BEFORE: It's finally here, the Big Documentary/Summer Music series, or BSDM for short. Wait, that's no good, that already stands for something. Plus, it already SORT OF started with "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny" for music and "Everything Is Copy" for docs. But either way this is where I'm hoping it all comes together, music and docs and such for the next 14 films, which would normally be two week's time, but my work schedule has slowed things down a bit, so 14 films should now stretch for about 3 1/2 weeks, nothing I can do about that.
Also, this WOULD have normally been the start of a superhero/sci-fi chain, in previous years I've timed those to synch up with San Diego Comic-Con, even though I stopped going out there in 2017. (Since the event went virtual in 2020, and is virtual again this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I would have had to stop in a couple years anyway, it feels a bit like I had a ticket for the Titanic that read, "Get off before the iceberg hits."). Yes, I've got both "Black Widow" and "Hellboy" coming up on the schedule, but it wasn't possible to link to them in time and still have a chain that gets me to the end of the year - at least there wasn't one that I found. But I'm still going to get there - I can link to them just four films after the Big Doc/Summer Music series ends, so in just about a month. Things could change though, my situation could allow me more time, that's what I'm waiting to hear about this week. The question then becomes, if I CAN accelerate my movie-watching schedule, should I? Or should I space out my movies so I don't have a big 2-week gap in September? I'm not sure, but I'll figure it out.
Hannah Marks carries over from "I Used to Go Here".
THE PLOT: A coming-of-age biographical film about the 1970s teenage all-girl rock band The Runaways. The relationship between band members Cherie Currie and Joan Jett is also explored.
AFTER: If Tenacious D was my warm-up/opening act, then the next band to take the stage is The Runaways (in fictional form) followed by Joan Jett (in documentary form). Lots of headliners coming up on the schedule, don't worry, from the BeeGees to Tina Turner. Once I started putting this chain together, though, I felt I HAD to include this one, because it's been on the list so long that if I don't watch it now, I'm afraid it's going to scroll off of Netflix. Yeah, THAT long.
It's weird to think that there hadn't been a successful all-girl band until the mid-1970's. There had been girl GROUPS, like the Supremes, the Ronettes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, but nothing that could be called rock and roll, everything was all very safe, very cookie cutter, and this is all a result of the patriarchy, right? America liked their women to present themselves in a certain way, something that represented the bygone days of the post-war era, where women could vote, sure, but they better not express strong opinions or have weird sexual desires and stuff. One rock promoter, Kim Fowley, who had produced hits for everyone from Cat Stevens to Paul Revere and the Raiders, saw the potential in molding a bunch of horny teen girls into some combination of strong feminists and sex objects at the same time. Just as male rockers were becoming more feminine (David Bowie, Lou Reed), he figured he'd flip the script and get a group of girls to act more masculine on stage. Somebody had to break through that wall, the one that said that "girls don't play electric guitar" - but that's only because nobody would let them.
And this was back when Joan Jett (aka Joan Larkin) was the SHY one, if you can believe that. So the lead singer was Cherie Currie, (it's pronounced in the French way, like "shuh-REE", because if you pronounce it like "cherry" then she sounded like an Indian dessert.). This was perhaps a bit confusing, though, that she sang the thrown-together song "Cherry Bomb", which I guess was a play on her name, only spoken differently. Anyway, in a few weeks Fowley had released his five girl recruits from their idyllic Hollywood lives and thrown them on the road in a van, hoping they'd learn some better chords along the way. So rock and roll, just throw the band into the fire and hope that they bond together and write some more songs while trying to dodge all the stuff that the audiences are throwing at them.
The film might be playing a bit fast and loose with the band's official story here, though - Jackie Fox didn't sign off her rights, so her character doesn't appear here, and there's no mention of original bassist Micki Steele, who was fired from the group, or her replacement, Peggy Foster, who left after one month. Since this is based on a biographical book by Cherie Currie, naturally the POV puts her in a more prominent role, but then again, she was the lead singer and got the most attention at the time, from Japanese photographers in particular. One has to make allowances, I suppose, for a film diverting from reality at times in order to tell a more compelling story.
So there's a focus here on the relationship between Cherie and Joan Jett - of course, you put these girls out on the road together with no supervision, at a time in their lives where they just want to party and screw and figure out all the implications later, stuff like this is bound to happen. Plus it was the 1970's, near the start of the whole gay rights movement, feminism, and they probably weren't even thinking about all this, they just wanted to have a good time. Jett never officially "came out" and was taken to task a bit for this in 2006, but come on, by that time if you couldn't figure out her sexual preference you were probably blind, deaf and dumb. Lita Ford had also written in her book about how she quit the band because everyone else in it was gay, so you figure it out.
The Runaways enjoyed success after traveling to Japan, and putting on shows that the Japanese teens had never seen before or even imagined, and you have to wonder what effect they had in the long run on those Japanese boys - and the girls, too. Cherie's photo layout for the Japanese press caused deep division in the band, though - Jett didn't want the band to just be about sex, she wanted it to be about the music. OK, well, umm, maybe write better songs, then? You can't have it both ways, really, to present a strong sexual image on stage, and then complain when fans are looking at sexy photos of you after the show. But that's the conundrum of feminism right there, I suppose - you put yourself out there sexually and some people in the crowd are going to be turned on, sorry if those aren't the people you were trying to reach.
After that, though, this just follows the typical "Behind the Music" formula for any band - get famous, get drunk, get stoned, and then get dead. Or the band breaks up, which is the other way to go - dying is actually the smarter career move at that point, some might say. Of course we all know that Joan Jett kept at it, re-invented herself several times over and made it to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but I'll deal with all that tomorrow. Lita Ford had a hit in the 1980's with "Kiss Me Deadly" (only, not if you're a girl), Cherie Currie became a chainsaw artist, and manager Kim Fowley was still reportedly prowling Hollywood Boulevard, trying to put another band together, until he died in 2015. See, smart move, he got out before the whole #metoo movement would have taken him out.
But does it go without saying that the best part of this film was Michael Shannon's performance as Kim Fowley? I often find that the best part of a film is Michael Shannon's performance, but I'll say it anyway. And who knew that if you put a bunch of glam make-up on Michael Shannon that he'd start to resemble Eddie Izzard. Just me?
Also starring Dakota Fanning (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Kristen Stewart ("ditto"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Riley Keough (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), Stella Maeve (last seen in "Brooklyn's Finest"), Scout Taylor-Compton (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Johnny Lewis (last seen in "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem"), Alia Shawkat (last seen in "Duck Butter"), Tatum O'Neal (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Brett Cullen (last seen in "Joker"), Jill Andre (last seen in "The Master"), Keir O'Donnell (last seen in "Gifted"), Brendan Sexton III (last seen in "Everybody's Fine"), Peggy Stewart, Robert Romanus, Nick Eversman (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Lisa Long (last seen in "What Women Want"), Time Winters, Masami Kosaka (also last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Masayuki Yonezawa.
RATING: 4 out of 10 seedy hotels
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