MARCH 26, 2010 6:19PM
The Non-Horror Post: ChillerPop saw "The Runaways"
(Note: Every once in a while I'll do the Non-Horror Post, where I'll spill forth the contents of my brain. Like a chainsaw to the skull from Leathehead - my thoughts on things outside the genre)
I'm wondering what the non-rock fans think of "The Runaways." It wouldn't surprise me if the opinion that it's just an extended VH1 Behind the Music episode was pretty widespread. I would certainly think that if I wasn't an obsessive rock geek.
And I say 'rock geek' because it was a late teen/early twenties love of all things alterna-rock that helped me backtrack to The Runaways. Frenzied reading on '70s punk, a growing fascination with Redd Kross, Nirvana's conquest of the airwaves, and the capture of my imagination by the riot grrl scene (and beyond) all pointed back to .... The Runaways.
And 'riot grrl' - was I wrong about the term's origins? I thought it was the line from The Runaways' single "Cherry Bomb" - "Hello world/I'm your riot girl" is really "Hello world/I'm your wild girl"?
So that's why one scene in the movie, for me, was very resonant, and as of yet I haven't come across any review that latched on to it. As Cherie Currie is recovering in a Japanese hospital following a drug overdose, Joan Jett visits her and tells her about an all-girl band in Korea, lamenting that they're terrible, but "still, it's kinda cool." All-girl bands in their wake? Hmm. Not sexy frontswomen and golden voiced singers, hippie high priestesses and exotic oracles and angry striking anomalies. Ones who played and drummed hard rock. "You had to play to count," Courtney Love used to state in interviews when discussing her female rock idols.
I don't necessarily buy the idea that The Runaways were so hugely influential - but what do I know?
In his OS blog, Scott Mendelson rightly called out Michael Shannon's theft of the film in his turn as glam-sleazeball impressario Kim Fowley. A chokered Frankenstein freak in eyeshadow, gleefully exploiting jailbait. A west coast Malcolm McClaren (well known for his mis-stewardship of the Sex Pistols, you can read about McClaren's more disturbing exploitation of 16 year old Anabella Lwin, singer for Bow Wow Wow, in Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 by Simon Reynolds).
Faning and Stewart did just fine in the roles, and Stewart easily captured Joan Jett's unimpeachable rock and roll cool, which was a huge part of my interest in this film. Joan Jett is decidedly awesome. But I have to say, I was pretty shocked that Lita Ford wasn't included in the "where are they now" updates on the band members, at the end of the film. I never loved Lita Ford's music, and the snob in me probably sees it as some kind of culture war between heavy metal and punk. But Ford was a high-profile rocker in the 80's, and a very sexy and strong performer, this time nurtured by Sharon Osbourne which I imagine has to be better than being slapped around by Kim Fowley. Let us now sing the St. Lita Ford Blues!
I looked this up for you on "wikipedia" (they're NEVER wrong!) :-p
"Writing in Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital, Mark Andersen reports that early Bratmobile member Jen Smith (later of Rastro! and The Quails), reacted to the violence by prophetically writing in a letter to Allison Wolfe: "This summer's going to be a girl riot." Other reports say she wrote, "We need to start a girl riot." Soon afterwards, Wolfe and Molly Neuman collaborated with Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail to create a new zine and called it Riot Grrrl, combining the "riot" with an oft-used phrase that first appeared in Vail's fanzine Jigsaw "Revolution Grrrl Style Now". Riot grrrls took a growling double or triple r, placing it in the word girl, as a way to take back the derogatory use of the term."
It makes sense that it took from the fanzine.
"Writing in Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital, Mark Andersen reports that early Bratmobile member Jen Smith (later of Rastro! and The Quails), reacted to the violence by prophetically writing in a letter to Allison Wolfe: "This summer's going to be a girl riot." Other reports say she wrote, "We need to start a girl riot." Soon afterwards, Wolfe and Molly Neuman collaborated with Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail to create a new zine and called it Riot Grrrl, combining the "riot" with an oft-used phrase that first appeared in Vail's fanzine Jigsaw "Revolution Grrrl Style Now". Riot grrrls took a growling double or triple r, placing it in the word girl, as a way to take back the derogatory use of the term."
It makes sense that it took from the fanzine.
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