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Interview: Floria Sigismondi
Art star Floria Sigismondi takes on icon JOAN JETT's story
from: nowtoronto.com
by Susan G. Cole
When I ask Floria Sigismondi to show me the T-shirt she's hiding under the jacket of her relatively straight-arrow black pantsuit, she reveals a vintage Iggy Pop T from his 1977 tour.
"Did you rip it yourself?" I ask, referring to the gaping hole at the top.
"This is real wear and tear," she says proudly. "I have three T-shirts like this that I have to handle with complete care."
It's an outfit that perfectly suits Sigismondi's moment. The shirt represents the OCA (now OCAD) grad's arty pedigree and huge cred as director of music videos for everyone from David Bowie to Christina Aguilera, some of them pretty disturbing. The pantsuit fits the image of serious director of first feature The RUNAWAYS, starring box office gold Kristen Stewart as iconic rocker JOAN JETT and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie, the lead singer in Jett's first band.
Sigismondi sees the film as a coming-of-age story as much as a story of girls gone bad in rock and roll.
"They grow into this rock world where they get in over their heads," she says in a Park Hyatt hotel room. "I just love the fact that they were so young, doing things that girls weren't supposed to do, and the energy of what it's like to be without parental...anything."
She was lucky to get both Fanning and Stewart, who'd met on the set of New Moon and had no idea that Stewart was about to become a juggernaut.
"The day Twilight came out, we closed her contract. I'd already wanted to work with her, but by the time it came out it was a different beast.
"Dakota had just turned 15 (Currie's precise age in the film), so she was perfect."
Not surprisingly, given Sigismondi's art background, the film looks terrific, making the most of the 70s aesthetic and especially the fact that so much of the band's look was DIY. It's not as if you could just go to a goth store in those days.
"I love that time period," Sigismondi says enthusiastically. "It's very personal and tactile. If you wanted to look some way, you had to make it. I remember that Ð being punk or goth or arty. I wore big dresses. It was all iron-on T-shirts, and you made your own things. So I took what I remembered and used it."
Credit Sigismondi with lesbo content that just seems part of the environment, a kiss here, a caress there. No major statements, just a slice of the life.
"It's not a thing. It was a very experimental time, and if you talk to Joan and Cherie about it, they'd say the same thing. It was a part of the experimental life. And for the actors, it was the same way."
Sigismondi wasn't fazed by making her first feature. It helps that she has such a solid music background.
"I've been working with musicians for a long time, I'm married to a musician (Living Things' Lillian Berlin) and I've been out on tour.
"There were performances in the movie that I wanted to make energetic and raw, and I felt really confident about that, so I could concentrate on the acting.
"And having written the script gave me more confidence. I'd spent three years researching. I thought I'd be more nervous my first day, but I had a really good dream the night before and came onto the scene very relaxed."
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