Floria Sigismondi discusses “The Runaways”

MakingOf: When adapting a story, what did you find to be the most challenging part?

(Floria Sigismondi): It was more than doing one person’s life, it was many people’s lives, so that was the most challenging part—figuring out who had all the rights to all these people’s stories. But then it became once I met the two—Joan [Jett] and Cherie [Currie]—they were experiencing the same things but they were different personalities. They were nicknamed the “salt and pepper,” so it was interesting dealing with the two extremes.

MO: What were you first meetings with each of them like?

(FS): We met very briefly over tea one day, and then I went to Cherie’s house and met her whole family, which lasted about five hours, so that was really great spending time with her mom and seeing that sort of dynamic where they hadn’t talked about what happened in 30-something years. It was really educational and I got a lot of information from there; and then, I had many meetings with Joan and I emailed her old articles so she could get herself back into that time, because if you think about it, she hasn’t stopped touring since she was 15.

MO: For casting, when writing the script, did you have a vision about who you wanted to play the part, or did that come along once you finished the script and started reaching out to people?

(FS): Well, Art Linson [producer] had worked with Kristin Stewart on Into The Wild with Sean Penn, so he suggested her and I don’t know if she was even 18 at that time, but I met her and was very interested in her because she had the same kind of qualities that Joan had: kind of tough, but shy and vulnerable quality at the same time. So she seemed perfect, but Dakota [Fanning, co-star] was too young, so I wasn’t even thinking about her until we finished and started casting and I found out she was interested, which was very exciting because she is one of the most talented 15-year-olds around. In the story, Cherie was 15 as well, so it was very important that you see someone that age going through this stuff.

MO: Were you a part of making sure they went through the training?

(FS): Oh yeah. For me, it was very important. I’m married to a musician and have been around music doing music videos for 15 years before this film, so it was very important that that was authentic and came across real—especially because the girls were so young at the time and people were kind of like, “Can they actually play their instruments?” and didn’t give them any slack, but they actually could! That’s why during their live performances, people were kind of in awe. I wanted to have that translate, so I put them through guitar lessons, drum lessons, whatever they needed, and Kristin already played the guitar and sang so that was great, and she just had to learn the songs. Then, on a daily basis for about a week I did a session where the band would play together, so they were bonding, you know? I also shot in consecutive order, so once they were in Cherry Bomb they were a real band and felt tight. The girls also sang their own vocals. Joan came in with her band and re-recorded all the instrumentation and then Joan and Cherie did their vocals, so they were lip-syncing to their own vocals.

MO: When you decided to tell this story, how did you go about crafting the screenplay and how many versions did you go through before you shared it with others, and at what point did you know it was going into production?

(FS): There were a few different versions. I played with England at once, some things that let’s say budgetarily wouldn’t work, so I kind of danced around with the money I had and the story to tell because the biggest challenge was depicting their travel and their journey because they’d traveled and toured so much and the constraints that I had. But I was lucky because at one point, they were thinking about possibly moving production to Detroit and thankfully it came back to LA because I think I got a lot of bang for my money, you know what I mean? There were a lot of places in the valley that weren’t touched and we didn’t have to build and I could go into locations, so that worked out. England was a big part of the band’s education, especially for Joan, being inspired by punk when they toured England, so I was thinking of how I can cheat England into Los Angeles, and Japan I couldn’t leave out, because they were big there, so I went with Japan because it’s very foreign and I found some good locations here. Lots of decisions.

MO: Were there any days that stood out to you as being ones that will forever encapsulate what it was like filming this movie, or are there any scenes that stand out in that way?

(FS): I think shooting Cherry Bomb was, for me, the arc, you know? In the beginning of the movie she says, “I can’t say that” when being forced to say a provocative word, and at the end she becomes a Cherry Bomb and she finds that she owns those words, and the girls did such a fantastic job that I heard Cherie cried. She came up to me in tears, so that solidified it.