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JOAN JETT...on being played by Kristen Stewart, teenage fame and just how close Cherie really were...
from: g3mag.co.uk
JOAN JETT's iconic 1970s teen rock band is brought to the big screen
in new fi lm The RUNAWAYS. The original riot girl talks about how it
feels to relive her youth...
Ê
Tough, sexy and achingly cool, JOAN JETT was a ballsy
pioneer for women in rock. She found fame with teen girl band
The RUNAWAYS in 1975, who treated the music world to a brief burst
of ferociously good rock with hits such as Cherry Bomb and Rock 'n'
Roll... before burning out early in 1979. Joan kept on rockin', pursuing
a solo career for a little while before forming her current band The
BLACKHEARTS, with whom she has enjoyed a string of top-40 hits,
including the US No 1 I Love Rock 'n' Roll. Twenty-one years after the
girls parted company, The RUNAWAYS' short but sharp career has been
immortalised in fi lm, with Joan as executive producer. Joan's role is played by
Kristen Stewart, star of vampire drama Twilight. The film explores Joan's intense passion for music, the trials of life on the road as a young band...and Joan's lesbian relationship with another band member.
How did it feel for Joan to see The RUNAWAYS' story unfolding again right in front of her? "Well, obviously, I look at it with a couple of different eyes -- or I have to try to do that -- because on one hand I'm an executive producer, and on the other hand I'm the person -- I'm the subject matter." She goes on: "It's great for me to see The RUNAWAYS' story up there. I think it's a great story. I think the music kicks ass. I'm excited that people who knew about The RUNAWAYS will get a chance to get reacquainted and the people that had no idea will get a chance to discover it and look further."
Joan had little input in the casting, stipulating only that "It would be really great if they could get teenagers...If you're 21 or 22, I know that's still young and it's still close but there's a little bit of a difference with that teenage energy." Fortunately, Kristen turned out to be a perfect choice -- Joan was delighted with the way the actress came across. "Our mannerisms in real life were a lot alike. If you were to see the two of us sitting around, just the way that we move in space is pretty much alike. We shake our leg. We move our hands around," the singer laughs. "But she'd also just watch my posture, everything, my facial expressions, the way that I stood. I have some funny stances that I do that she'd copy. She tried to get it all."
As well as displaying many natural similarities to Joan, Kristen also put a lot of work into researching the part and really trying to become Joan. "She took it very seriously," Joan enthuses. "It was not a gig for her. It wasn't like, 'OK, I'm doing this movie and then I've got something else down the road'. I mean, she cut off her hair! She immersed herself not only in the music but in the story, because I chewed her ear off about it. I know she was reading articles about it. I sent her tapes. I sent her about twenty minutes of me talking as maybe a 14-year-old."
The film is something of a cautionary tale about what happens when you get too
much too young; of how life on the road takes its toll on a young band. "It wasn't easy," Jett recalls, "and people think, 'Oh yeah, let me be a rock star. It's easy. I'll just get in a band, cut my hair and do this'. It's hard work." She goes on: "We were teenagers and we were together all the time. We were different people. Everybody literally had different tastes in everything." Joan hopes that the positive aspects of The RUNAWAYS' experience shine through, however. "I also think that there's a message that the underdog can win. Dreams should be sought. You shouldn't not go for your dreams because you're told not to, because that's just not what a girl's supposed to do."
What made Joan decide to purse a career in music in the first place? "I think that it was a combination of things... Being told by my parents that I could do anything I wanted," she responds. "That it didn't matter what it was. So I wanted to be all sorts of things, like an astronaut and an archeologist, and all these other things before you grow up a little bit. I wanted to be an actor. I was in chorus class. I went from listening to Donnie Osmond to rock and roll on the radio and all of a sudden, I wanted to make those sounds." Joan became aware early on that she'd have to put up a real fight in the face of the 'girls can't rock' mentality of the time. She says: "The whole 'girls can't play rock and roll' thing just doesn't fly when you're sitting in school with girls playing Beethoven and Bach on cellos and violins. It's like, 'So what you're saying is that it's not that we can't master the instruments, it's that girls aren't allowed to play rock and roll sexual'."
At one point in the film, Joan has an altercation with a music teacher when she doesn't like what he's trying to teach her. "That was real," Joan asserts, "although it didn't happen exactly like that. I didn't really have a fight with teacher. It was more like I didn't want to play OnTop of Old Smokey. I was a teenager. I wanted to learn how to play rock and roll. It's like you want to do it and you want to do it now. 'I don't want to learn the process. Just teach it to me.' I'm like, 'Teach me how to play rock and roll. Let's play Smoke on the Water or something'."
So, the burning question -- how realistically was Joan's lesbian relationship with band mate Cherie (played by Dakota Fanning) really portrayed? Joan tantalisingly responds: "I thought that they did a great job. The RUNAWAYS never played a roller rink. I'm not a kiss and teller." The star has always played her cards close to her chest when it comes to talking about her personal life, so audiences will probably have to draw their own conclusions about whether they are looking at a depiction of teenage experimentation...or at Joan finally coming out to the world.
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