The Twilight Saga's Kristen Stewart is making a splash at the 2010 edition of the Sundance Film Festival. First, she was a foul-mouthed stripper/sex worker in Jake Scott's Welcome to the Rileys. Then comes writer-director Floria Sigismondi's narrative feature debut The Runaways, in which Stewart plays rocker Joan Jett, who fled home at the age of 16 and co-founded with Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) the all-teen girl band Runaways in the mid-'70s.
According to Chris Lee in the Los Angeles Times blog 24 Frames, before the Runaways' final credits roll Stewart "snorts cocaine, makes out with co-star Dakota Fanning and drunkenly urinates on an electric guitar." Sounds like the stuff Academy Awards are made of.
Sigismondi (photo, right) had previously done music videos for the likes of Marilyn Manson, David Bowie and Björk. Apparently, it's that sort of edgy sensibility that she brings to her film. Stewart, who reportedly does her own singing, took lessons from Joan Jett herself. "Put your pussy to the wood!" Stewart remembered Jett coaching her. "Fuck your guitar!”
“Both (of these women have) a dominant sexuality. They had to fight,” Stewart remarked at Sundance. “People like girls to be sexy and they did then, too, but in a different way. They didn’t want to get fucked (by the girl), they wanted to fuck them.”
Stewart is up for the British Film Academy's Orange Rising Star Award. If she wins — and keeps courageously stretching herself as an actress — hers will be a fully deserving victory.
Dakota Fanning is no slacker, either. Her starring role as a pre-teen who gets raped in Hounddog caused a furor at Sundance 2007 (and later, elsewhere), angering the p.c. crowd, right-wingers, feminists, religious freaks — you name it. Fanning's mother was accused of exploiting her child, director Deborah Kampmeier was accused of exploiting her young star, the Sundance festival was accused of exploiting the exploitation.
Much to her credit, the then 13-year-old Fanning kept her cool, and by way of interviews told the Dearly Concerned Ones that she was an actress, that she trusted both her mother and her own acting instincts, and that others should mind their own goddamned business.
Also in the Runaways cast: Scout Taylor-Compton, Alia Shawkat, Michael Shannon, and Tatum O'Neal.
Photo: Sundance Film Festival
Stewart/Jett quote: Canada.com
I can't wait to see this movie… Hahaha!:D It's going to be soooo funny!!!:D