Sunday, December 07, 2008
Casting for a Music Biopic

Following her role as Bella in "Twilight", Kirsten Stewart will play Joan Jett in the forthcoming rock bio-pic, "The Runaways". (News from Hollywood Reporter) This casting choice led Gil Kaufman to write about The Runaways.

While I have Joan Jett on my iPod, I have to admit I'm not 100% on the music of the Runaways. They came together some time in the mid 1970s (I was born in 1976, sorry), and they were apparently one of the first successful all-girl rock band. The film will be based on an unpublished memoir by lead singer Cherie Currie, and "intends to bare all the drugs, sex and heartache experienced by girls who struggled to be viewed as musicians, not sex kittens with guitars." Before Sarah McLachlan and the Lilith Fair, these were young women who struggled to be taken seriously as musicians in the rock scene.

"We certainly utilized to our advantage our image as teenage girls who wore titillating clothes," Jett told Daily Variety. "But we also became an excellent band and made it OK for girls to play rock 'n' roll. It got hard once people focused more on what we were wearing than what we were playing."

I so want to watch this. I only hope the film will be a decent one.

But back to the cast.

I started paying attention to Kristen Stewart after watching her play Jodie Foster's daughter in "Panic Room". The teenage actress carried herself in the movie admirably, standing next to the limelight that is Jodie Foster. She felt like one of those young actress to watch, kind of like Ellen Page - a little out of place in the conventional Hollywood fare, but marketable enough to be successful and interesting at the same time.

Now the question is, can Kirsten Stewart pull off the role of Joan Jett. Can she be the young rocker of The Runaways with the dark looks and bad hair, who went on to a successful and iconic solo career, and is still rocking at 50, looking like this:

It will be one of the most challenging roles for young Kirsten Stewart. She's not just playing a singer. She's playing an icon of a sort. Kind of like if Ellen Page ever gets casted as Patti Smith (Not going to happen, I think)

Meanwhile, Carrie Brownstein has asked her readers to nominate their casting choices for films on relatively obscure bands.

I was pretty taken with the idea of Pink playing Janis Joplin, but lately I wonder if Leisha Hailey might make a better Janis.

Philip Seymour Hoffman might make an interesting Black Francis in a Pixies biopic. We will need a great actress to play Kim Deal against him though. Somebody with enough exuberance and that right streak of antagonism.

Posted by Dark Orpheus on Sunday, December 07, 2008