Say a few words about him. What was his story? Is he someone you worked with for a long time?
Yeah, I’ve worked with Jim for a number of years, you know, on documentary-style projects. And I have to say that this was a very exciting project for him. You know, it was outside of his area of comfort… but became his comfort area. He actually had worked on stuff about Bigfoot. So yeah, he’s been all over the place, but yeah.
The roller derby players are easier to find than Bigfoot is.
Exactly. He was an amazing guy. And actually, he did get to see some final cuts of the film, prior to his passing. He passed in the summer of 2020, not from COVID. However, he just, he had cancer. So yeah, but he did see, I would say, on its way to a final cut of the film.
I’m really pleased that he got to see that. And when we had our world premiere last year, we ended up having a gathering of all his colleagues, which was, you know, great, because during COVID, we couldn’t, we couldn’t do funerals. And so this was an opportunity to celebrate him and celebrate the last film he shot.
Anything else about the film you want to say about the film?
I just hope that people watch it and, you know, find themselves in there somewhere. I will say that you don’t have to be an athlete to enjoy this film. And, you know, I, it’ll be interesting to see which characters come to the surface as the ones that people relate to, because at screenings, it’s been a real mix.
It’s like, some people are like, I totally get Brickyard or I totally get Smokahontas or Oh my God, Shiver Me Kimbers. That’s me. You know, so it’s, it’s fun to see who, who are you? It’s, it’s like Harry Potter, but for derby.
Have you had some of the people from the film with you at the screenings?
Yes. Yes. And in particular at the world premiere, everybody was there except Brickyard because she was living in another state and her baby was due that day. So we figured we wouldn’t make her travel.
It’s probably a good excuse, yeah.
Yeah, that’s legit. But actually, we had a lot of fun. We had players at every screening derby players from local teams.
You can now stream Dawn Mikkelson’s Minnesota Mean documentary on various platforms here.
