I AM OLD: The fact that there is a Runaways movie (authorized, with Joan Jett as executive producer) has been kicking around in my brain for a while now, but I just read this very morning that Dakota Fanning is playing Cherie Currie. Ick. I do not want to see this playing this. So I'm taking myself -- erstwhile and occasionally nostalgic fan of '70s and '80s hard rock -- out of the movie's target audience.
Incidentally, I take issue with the casting of the band. By using fresh-faced Kristen Stewart, Fanning, and Scout Taylor-Compton as Jett, Currie, and Lita Ford, they're missing the thoroughly discomforting truth at the heart of the Runaways. This was a band that actually looked and seemed like runaways* -- reckless, feral, ragged, dead-eyed, more Larry Clark than Malcolm McLaren. I just hope the movie won't gloss over the seediness of the whole enterprise, not just the standard music-industry stuff, but the particular and peculiar image this band's management built.
*Though, obviously, they weren't -- for example, I just read on Wikipedia that Jackie Fox, the bassist in the lineup for the first couple of albums, was a great student who ultimately graduated from Harvard Law.
And to be fair, Dakota Fanning is now almost 16 and a high schooler, the same age as Currie when she joined the Runaways in 1975.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying she's the wrong age. I'm saying that it's creepy.
ReplyDeleteIsaac -- the original Runaways were creepy...They were all underage and dressed like skanks...
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's my point -- I would rather not see Dakota Fanning in that role. Either Dakota Fanning will be tarted up like the Runaways, a band that now seems to have been conceived for and marketed to predators, or they won't get the band exactly right.
ReplyDeletehere's an article with clips imbedded. i would not have guessed it was dakota fanning...
ReplyDeleteTaylor Momsen=Cherie Currie. I actually thought it was her in the picture for a second. She's already trying to be a rock chick to shed her Gossip Girl image.
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