fingers broken so many times, she had to start wearing bigger ring sizes. There’s concussions and broken ankles, too. Yet when one of Mikkelson’s friends (who joined a roller derby team at age 40) got hurt, teammates would take her to medical appointments and bring her food. These people are a tight-knit group.
So you can understand why it’s so hard for players who love the game to leave it; that means leaving their teammates. Teammates who might appear at your wedding – on skates! You don’t want to let them down. And that’s where most of the drama in Minnesota Mean comes from.
Several of the players Mikkelson interviews have been with the Minnesota squad for ten years. But all those years means injuries can start to take their toll. And, there’s also the issue of pregnancy, which doesn’t always happen at the most convenient time.
I had a pretty big blind spot, here; I’d never considered how pregnancy can interfere with a sports season, before watching this. Which is kinda crazy, or at least very narrow-minded on my part. When I think of players missing time for pregancy, I think of… the three days MLB gives players when their kids are born. (Which MLB only started doing in 2011!)
It’s also an American blind spot – we’re the only wealthy country in the world that doesn’t legally give parents paid parental leave when a baby is born. Other countries all give mothers at least two months, and others much more. Some guarantee paid leave for fathers, too.
Just once, I’d like to see a baseball player demand serious time off when their kids are born – after all, the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act gives workers in most jobs up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off. But there’s probably a loophole for sports teams, like the ones they used to avoid state labor laws for minor leaguers.
Who knows if they’d take the time off even if they could? Remember, back in September, Christian Vázquez’s wife had a kid – and Rocco Baldelli had to MAKE Vázquez take paternity leave. But he was working for owners who don’t give a damn about their employees; in roller derby, the teams are owned by players.
One of the strongest moments in Minnesota Mean is when a player reveals to her teammates that she’s pregnant. Everyone is happy for the good news. But it means the player having to leave her OTHER family – her teammates. And leaving something you’ve put that much time & love into can be a tough decision.
Sticking with a labor of love, as these players do, is a lot like what independent filmmakers do. Most of the movie was shot in 2017; it only came out this year because, Mikkelson said, “when you don’t have a budget and everybody’s working on weekends and evenings, it takes a few years.” On a low budget, you don’t want somebody crashing into your camera and wrecking that expensive piece of a equipment; they had some pretty close calls.
That’s ultimately what I got most from the film; how both the director and the athletes aren’t doing this for money. It’s about committing to something for the sake of committing to it.
Is Minnesota Mean a perfect movie? No. For one thing, when much of your film consists of athletes taking to the camera, some of them are gonna end up sounding… like athletes. Also, I had to remind myself that these players all grew up thinking of “reality television” as compelling drama. One or two talk like the people on Survivor, which is ugh.
Most of them ARE pretty interesting – I particularly warmed to the player who described herself as naturally antisocial. Mikkelson knows that different viewers will relate to different personalities; she’s done a fine job including all sorts. (Including one of the traveling fans, a player’s husband – he could give shirtless Vikings fans a run for their Yelling Money.)
And who doesn’t enjoy seeing our buildings and lakes in a movie? Especially a movie that features talented people racing around and smashing into each other? Right in time for the holidays, too!
Minnesota Mean is available for rent on the usual platforms. Also, both the Minneapolis and Saint Paul libraries have it! Support your libraries, people!