Why ‘Backspot’ Director D.W. Waterson Crafted the Queer Cheer Drama Like a ‘Gritty Football Movie’ (EXCLUSIVE CLIP)

Ellise Shafer For years, D.W. Waterson’s go-to performance look for their DJ sets was a purple cheerleading uniform. “For some reason, it just really gets the audience going,” Waterson tells Variety.

“Cheerleaders are hype men — they’re the best people to get people excited.” Waterson didn’t know too much about cheer itself, but they found that wearing the outfit — combined with growing up in a sports-heavy household — made them want to dive deeper into the world of cheer. “There’s a sense of cheerleaders being misrepresented that made me really curious,” Waterson says. After creating and directing the award-winning web series “That’s My DJ,” Waterson had been searching for the right story for their feature-length debut — and found that there was a rather large gap in the oeuvre of films about cheerleading.

“Seeing what’s expected from these young girls when you’re throwing bodies super high in the air and catching them — and the concussion rate for cheerleading is one of the highest of all sports, like above football — so I’m like, ‘Why aren’t we talking about this?'” Waterson says. “I’ve seen so many gritty male sports films in my life, but where are the gritty female sport films or the gritty queer sports films?” “Backspot,” premiering Sept. 8 in Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery program, happens to be both.

The drama follows Riley, a driven cheerleader (“Reservation Dogs” star Devery Jacobs), who struggles to handle the pressure when she and her girlfriend, Amanda (newcomer Kudakwashe Rutendo), are both selected for an elite cheer squad. Evan Rachel Wood features as their intensely critical coach, Eileen. Jacobs is also a producer on the project, and Elliot Page executive produces through his Page Boy