James Caan's Skating Training Rollerball

James Caan was thirty-four and had, by his own account, never been on roller skates. The shoot required him to skate, motorcycle-tow, and execute hand-to-hand contact stunts at thirty miles per hour for four months in Munich. The boot camp that preceded the shoot is one of the most-extensive training-for-role programs in mid-1970s Hollywood production.

Four months in California, seven days a week

The Houston-team cast — Caan, John Beck, the supporting skaters — attended a rollerball boot camp at a flat practice rink in California while construction was underway on the banked track in Munich. The training schedule, by the accounts of the cast members later, was seven days a week. The stunt coordinator was Max Kleven. The training covered:

• Skating fundamentals: balance, edge control, falling without injury
• Motorcycle work: tow techniques with the skater clipped to a moving bike, and dismounting at speed
• Contact stunts: the three Houston methods — shield-and-pads work, drag-the-biker-down, the swoop
• Game rules: how the ball moves, the standard penalties, the legal contact zones

Beck was the only one of the cast principals who could skate before the boot camp; he had been a competitive roller skater as a teenager.

"James Caan attended a Rollerball boot camp in California for four months with the whole supporting cast, learning to skate seven days a week, while construction was underway at Munich's Olympic basketball arena." — Remind Magazine, Rollerball turns 50 (2025)

"I was really persuaded to get involved by the jock in me." — James Caan, Yahoo / Telegraph (2022)

The Bronx kid who became a cowboy

Caan's willingness to do the physical work came out of his pre-existing athletic life. The Bronx-born actor had, by the mid-1970s, transitioned into the unlikely identity of professional rodeo cowboy. He competed seriously in team roping events on the professional rodeo circuit through the 1970s. The fearlessness Norman Jewison cited in casting Caan was not theatrical confidence but actual physical risk-tolerance built in rodeo arenas.

"I don't think he'd ever roller-skated in his life, but he was fearless. I think he later got into rodeos, which was hilarious since he was a kid from the Bronx. But he was an intense guy." — Norman Jewison, Den of Geek (2022)

The Munich track was different

The California training track was flat. The actual Munich track was a banked oval with walls rising to thirteen feet at the curves. The cast had spent four months learning skating physics that did not apply to the production track.

"When they came to Munich, the track was banked with contours 13 feet high, not flat like the one they'd trained on. We'd just fall downhill." — James Caan, Yahoo / Telegraph (2022)

The cast had to re-learn balance and timing in the gravity well of the banked track. The Munich shoot opened with two or three weeks of on-track adjustments before principal photography of the arena sequences could begin.

Injuries through the shoot

Injuries were extensive. The principal documented cases:

• One stunt performer was hospitalized mid-shoot for an injury sustained during a motorcycle-and-skater collision sequence.
• A second person was laid up for six months after an injury during the California training boot camp, before the production even moved to Munich.
• Caan himself came out of the shoot with shoulder and rib injuries. He said later he was "luckier than most." (yahoo/telegraph)

Jewison was "terrified that I was going to kill somebody," and the stunt-coordination apparatus he assembled around the production was, for its period, unusually large. The decision to give individual screen credit to stunt performers — a first for a major Hollywood production — was driven partly by the danger of the work the stunt team was being asked to perform.

"When I got into the arena and started shooting, I was just terrified that I was going to kill somebody." — Norman Jewison, Yahoo / Telegraph (2022)

What Caan did himself and what stunt performers did

Caan performed roughly two-thirds of his own skating and physical-contact stunts. The remaining one-third — the highest-risk motorcycle-collision sequences and the most-dangerous fall sequences — were handled by stunt performers. Roy Scammell, one of the lead stunt performers, doubled Caan for several of the highest-risk Tokyo and MSG sequences.

"Naturally, I don't want to die, but take that out of it and it's a terrific game." — Roy Scammell, on the production's danger, Yahoo / Telegraph (2022)

What Caan thought of the picture later

Caan rated the film 8/10 in a 1977 interview and said he "couldn't do much with the character" — the character of Jonathan E. is, by Caan's own assessment, "a man whose emotions had basically been taken away from him," which is a particular acting problem for a performer whose strongest mode was the emotionally exposed-from-the-body-up register he had used in Brian's Song and The Godfather. The training, by contrast, he was uncomplicated about.

"I was luckier than most." — James Caan, Yahoo / Telegraph (2022)

The luck held. Caan went on to A Bridge Too Far, Comes a Horseman, Thief, and decades of further work. The shoulder and rib injuries from the Munich shoot did not end his career.