Written Interview: Floria Sigismondi (The Runaways)

Today’s written interview is with Floria Sigismondi who wrote and directed the recently released music-drama The Runaways. A story overview per IMDB:

The movie chronicles THE RUNAWAYS from 1975–1977; formed by teenage girls living near Hollywood, CA., and heavily manipulated by their manager Kim Fowley as ‘jailbait rock’ (all the girls were 16 or younger when the band recorded their first album). The band ultimately succeeds on their own merits as musicians, becoming the first all-girl rock-band to ever break into the world of arena-filling hard rock acts.

The movie stars Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as the band’s lead singer Cherrie Currie. This interview can be found at WGA.org:

Over the last decade and half, music video auteur Floria Sigismondi has breathed a new sense of twisted grandeur into the weary, post-flannel world of rock and roll. Working with acts like Marilyn Manson, The White Stripes, Interpol, David Bowie, and Christina Aguilera, the Italian-born, Canadian-bred video director has redefined the form with ultra stylized, jarringly surreal images that have helped re-infuse rock with its fundamental sense of immortal defiance by embracing the sexy goodness of apocalypse.

Now, with her feature debut, The Runaways, the writer-director dives deep into a supercharged era of rock and roll, when its power was at a white-hot apex. The film stars Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart and is about the creation and ascent of one of rock’s first all-girl bands, an assemblage of sneering, lingerie-clad jailbait called The Runaways. The group was formed by Svengali/creep Kim Fowley and Joan Jett, who tapped a 15-year-old Cherie Curry to be lead singer after discovering her in a minors-only disco. The group made a global splash with their 1976 hit “Cherry Bomb,” a shamelessly taunting Lolita anthem that turned rock and roll’s fondness for sexual innuendo on its head.

Some interview excerpts:

What brought you to this project, other than the fact that it’s obviously really freakin’ cool?

One of the things I wanted to do with it is to make a coming-of-age story, so I focused on that. It’s based in a world that I knew. It was raw, young girls and the ’70s. It was very appealing to me. Also because of what the girls stood for. They were obviously the first girl rock band so they had some obstacles.

Was it based largely on [Cherie Currie’s 1989 autobiography] Neon Angel?

No, I wouldn’t say that at all, actually. It was very loosely based on Neon Angel. That was the initial source material because that’s all they had, you know? It was loosely based on that because that was just Cherie Currie’s part of the story. Then I interviewed Joan and Kim [Fowley], and I read hundreds of articles. Then a lot of it was also just how I wanted to tell the story.

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I’m curious if, by knowing the power of visuals to advance story and instill emotion, you automatically had a better understanding of what so many screenwriters struggle with — the idea that less is almost always more.

I started that way. My descriptions were heavy. For directors that are writers, their [scripts] are kind of like shot lists in a way. But people don’t want to read all that, so I have to strip that down and just keep that in separate notes for me later. I just kept things very simple. Like you said, having worked with talent and the visual medium, [I know] that I can convey something in many ways, whether it’s with a look or the camera being in a spot where it separates two people at opposite ends of the frame — just the tension you can create by composition.

For more, here’s the link.

The movie’s trailer: