Elizabeth Day from Guardian.co.uk is reporting:

THE RUNAWAYS were the original 'rock chicks', a wild all-girl teen band whose story is told in a film that opens today. Cherie Currie, the band's singer, Cherie Currie was 15 when she started scandalising middle America. That was when she auditioned to become the lead singer of all-female teenage rock band the Runaways, a group that would send shock-waves through the suburbs with their attitude-fueled performances and sexually explicit lyrics.

Their first single, "Cherry Bomb", talked unapologetically about "wild girls" and "street boys" and several radio stations refused to give it airtime. Currie would routinely appear on stage wearing stockings, suspenders and a tight-fitting basque so that even the reliably liberal Village Voice was moved to denounce the girls as "bimbos".

The year was 1976. Jimmy Carter was about to be elected president. It seemed America was not yet ready for five adolescent females who played their own instruments and sang openly about sex. But Currie didn't care. "We truly believed girls could play rock 'n roll," she says now from her home in Los Angeles. "We knew we were going into unknown territory. We had to fight on a daily basis, especially with a lot of male bands who didn't take us seriously." She gives a long, throaty laugh. "I look back 30 years and I still can't believe it."

Now, the story of the band is to be immortalised in a film, The Runaways, which premieres at this year's Sundance film festival and which is partially based on Currie's brutally honest memoir, Neon Angel. Kristen Stewart, the star of the popular Twilight franchise, is cast as the feisty guitarist Joan Jett while Currie is played by Dakota Fanning. "Seeing her playing me is so off-the-map it's incredible," says Currie, who was a frequent visitor to the set. "I can't even digest it. She's so together, which I was not at that age… She came to my house one afternoon and we sang back and forth so that she could get the inflections, and she nailed it."

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