The Woes of Roller Skaters was apparently inspired by a 1905 or 1906 film by Pathé Frères, featuring a character very similar to the exaggeratedly obese man in this film.
[3] Méliès appears in the film as the passerby attacked by "Apaches" at the end.
[3] The film is one of several Méliès works in which spectators watching movement begin unintentionally to imitate it: in this case, a cancan and then a roller skating act.
[2] Like Méliès's 1905 comedy The Scheming Gambler's Paradise, the film parodies the police by showing them making their own comical use of confiscated objects.
)[1] It was registered for American copyright at the Library of Congress on 21 July 1908.