 It’s
10 p.m., and Rollerball director JOHN MCTIERNAN, checking
in from Alberta, Canada, sounds very tired. Unfortunately, his day
is just beginning. “I’m about to start 14 hours in the dark,” he says
wearily, prepping to shoot a chase scene using infrared light and
special lenses. “We’ve got the whole crew wandering around with night-vision
glasses. I don’t think anyone’s ever done anything like this.” McTiernan
(The Thomas Crown Affair) and his cast, which includes CHRIS
KLEIN, REBECCA ROMIJN-STAMOS, LL COOL J, and JEAN
RENO, have been keeping vampirish hours for the past couple of
weeks, shooting this sci-fi action-drama about a new sport—a floor
hockey–football hybrid played on motorcycles and skates—that becomes
increasingly popular as its violence escalates. Though it’s not a
straight remake of the 1975 JAMES CAAN starrer of the same
name (which itself was adapted from the William Harrison story Rollerball
Murders), this version shares the original’s moralistic themes.
“What if you found out that ratings would go up if you got blood on
the track, and so they did that?” McTiernan asks. “People watch car
racing hoping for a wreck, so what happens when a promoter says, ‘We’ll
have more wrecks’ ?”
 Reno
(Ronin) plays a former KGB agent and team owner who pushes
the limits of the game. “He can be a killer,” Reno says. “He manipulates
the players and the violence of the game.” Filming those game sequences
required some extra preparation from the cast: Romijn-Stamos (X-Men)
learned to ride a motorcycle, and Klein (American Pie), who
stars as an athlete who finds instant fame on the rollerball track
and then can’t escape once the sport becomes life-threatening, had
to learn to skate—and skate well. “Being six feet tall and almost
200 pounds, I wasn’t meant to be on wheels,” says Klein, who spent
six weeks training with members of Canada’s Olympic speed-skating
team. “I decided that in order for me to be actively involved, I
had to be a really good skater,” he says, adding, “I’ve definitely
taken my fair share of falls. I’ve got some pretty good bumps and
bruises. It was humbling.”
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