''Norman Jewison and I have this joke that I'm actually his illegitimate son and I'm trying to get his attention,'' says John McTiernan, before exploding into laughter. Well, McTiernan's no doubt got it, thanks to his choosing to helm back to back remakes of Jewison's ''The Thomas Crown Affair'' and, now, ''Rollerball.''
Klein stars as an aimless American kid named Jonathan Cross who comes into his own racing around the brutal rink of a futuristic extreme sport where violence translates into TV ratings for the league's corporate overlords. Naturally, off the track he also learns a thing or two from his badass, wheelie-popping love interest (Romijn-Stamos).
Midway through shooting, Romijn-Stamos (''The X-Men'') jokes that she still has no clue what the fast moving game -- which combines elements of in-line skating, motocross, and Roller Derby -- is all about. But her director is slightly better at bluffing. ''We had to come up with a set [of rules],'' says McTiernan, ''although I'm not sure you'll know all the rules from watching it. But it doesn't matter… you just need to know enough so you can tell when someone's succeeding and when they're failing.'' Kinda like the XFL, then?
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