Feminist Music Geek

We are the band and they're making a movie about us; image courtesy of toolegittoquit.tumblr.com

The Runaways biopic trailer is up on the Interwebz. I know about it thanks to Courtney, who posted this article to our friend Annie’s Facebook page. I’ve been at attention for any news about it for months, so I just had to rush out and write a post. What do we all think?

Admittedly, it looks like a standard rock biopic trailer that actually doesn’t reveal too much about the band. We know from the trailer that the girls were in a band, the rock industry in the 1970s was dominated by men, and The Runaways had a male manager who wore glam eye make-up (Kim Fowley, played by Michael Shannon who was excellent in Revolutionary Road).

While we see that Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) may have gone through some inner turmoil, we don’t see any acting scenes from the girls. In fact, we don’t hear the actresses deliver any lines of dialogue and I’m not sure if they’re actually playing (though I hope they are and speculate that Dakota Fanning did her own singing as Cherie Currie). The only spoken words we hear are all from adult men. So that’s a bummer.  

I’m also curious as to how the movie will navigate the band’s myriad of replacement bassists and how this may be informed by Jackie Fox and Joan Jett’s legal disagreements.

Nonetheless, I’m fucking stoked. Can’t wait to see these girls. Looking forward to Alia Shawkat, who makes an appearance as one of the band’s bass players. Also looking out for Scout-Taylor Compton, who plays Lita Ford and played Laurie Strode in the Rob Zombie Halloween remakes (proud aside: the second installment of the series featured a dear friend of mine). So I hope these ladies (including Kristen, Dakota, and Floria) rock that shit.