Skatetown, U.S.A.

Skatetown, U.S.A. (1979)

The Rock and Roller Disco Movie of the Year!

A street-gang leader challenges a handsome young skater in a championship contest at the local roller-disco rink.

Date of release
1979-10-01
TMDB
5.2 / 10 (20)
Runtime
1h 38m
Genres
Comedy
Director
William A. Levey

Casting

Interesting facts

Skatetown, U.S.A. is a 1979 American comedy musical film produced to capitalize on the short-lived fad of roller disco. Directed by William A. Levey, the film features many television stars from the 1960s and 1970s, among them Scott Baio, Flip Wilson, Maureen McCormick, Ron Palillo and Ruth Buzzi. Patrick Swayze's leading role as the skater "Ace" was his first movie performance. Also in the cast are Sydney Lassick, Billy Barty and Playboy centerfold model Dorothy Stratten.

Production notes

The setting is based on Flipper's Roller Boogie Palace, a disco roller rink which had opened in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard earlier in 1979 and was fleetingly a very popular celebrity hangout. The film includes many short, broadly comedic and slapstick subplots set between long roller skating sequences and musical performances.

Filming was done mostly at the Hollywood Palladium, built in 1940. Its sprawling blond hardwood dance floor, chandeliers and soap bubbles blown by a machine from the Lawrence Welk Show can be seen in sundry scenes. Some exteriors were shot on Santa Monica Pier and at nearby Venice Beach. Patrick Swayze, who had roller skated competitively as a teenager and was a trained dancer, did his own skating and stunts in the film.

Twenty-nine years after filming, Maureen McCormick recalled that there was a lot of cocaine being done on the set. McCormick wrote that she fell back into severe cocaine addiction during production, often showing up late for shooting or not coming to work at all.

I have blocked that movie from my memory, it was so bad...That was that whole time where Xanadu and Roller Boogie and all that crap was coming out. That was one of those things where they sent me the script and I said 'no', but they just kept calling and offering more money! I mean, they offered me a lot of money. And finally I said 'Well, hell. What is it? Two weeks' work? Whatever. Okay. Fine'.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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