My thoughts on "The Runaways"

Okay, I guess it's time. My first regular Blogspot post! I'm so excited.....

My favorite movie review site is Pajiba. As a fan of the band The Runaways, I thought I'd copy and paste here my thoughts on the recent Runaways movie that I wrote in the comments section of their review page on the film (Note: It starts out with me responding to an ill-informed fan named Protoguy who claimed both the Lita Ford and Jackie Fox characters weren't in the film):

"As a huge Runaways fan, Protoguy: Lita Ford IS in the film. Bassist Jackie Fox is not, probably because she was the one causing legal trouble and she's now a lawyer herself, so the producers probably thought she would be the only real threat here, so they created a fictional bassist with no lines to replace her. Brian: Once the group was solidified with the lineup that appeared on their albums, there were really only two bass players: Jackie Fox on the first two albums and Vickie Blue on the second two albums. Cherie Currie left the band after the second album, at the same time Jackie Fox did. Which brings me to my thoughts on this film: Most of the film is really good, but the last bit sucks. As you noted, Cherie's biography is the source material. But her bio is not the same as The Runaways' bio. This movie makes it seem as if The Runaways ended when she left the band. NO! Thank God at the end there is print for us to read that told us the truth: That after Cherie left, Joan Jett continued with the band for two more years, whereby she sang all the songs. Why didn't Joan continue the rest of the story of the band with the producers? In fact, their first album without Cherie (third overall), Waitin' For The Night, I bought at a record store in either '77 or '78 whose land today is occupied by the mall that houses the very theatre where I saw this movie! It also must be a head-scratcher to movie-goers not familiar with the band: If this is a Runaways bio, why do they seem to be concentrating mostly on the lead singer's life? With only a bit about the guitarist's life and almost nothing about the other members? Now, I'm a Runaways fan, so I didn't mind all the stuff with Cherie and her family, and I wasn't thrilled at first with how the film only concentrates on Cherie and Joan, but there may not have been room for five different points of view, and I'm happy with the screen time the Sandy West and Lita Ford characters do have. In fact, Lita and Joan do get into an argument near the end. It does suck there is no Jackie Fox. But where was their No. 2 most well-known song (after 'Cherry Bomb'), 'Queens Of Noise?' I was looking forward to seeing the girls perform that song. It is listed in the credits, so.....was there a snippet of the song so small I missed it? Someone help me on that one. If the song really wasn't in the movie, shame on the producers for that. It would have been cool if the Kim Fowley character made mention of the two songwriting credits he got on Kiss' Destroyer during The Runaways' Cherie Currie years, too."

For the references I made above that I didn't name because only Winnipeggers would understand them: Of course, The Runaways played at the Globe Cinema, which is in Portage Place, and which stands on the very same piece of land the record store The Wherehouse used to be in the '70s, and where I bought the Waitin' For The Night album. So I guess it's apropos that the film played at the Globe! I return to the scene of the crime 32 years later!