QUEENS OF NOISE
Rock goddess Joan Jett and director Floria Sigismondi on the story of the all-girl L.A. band the Runaways, depicted on screen by some of Hollywood’s hottest properties
TEENAGE KICKS: The Runaways
“Put your pussy to the wood! Fuck your guitar!” Sage advice from Joan Jett to Kristen Stewart, on the set of The Runaways, the sordid story of the mid-’70s all-girl rock band. The film is part rock biopic, part coming of age story, part buddy movie, revolving around the friendship between Jett, depicted by the 20-year-old Twilight actress, and Runaways singer Cherie Currie.
That role is played by former child star Dakota Fanning, now 15, the same age Currie was when Jett and infamous band manager Kim Fowley discovered her at Rodney’s English Disco on the Sunset Strip in 1975. Director and screenwriter Floria Sigismondi says that Fanning’s tender age only heightens the impact of the formative experiences we see her engaging in, from sex with boys and girls to drugs and alcohol to getting her first period—the film’s opening shot is a drop of menstrual blood hitting the hot Hollywood pavement, as Currie and her twin sister Marie surreptitiously change into trashy glam rock eveningwear.
“When you’re watching the character delve into things that are a little bit darker, you really feel for her because you’ve watched [Fanning] grow up,” says Sigismondi.
Throughout the shoot, both Currie and Jett visited the set regularly to advise the actors, who had never heard of the band prior to this project.
“I find Stewart to be hard-working and authentic,” says Jett. “She genuinely wanted to get it right and I admired her dedication, cutting all her hair off. I think that helps to embody the character, just to swing that shag around. It makes a difference.”
Stewart already knew how to play guitar, but Jett gave her a lesson in playing bar chords the way she does, and gathered Runaways audio bootlegs and film footage, which Stewart used to mimic Jett’s voice and mannerisms. But although the band released four albums and toured extensively between 1975 and 1978, the only legit footage of the band comes from their blowout 1977 shows in Japan, where the Runaways were superstars. A lack of documentation is part of the reason the band remains obscure, the other perhaps being their reputation as a pre-fab act, with Fowley as their Svengali. But for better or worse, the young girls wrote most of their own material, and although they were amateur players at the outset, they quickly developed into heavy duty rock chicks.
“Maybe the film will do what we couldn’t do back then,” says Jett, “getting the story out there, getting the music out there.”
BANDING TOGETHER: Jett and Sigismondi
NEON ANGELS
The Runaways is the debut feature film for the Italian-born, Hamilton, Ontario-raised Sigismondi, who came to fame as a music video director—she’s worked with everyone from David Bowie to the White Stripes to Christina Aguilera. Her script is loosely based on Currie’s book Neon Angels, which was initially a somewhat sanitized autobiography, later expanded to include such ribald stories as Fowley’s sex-ed lesson, wherein he had intercourse with a woman in front of the girls to “teach you dogs how to fuck”—in the film, Fowley (played with gusto by Michael Shannon) screws a woman while he’s on the phone with Jett. Similarly, the rape of Currie by her sister’s boyfriend was reduced to suggestive groping on celluloid, not out of consideration for Fanning, but because Sigismondi felt the character shouldn’t lose her innocence so early in the film. But there’s always poetic licence.
“I think the film definitely gives you a sense of what it was like being in a band, what it was like in the ’70s, this sort of crazy, sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle,” says Jett, acknowledging that certain “embellishments and timeline shifts” were necessary for the story arc. We never see Jett as the singer for the Runaways, a role she played for nearly two years after Currie quit, nor do we see the band’s Spinal Tap-esque succession of bassists. The bassist in the film is a fictive composite, so written to prevent the band’s best known bassist, Jackie Fox (now a lawyer), from suing. Guitarist Lita Ford plays a minimal role too, because the real Ford would have nothing to do with the project.
FREAKY FATHER FIGURE
Conversely, the eccentric, flamboyant Sunset Strip scenester, record producer and band manager Kim Fowley cooperated fully during the film’s production and praised Shannon’s performance, describing the actor’s portrayal as “a cross between Citizen Kane and a vampire from outer space,” and “Darth Vader as a used car salesman.”
“It doesn’t matter how hard you hit him, he rolls with the punches,” says Sigismondi. “I wanted to create the character with humour, but there’s a little bit of darkness to him, and he presents a challenge to the girls, especially to Cherie.”
Currie has described Fowley as cruel and crooked, a domineering drill sergeant who, on some occasions, cheated the band out of their earnings. This is reflected in scenes where Shannon mercilessly berates the band, recruits random boys to throw dog shit at the girls as they rehearse (to steel them up for tough audiences) and pockets the cash made at an early concert. But he’s also shown scoring the band a major record deal, and co-writing their enduring sleaze-rock anthem, “Cherry Bomb.” Sigismondi theorizes that Currie initially viewed him as an authority figure that would fill the void left by her own family—her mother moved away to Indonesia, her father was a deadbeat drunk.
“She took things very differently that were coming out of his mouth than Joan did,” says Sigismondi. “Joan looked up to him as a friend, so his hard language would affect her in a much lighter way than it would Cherie. Cherie was extremely affected, probably looking at him like a father figure, which he couldn’t be.”
“I had a very close relationship with him,” says Jett. “He taught me how to write songs, we hung out a lot and plotted to take over the world together.”
“But,” she concedes, “if there has to be a villain here, he is the one.”
BAD REPUTATIONS
And Fowley is still at it, running a reality TV project called Black Room Doom, wherein batches of six girls are thrown together as a rock band for a day, playing and recording as much as they can before breaking up by dinnertime.
Jett is still at it too, touring to this day with her band, the Blackhearts. In the early ’80s, she became the first woman to launch her own record label, Blackhearts Records, releasing such singles as cougar anthem “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll,” lesbian anthem “Crimson and Clover” and overall ode to bad girls, “Bad Reputation.”
Lita Ford also did her turn as a rock goddess, albeit briefly, while Currie has kept a lower profile. Like drummer Sandy West, who died of cancer in 2006, Currie was beset with drug problems, but eventually pulled herself from the precipice of a fatal freebase cocaine addiction. Still one for dangerous hobbies, Currie is currently a chainsaw artist.
“I guess you have to chalk some of it up to opportunity and luck,” says Jett, humbly addressing her perseverance as a professional rocker. “But it’s also hard work. Some of the other girls, I don’t know exactly what they did afterwards but I know that they weren’t necessarily in bands out there trying to make it happen.
“I don’t know that you can have it all,” she adds, noting that some of her former bandmates, Currie included, gave up music to “have a life,” meaning marriage and kids. “This life is really tough. You’re always on the road and it can be lonely but it’s what I’ve always known, I knew this was what I was gonna do, so I’m fine with it.”
She’s already a rock legend and lesbian icon, but Jett hopes this film will reach an audience unfamiliar with her corner of music history, and provide inspiration with a tale of typical teenagers who became pioneers.
“It introduces the story to a whole new generation of kids who might really be interested in starting a band,” says Jett. “If they take the message to follow your dream no matter what it is, whether it’s music or science, I think the job has been done.”
THE RUNAWAYS OPENS THIS FRIDAY, MARCH 19
Montreal Mirror, Lorraine Carpenter
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