Floria Sigismondi ('The Runaways', 'Postmortem Bliss')

By Scott W. Perry

In the mid 1990s, director Floria Sigismondi exploded onto the music video scene with visually striking, intense visuals that took the art form to a high. Probably best known for Marilyn Manson’s iconic music video "The Beautiful People," Sigismondi has made arrestingly striking videos with the best artists in the field, including David Bowie, The White Stripes, Christina Aguilera, and The Black Eyed Peas.

Her extensive background in this field led Sigismondi to helm her first feature film, a biopic/coming of age film The Runaways, about the title band of teenage girls who in 1975 formed a group and become a rock sensation before the pressures of being famous so young led to the band’s breakup...

The film beautifully captures the mid 1970s music scene as well as the Runaways quick success overseas in Japan, but the main focus is on the budding friendship and breakup of lead singer Cherrie Curie (Dakota Fanning) and Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart).

With The Runaways due for limited release on March 19th 2010, and in wider release on April 9th 2010, Sigismondi took time to speak to a group of reporters including myself to discuss the many challenges of making the film.

The 45-year-old Sigismondi is tired from the publicity tours on the film on this cold New York morning, but is all smiles as she looks back on the film with great aplomb. She is asked on how she was approached with the film. “My manager Brian Young gave me Cherrie (Curie)’s memoir,” recalls Sigismondi. “I was interested so I met with Art and John Linson, the producers. They had rights to most of the girls and I just went in saying ‘I don’t want to do a biopic. I want to do a coming of age story.’ We were on the same mindset right away and they asked me to write. I had never written before so they had a lot of trust.”

Writing the screenplay was challenging, especially in trying to replicate the lives of real people, but Sigismondi knew from which point of the view the story was best told from. She says, “It’s challenging because you have living people and then you’ve got to find the story. Everyone has their own versions of how things happened. I interviewed everybody and narrowed the story down to Cherrie and Joan (Jett) and how the band in this time were affected and also how it was to be 15, 16, and set up in the rock n roll world to be so young. We didn’t have Lita (Ford)’s full rights and we wanted to keep the story to the two of them and wanted to stay true to that. It was also loosely based on Cherrie. Her book Neon Angel was more about her than just The Runaways so I had to get Joan signed and Kim signed to be the other main characters. I got my stories from interviewing them. Then it was also how to tell the story in making a movie and not a documentary. How can I talk about this character but not take five long scenes to do that? I had to create scenes that would illustrate getting their identity and I would create scenes that symbolized that.” Of course, Sigismondi had her own recollections of the first time she heard The Runaways. “I worked at a club called The Big Bop in Toronto. I was in art college at the time and they played it at night, like every night (laughs). I definitely knew Cherry Bomb and that’s how I was introduced to the band. This was the mid 1980s.”

One person in particular Sigismondi had an interesting conversation with was the real Kim Fowley, the band’s manager and quasi father figure, played with a manic ferocity by Michael Shannon in the film. “I talked to him once but it was very long, I think around four to five hours. It was the most interesting meeting. The quote at the epilogue about how he is now was because I saw him on Melrose walking with bright green hair and a cane. He’s 70 now and he couldn’t stick more out than he does. He had a soundtrack to our meeting. He had it all prepared. He came with stacks of books and he would throw them down, explaining to me how he would influence these people. He’s really a trip.”

Casting Joan was essential and after meeting Kristen Stewart, Sigismondi felt that she had found her Joan Jett. “After meeting Joan, she has this tough but vulnerable quality. There’s a shyness to her and when I met Kristen, that’s what I saw. She could play, she could sing, and she really wanted to do it, so all of those combinations really worked.”

Further proof of how perfect Kristen was in the role of Joan came when Jett herself mistook Kristen’s singing for her own before a single foot of film was shot. “In pre-production I remember we sent Joan a tape of the very first time Kristen was singing,” Sigismondi recalls fondly. “Joan said to me ‘You have to turn me down, I can’t hear Kristen singing.’ I told her, ‘No, that’s Kristen!’ She couldn’t believe it. Joan really thought she was hearing herself singing. Kristen really embodied Joan and picked up everything well. She picked up Joan’s low guitar stance and the way she played. Kristen just nailed it. I think it was fun for her. As far as the cast, I knew when I saw them play together I knew the cast was perfect. She concludes with confidence, stating “You have to think your cast is perfect as a director because if you think otherwise, you haven’t done your job.”

When asked about Kristen’s resemblance to another Runaways member, Cherrie Curie, Sigismondi responded with conviction, “Well you know, once I met Kristen, she was more Joan. With the physical stuff, I thought after the hair and make up Kristen came across as Joan. I can kind of see it but knowing Kristen, she fits more into Joan.”

With the cast in place, Floria wanted them to look as authentic as their real life counterparts, and put the cast to extensive work. “All the girls could play their instruments and I just put them through a boot camp of guitar and drum lessons.” The two stars, particularly Fanning, had additional responsibilities. “Kristen and Dakota were fun. I had more time with Dakota. I put her in front of a live band so she could hear what it would feel like to be competing with the noises of the amps and drums. As an actor you can be subtle but as a musician on stage you have to compete with all these noises, especially in a rock n roll setting. I put her with my husband’s band in my house and we did that about three times. She was taking that all in and then we went to the studio because I wanted them to really sing the songs. I had Joan do the instrumentation and then they came in. I thought it was great for them to experience what it was like to be in the studio and record all of that. Then I had all the girls rehearse like a real band because I wanted their fingers in the right places for their performance and it was real important for me because people had a hard time believing the real girls could actually play these instruments and I wanted them to look like they were the real deal.”

With the cast ready and shooting about to begin, Sigismondi had a very specific look she wanted to accomplish the film, one she does well in truly capturing the time. She discussed this rigorously with her cinematographer Benoit Debie. “I took more of a naturalistic approach. I wanted it very real and raw. I wanted you to be able smell the smoke and smell the beer in the clubs, just the reality of it. Everything was really smoky so I smoked up the atmosphere and I really wanted to shoot on Super 16mm film. It was very important to me because that gave it some grit and texture. It sort of delved into that. I designed the film so it had a visual arc. It starts very colorful and Californian and by the time they get back in Japan, it starts to look faded because you can see the wear and tear of that 13 month period.”

Being with the project through many inceptions made Sigismondi appreciate something about the band that she saw upon seeing the film cut for the first time, as she states “I kind of knew it beforehand but I didn’t really realize how on their own they were. You start to realize they were that age, especially when you see Dakota in there because she’s really that age, and you can just see how there was no parental guidance and they were looing at Kim (Fowley) as a father figure and he can never be a father figure. Wrong guy for that.”

When asked about the relationship now between Fowley, Jett, and Currie, Sigismondi has her own feelings on what the film as a whole has meant for them. “Looking back for all of them, it really was a special time. I don’t know if they knew how special it was until now.”

Sigismondi’s final question is what she hopes fans of Kristen and Dakota, and fans that age in general, will get out of The Runways and her own thoughts on them, she answers “They were putting their necks out. They were pioneers at the time. They were doing things that young girls weren’t supposed to do. They were playing aggressive rock n roll and it hasn’t changed much. There aren’t many girl rock n roll bands so I hope this will get them inspired to play more music.”

With The Runaways finally being released, Sigismondi closed with her next endeavor with great enthusiasm.

“I have some things coming up but I need to sleep first.”

Look for The Runaways in limited release, from Apparition Films, on March 19th and in wide release on April 9th. Check out Sigismondi's personal website and music videos at www.floriasigismondi.com.

(Special thanks to Betsy Rudnick and Brian Clark at Falco Ink)