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selenakI became curious about The Runaways because of this review; the music and the group itself, I have to admit, was unknown to me. (I mean, obviously I know who Joan Jett is, I know several of her solo songs, and I saw her on screen in Light of Day with Michael J. Fox, not to mention that appearance in Highlander, but the Runaways as a group I hadn't known existed. I probably was too young in the mid-70s.) So I had no bias, preferences or expectations other than of the genre - rock group makes it and breaks - and how it would play out with a female group, based on the autobiography of one member, co-produced by another and directed by a female director.
It made for a compelling viewing experience but afterwards, when I had time to think about the film, it felt oddly frustrating and empty. Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie and Kirsten Stewart as Joan Jett deliver great performances - btw, I haven't seen any of the Twilight films, nor do I intend to, so I didn't have any preconception about Kirsten Stewart, either - and so does Michael Shannon as their creepy manager Kim Fowley. By now, I've checked out YouTube for vids showing the original Runaways, and the film does a great job recreating not just the look but the feel of those performances. Here the originals are with their signature hit Cherry Bomb:
The film also is right on the nose with pointing out how for all of Fowley's PR talk about female empowerment what is going on is incredibly exploitative. (Not that from a cynical market pov he was wrong; he obviously hit gold by pimping his "teenage Bardot" as "jailbait".) What's more, you can tell the director is trying not to fall into the same exploitative trap; while there are scenes making it clear that Cherie has sex with a roadie, and scenes where the relationship with Joan turns sexual, these aren't filmed in a tiltilating way and they make a point about the respective situations Cherie is in. So what is my problem with the film anyway?
For starters, nobody but Cherie, Joan, Kim Fowley the creep and Cherie's sister Marie has a chance to develop a personality. I had to look up the names of the other Runaways before writing this review. They're just kind of there. What are their hopes and reasons for joining the band, how do they react when Cherie quits? We don't know. Lita Ford has one scene where she calls Cherie an egomaniac, triggering the argument that leads to Cherie's departure, but there is no leading up to this, no fleshing out of Lita, why she resents Cherie. Is she jealous because of the (exploitative) press attention, because of the relationship between Joan and Cherie, does she think Cherie isn't really good musically since she was picked for looks and and attitude, and thus doesn't deserve centre stage? Could be any or all of the above, but the film never tells you. It doesn't tell you how Cherie feels about any of the other band members except for Joan, either, come to think of it.
Now, I can see the point of tight focus on some characters and keeping others in the background in order to have in depth characterisation for some. The film Backbeat, for example, which has some interesting parallels (and crucial differences, not just due to gender), never pretends to be about the Beatles in Hamburg. It's strictly the Stuart Sutcliffe story, with the only Beatle fleshed out the one Stuart has a relationship with, John Lennon; the narrative leaves those other guys the moment Stuart leaves the group, much as we don't see the Runaways again after Cherie leaves (though we do see Joan); again, I had to check Wikipedia to find out the group went on for another two years after Cherie's departure. But even though the other Beatles are just kind of there in Backbeat the same way the other Runaways are in The Runaways, we at least get a clear reason as to why Paul McCartney increasingly objects to Stuart's presence in the group (the bad bass playing; the other historical reason - the competing for John's attention - was edited out because to include that the film would have had to flesh out Paul, which they didn't have screen time for, given the focus on Stuart-Astrid-John), and it's not just presented in a single scene but build up in various scenes. While poor Lita Ford just gets to be mean and harangue Cherie in the studio out of nowhere.
Then there is the question of Cherie as the central character. It makes for a clear narrative - dysfunctional family, she joins the group, sex-drugs-rock-n-roll happens, big break and success, drugs and alcohol become too much, Cherie quits, goes to pieces, starts to recover, happy epilogue in which Joan has become an iconic rock star and Cherie has it together again - but it's a narrative that feels familiar. The Rose for a teenager, except for the happy epilogue. This is where I wondered whether the real Joan Jett's involvement in the production might have been a detriment as much as an advantage because I couldn't help but feel hers would have been the more interesting story to focus on, since despite being under the same pressure, she didn't go to pieces, recreated herself after the Runaways and became one of the most successful rockstars of her generation. (It's the reverse from the usual phenomenon when someone is involved in the fictional depiction of their lives - Jett evidently wanted the focus away from herself.) There is also a question mark about how the script wants me to see her relationship with Cherie Currie. Friends with occasional sexual benefits? Lovers? In which case, how does she feel about the roadies? When Cherie quits, is this a purely personal loss (in which case, why not try to stay together outside of the band) or a musical one? We don't know. In retrospect, the most detailed and layered relationship is the one between Cherie and her sister Marie, and since I like sibling relationships given narrative scrutiny, I can't say I object to that, but in that case it feels narratively dishonest to end with the brief epilogue of not quite communication on the radio between Cherie and Joan, because the film hasn't earned theirs as the central relationship; a scene between Cherie and Marie, mirroring and contrasting the first one which opens the film perhaps, would have been more honest.
I also got around to reading the much discussed Keith Richards memoirs, Life, which made for an interesting counterpart.
First of all, James Fox, Richards' co-author, does a great job with the narrative voice. I'm assuming this book was done in the way such non-writer memoirs are, i.e. Fox interviewed Richards a lot (and some of the people quoted in the book) and did his research to compare dates, and then shaped the whole thing into coherent prose. It reads authentic, which is to say, you can imagine Richards telling you this story in just those words, it's immensely entertaining and vividly written, and, as opposed to many a celebrity memoir, it never forgets the reason why people care about the central character to begin with, i.e. in this case that he's a musician and song writer. For all the Keith/Anita/Brian, Keith/Anita/Mick/Marianne drama, the way the songs were written and played, what the authors call tongue in cheek "Keef's guitar workshop" get more attention.
As for the drugs. Early on, I wasn't quite sure whether or not Richards romantisizes them, but the tales of the various attempts to go cold turkey and the eventual final clean-up process, leaving a marriage irrevocably broken and a child dead in its wake, are as harrowing as any "don't do it" warning could ever be (especially considering the majority of the population doesn't have Keith Richards' financial resources). The part where his baby son Tara dies is one of the most affecting and chilling in the book; at that point Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards were both hopeless addicts just looking for the next fix, their eldest on Marlon basically became his father's minder on tour from the time when he was seven onwards, and his mother's when he was home, and after the death of the baby, Richards decided to give the toddler daughter, Angela, to his mother to raise in an acknowledgment that neither he nor Pallenberg were capable of this anymore.
The pen portraits of contemporaries are colourful and interesting especially if you've come across them in another context, like the infamous Allen Klein, who managed the Stones before becoming one of the reasons for the Beatles' breakup; Keith Richards portrays him as supremely gifted in the money making department and supremely dishonest, though while the Stones ended up sueing Klein as well (seriously, was the man in lawsuits all through the 70s?), the attitude on our narrator's part is amusement rather than hostility, even when mentioning such details as Klein (and now his heirs - he died in 2009) owning hits like Satisfaction, as opposed to Richards & Jaggers. Which isn't to say Keith R. can't nurse his grudges with other people. Brian Jones is portrayed as an abusive bastard who was better off dead, director Doug Camnon (who directed Performance in which Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg were cast as lovers, something that Richards blamed directly for the Jagger/Pallenberg tryst) can't commit suicide fast enough to satisfy our narrator, and as for the singers/musicians who came after the Stones, he has the occasional compliment for U2 but appears to dislike pretty much everyone else. Punk was awful, Prince is ”an overrated midget”, Elton John is ”an old bitch”, and as for Bruce Springsteen: ”If there was anything better around, he’d still be working the bars of New Jersey." Ouch.
The most widely reported dissing in this book, of course, concerns Mick Jagger, but here I have to say the overall context makes a difference because Keith Richards actually says a lot of positive things as well as the negative ones; the media, predictably, only picked the criticism of Mick's gigantic ego and penis and skipped the praise for his songwriting skills, voice, harmonica playing and kindness during those tours when Keith was completely zonked out and someone had to take care of the kid (Marlon) who was taking care of Keith. While Richards puts the blame for their end of 70s/early 80s fallout squarely on Jagger who instead of being properly grateful a now sobered up Keith was ready to co-lead the band again wanted to continue to lead on his own and "treated everyone like sidemen", then proceeding to the dastardly meanness of wanting to do a solo album, it's hard not to remember that a few pages earlier we got the description of how while he was on heroin, his band mates were forced to live on “Keith Time,” in which 2 p.m. recording sessions had a way of becoming 1 a.m. dates the following day, and understand why, gigantic ego or no gigantic ego, Mick Jagger might have reached a point where he felt fed up instead of overwhelmed with happiness and admiration Keith was off the heroin at last and an equal again. For every slagging off where Mick J. is an egomaniac who goes through women like paper tissues (whereas Keith, you know, appreciates groupies as people, and also for their nursing skills), selling out to the establishment and so unbearable from the 80s onwards that they only get together for work related reasons, there is a passage lamenting past closeness, or, near the very end of the book when he describes how he lives today, the passage on what he likes to read: George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels (figures) and Patrick O'Brien's seafaring novels because of the central friendship between Aubrey & Maturin who always remind our narrator "of Mick and myself".
Is he critical towards himself? (In matters other than drug addiction, that is.) Partially. In one of the most insightful passages on how fame affects you, he writes: “I can’t untie the threads of how much I played up to the part that was written for me. I mean the skull ring and the broken tooth and the kohl. Is it half and half? I think in a way your persona, your image, as it used to be known, is like a ball and chain. Image is like a long shadow. Even when the sun goes down you can see it.… It's impossible not to end up being a parody of what you thought you were."
On the other hand, he can't understand why annoying feminists might object to some song lyrics, going on about how it was always fun to irritate them, where would feminism be without the Stones anyway (?!?) and hey, a line like "black girls just wanna get fucked all night" is written from real life experience, and it could have been white or Asian girls just as well, so why is anyone upset?
Worth noting: for all the criticism of bandmates (i.e. mainly Jagger and the late Brian Jones, the rest only gets bad grades when they leave the band, which Keith just can't understand), the Rolling Stones as a band are sacrosant. You do not leave the Stones. In the big files of Ways Mick Done Me Wrong, the solo enterprises of the 80s are worse than having sex with Anita or Treating Me Like A Sideman. Mick Taylor and Bill Wyman leaving is just incomprehensible. And he's as proud of the band as he was in the 60s.
Re: The Other Band - Keith Richards credits Andrew Oldham with the ingenious marketing device of billing the Rolling Stones as the anti Beatles (after an early and failed attempt to follow the same model), gives credit where due for the breaking of barriers and for songwriting motivation/inspiration ("if John and Paul can do it, so can we") and sums the early 60s up with "we envied them their songwriting skills and harmonies, they us our image and freedom". They always timed their single and lp releases with each other, making sure that they never released something simultanously, which would have endangered everyone's profits, and otherwise were highly amused about all the press furore re: rivalry. There are some anecdotes about taking LSD with John in the mid-60s and heroin in the late 60s. The later is the one and only time Yoko Ono is mentioned, btw (pointing out that John wasn't good at taking heroin), but the most personal story isn't from the 60s but decades later, when our hero is vacationing in 2005 and meets an equally vacationing Paul McCartney on a beach and the two hook up for the remainder of the holidays. Doing the math later, either Richards himself or co-author James Fox works out this was just when the catastrophic second McCartney marriage ended. Apparantly, the McCartney method of divorce therapy was visiting Keith Richards on a daily (or rather, nightly, after his youngest daughter fell asleep) basis, jamming together and reminiscing about, who else, John. (Teasingly, Keith R. even mentions all this jamming together resulted in a McCartney/Richards song which the world doesn't know yet. That's just mean.) Also about the basic difference in the structure of the Beatles and the Stones which I found amusing because I had just exchanged emails withkathyh where we basically said the same thing the guys in question observed, that it made a difference the Beatles were more vocalists with all of them were able to sing the lead whereas the Stones were more a group of musicians with a single frontman, which in turn affected the power structure.
In conclusion: definitely worth reading. You'll roll your eyes on occasion, but it's a yarn well told, and there's life in the old boy yet.
It made for a compelling viewing experience but afterwards, when I had time to think about the film, it felt oddly frustrating and empty. Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie and Kirsten Stewart as Joan Jett deliver great performances - btw, I haven't seen any of the Twilight films, nor do I intend to, so I didn't have any preconception about Kirsten Stewart, either - and so does Michael Shannon as their creepy manager Kim Fowley. By now, I've checked out YouTube for vids showing the original Runaways, and the film does a great job recreating not just the look but the feel of those performances. Here the originals are with their signature hit Cherry Bomb:
The film also is right on the nose with pointing out how for all of Fowley's PR talk about female empowerment what is going on is incredibly exploitative. (Not that from a cynical market pov he was wrong; he obviously hit gold by pimping his "teenage Bardot" as "jailbait".) What's more, you can tell the director is trying not to fall into the same exploitative trap; while there are scenes making it clear that Cherie has sex with a roadie, and scenes where the relationship with Joan turns sexual, these aren't filmed in a tiltilating way and they make a point about the respective situations Cherie is in. So what is my problem with the film anyway?
For starters, nobody but Cherie, Joan, Kim Fowley the creep and Cherie's sister Marie has a chance to develop a personality. I had to look up the names of the other Runaways before writing this review. They're just kind of there. What are their hopes and reasons for joining the band, how do they react when Cherie quits? We don't know. Lita Ford has one scene where she calls Cherie an egomaniac, triggering the argument that leads to Cherie's departure, but there is no leading up to this, no fleshing out of Lita, why she resents Cherie. Is she jealous because of the (exploitative) press attention, because of the relationship between Joan and Cherie, does she think Cherie isn't really good musically since she was picked for looks and and attitude, and thus doesn't deserve centre stage? Could be any or all of the above, but the film never tells you. It doesn't tell you how Cherie feels about any of the other band members except for Joan, either, come to think of it.
Now, I can see the point of tight focus on some characters and keeping others in the background in order to have in depth characterisation for some. The film Backbeat, for example, which has some interesting parallels (and crucial differences, not just due to gender), never pretends to be about the Beatles in Hamburg. It's strictly the Stuart Sutcliffe story, with the only Beatle fleshed out the one Stuart has a relationship with, John Lennon; the narrative leaves those other guys the moment Stuart leaves the group, much as we don't see the Runaways again after Cherie leaves (though we do see Joan); again, I had to check Wikipedia to find out the group went on for another two years after Cherie's departure. But even though the other Beatles are just kind of there in Backbeat the same way the other Runaways are in The Runaways, we at least get a clear reason as to why Paul McCartney increasingly objects to Stuart's presence in the group (the bad bass playing; the other historical reason - the competing for John's attention - was edited out because to include that the film would have had to flesh out Paul, which they didn't have screen time for, given the focus on Stuart-Astrid-John), and it's not just presented in a single scene but build up in various scenes. While poor Lita Ford just gets to be mean and harangue Cherie in the studio out of nowhere.
Then there is the question of Cherie as the central character. It makes for a clear narrative - dysfunctional family, she joins the group, sex-drugs-rock-n-roll happens, big break and success, drugs and alcohol become too much, Cherie quits, goes to pieces, starts to recover, happy epilogue in which Joan has become an iconic rock star and Cherie has it together again - but it's a narrative that feels familiar. The Rose for a teenager, except for the happy epilogue. This is where I wondered whether the real Joan Jett's involvement in the production might have been a detriment as much as an advantage because I couldn't help but feel hers would have been the more interesting story to focus on, since despite being under the same pressure, she didn't go to pieces, recreated herself after the Runaways and became one of the most successful rockstars of her generation. (It's the reverse from the usual phenomenon when someone is involved in the fictional depiction of their lives - Jett evidently wanted the focus away from herself.) There is also a question mark about how the script wants me to see her relationship with Cherie Currie. Friends with occasional sexual benefits? Lovers? In which case, how does she feel about the roadies? When Cherie quits, is this a purely personal loss (in which case, why not try to stay together outside of the band) or a musical one? We don't know. In retrospect, the most detailed and layered relationship is the one between Cherie and her sister Marie, and since I like sibling relationships given narrative scrutiny, I can't say I object to that, but in that case it feels narratively dishonest to end with the brief epilogue of not quite communication on the radio between Cherie and Joan, because the film hasn't earned theirs as the central relationship; a scene between Cherie and Marie, mirroring and contrasting the first one which opens the film perhaps, would have been more honest.
I also got around to reading the much discussed Keith Richards memoirs, Life, which made for an interesting counterpart.
First of all, James Fox, Richards' co-author, does a great job with the narrative voice. I'm assuming this book was done in the way such non-writer memoirs are, i.e. Fox interviewed Richards a lot (and some of the people quoted in the book) and did his research to compare dates, and then shaped the whole thing into coherent prose. It reads authentic, which is to say, you can imagine Richards telling you this story in just those words, it's immensely entertaining and vividly written, and, as opposed to many a celebrity memoir, it never forgets the reason why people care about the central character to begin with, i.e. in this case that he's a musician and song writer. For all the Keith/Anita/Brian, Keith/Anita/Mick/Marianne drama, the way the songs were written and played, what the authors call tongue in cheek "Keef's guitar workshop" get more attention.
As for the drugs. Early on, I wasn't quite sure whether or not Richards romantisizes them, but the tales of the various attempts to go cold turkey and the eventual final clean-up process, leaving a marriage irrevocably broken and a child dead in its wake, are as harrowing as any "don't do it" warning could ever be (especially considering the majority of the population doesn't have Keith Richards' financial resources). The part where his baby son Tara dies is one of the most affecting and chilling in the book; at that point Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards were both hopeless addicts just looking for the next fix, their eldest on Marlon basically became his father's minder on tour from the time when he was seven onwards, and his mother's when he was home, and after the death of the baby, Richards decided to give the toddler daughter, Angela, to his mother to raise in an acknowledgment that neither he nor Pallenberg were capable of this anymore.
The pen portraits of contemporaries are colourful and interesting especially if you've come across them in another context, like the infamous Allen Klein, who managed the Stones before becoming one of the reasons for the Beatles' breakup; Keith Richards portrays him as supremely gifted in the money making department and supremely dishonest, though while the Stones ended up sueing Klein as well (seriously, was the man in lawsuits all through the 70s?), the attitude on our narrator's part is amusement rather than hostility, even when mentioning such details as Klein (and now his heirs - he died in 2009) owning hits like Satisfaction, as opposed to Richards & Jaggers. Which isn't to say Keith R. can't nurse his grudges with other people. Brian Jones is portrayed as an abusive bastard who was better off dead, director Doug Camnon (who directed Performance in which Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg were cast as lovers, something that Richards blamed directly for the Jagger/Pallenberg tryst) can't commit suicide fast enough to satisfy our narrator, and as for the singers/musicians who came after the Stones, he has the occasional compliment for U2 but appears to dislike pretty much everyone else. Punk was awful, Prince is ”an overrated midget”, Elton John is ”an old bitch”, and as for Bruce Springsteen: ”If there was anything better around, he’d still be working the bars of New Jersey." Ouch.
The most widely reported dissing in this book, of course, concerns Mick Jagger, but here I have to say the overall context makes a difference because Keith Richards actually says a lot of positive things as well as the negative ones; the media, predictably, only picked the criticism of Mick's gigantic ego and penis and skipped the praise for his songwriting skills, voice, harmonica playing and kindness during those tours when Keith was completely zonked out and someone had to take care of the kid (Marlon) who was taking care of Keith. While Richards puts the blame for their end of 70s/early 80s fallout squarely on Jagger who instead of being properly grateful a now sobered up Keith was ready to co-lead the band again wanted to continue to lead on his own and "treated everyone like sidemen", then proceeding to the dastardly meanness of wanting to do a solo album, it's hard not to remember that a few pages earlier we got the description of how while he was on heroin, his band mates were forced to live on “Keith Time,” in which 2 p.m. recording sessions had a way of becoming 1 a.m. dates the following day, and understand why, gigantic ego or no gigantic ego, Mick Jagger might have reached a point where he felt fed up instead of overwhelmed with happiness and admiration Keith was off the heroin at last and an equal again. For every slagging off where Mick J. is an egomaniac who goes through women like paper tissues (whereas Keith, you know, appreciates groupies as people, and also for their nursing skills), selling out to the establishment and so unbearable from the 80s onwards that they only get together for work related reasons, there is a passage lamenting past closeness, or, near the very end of the book when he describes how he lives today, the passage on what he likes to read: George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels (figures) and Patrick O'Brien's seafaring novels because of the central friendship between Aubrey & Maturin who always remind our narrator "of Mick and myself".
Is he critical towards himself? (In matters other than drug addiction, that is.) Partially. In one of the most insightful passages on how fame affects you, he writes: “I can’t untie the threads of how much I played up to the part that was written for me. I mean the skull ring and the broken tooth and the kohl. Is it half and half? I think in a way your persona, your image, as it used to be known, is like a ball and chain. Image is like a long shadow. Even when the sun goes down you can see it.… It's impossible not to end up being a parody of what you thought you were."
On the other hand, he can't understand why annoying feminists might object to some song lyrics, going on about how it was always fun to irritate them, where would feminism be without the Stones anyway (?!?) and hey, a line like "black girls just wanna get fucked all night" is written from real life experience, and it could have been white or Asian girls just as well, so why is anyone upset?
Worth noting: for all the criticism of bandmates (i.e. mainly Jagger and the late Brian Jones, the rest only gets bad grades when they leave the band, which Keith just can't understand), the Rolling Stones as a band are sacrosant. You do not leave the Stones. In the big files of Ways Mick Done Me Wrong, the solo enterprises of the 80s are worse than having sex with Anita or Treating Me Like A Sideman. Mick Taylor and Bill Wyman leaving is just incomprehensible. And he's as proud of the band as he was in the 60s.
Re: The Other Band - Keith Richards credits Andrew Oldham with the ingenious marketing device of billing the Rolling Stones as the anti Beatles (after an early and failed attempt to follow the same model), gives credit where due for the breaking of barriers and for songwriting motivation/inspiration ("if John and Paul can do it, so can we") and sums the early 60s up with "we envied them their songwriting skills and harmonies, they us our image and freedom". They always timed their single and lp releases with each other, making sure that they never released something simultanously, which would have endangered everyone's profits, and otherwise were highly amused about all the press furore re: rivalry. There are some anecdotes about taking LSD with John in the mid-60s and heroin in the late 60s. The later is the one and only time Yoko Ono is mentioned, btw (pointing out that John wasn't good at taking heroin), but the most personal story isn't from the 60s but decades later, when our hero is vacationing in 2005 and meets an equally vacationing Paul McCartney on a beach and the two hook up for the remainder of the holidays. Doing the math later, either Richards himself or co-author James Fox works out this was just when the catastrophic second McCartney marriage ended. Apparantly, the McCartney method of divorce therapy was visiting Keith Richards on a daily (or rather, nightly, after his youngest daughter fell asleep) basis, jamming together and reminiscing about, who else, John. (Teasingly, Keith R. even mentions all this jamming together resulted in a McCartney/Richards song which the world doesn't know yet. That's just mean.) Also about the basic difference in the structure of the Beatles and the Stones which I found amusing because I had just exchanged emails with
kathyh where we basically said the same thing the guys in question observed, that it made a difference the Beatles were more vocalists with all of them were able to sing the lead whereas the Stones were more a group of musicians with a single frontman, which in turn affected the power structure. In conclusion: definitely worth reading. You'll roll your eyes on occasion, but it's a yarn well told, and there's life in the old boy yet.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-30 12:25 pm (UTC)Great review.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-30 02:01 pm (UTC)