By SIA MICHEL


The gritty tale of a band that paved the way for Madonna.


The most striking thing about “The Runaways,” a new film about the trailblazing bad-girl rock band from the 1970s that spawned Joan Jett, is how authentic it feels. The clubs are properly scuzzy. The dialogue is properly raunchy. From the adrenaline rush of performing to the monotony of rehearsal, it’s a vivid snapshot of life on the road for ambitious teenagers who are constantly told that rock ‘n’ roll “is the sport of men.” (And that’s their own manager talking.)

One reason may be that the movie is partly based on “Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway, ” a newly revamped autobiography by the group’s lead singer Cherie Currie, whose chillingly quick self-destruction is relived through Dakota Fanning. Another may be that Ms. Currie and the guitarist Joan Jett (played by Kristen Stewart) put the actors through hard-rock boot camp for several weeks before filming. And Floria Sigismondi, the writer and director, has “been around music all my life,” she said. Along with making videos for artists like David Bowie and the White Stripes, she’s worked in clubs and gone on tour with her husband’s band, the Living Things. “I wanted it all to look real. I wanted bed head. I wanted freckles and pimples,” she said of the film, her first feature. The words she kept repeating on the set were “raw” and “gritty.”

Though “The Runaways” follows the general trajectory of the band, Ms. Sigismondi also considers the movie more of a coming-ofage story than a definitive biopic, focusing on the relationship among Cherie, Joan and Kim Fowley, the band’s insult-spewing male manager (Michael Shannon). In the film Cherie struggles with her twin sister, a sick alcoholic father, addiction and instant notoriety.

“It’s a cautionary tale on Cherie’s side and an inspirational tale on Joan’s side,” Ms. Sigismondi said. (After the Runaways broke up in 1979, Ms. Jett had a monster hit with a 1982 cover of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll.”)

Ms. Fanning said the anarchic world the Runaways inhabited drew her to the Cherie role. “Working in the film industry, there are so many people in control, lots of authority and rules about so much, including school,” she said. “And there the Runaways were with no rules at all, out on the road with no supervision, making it up as they go along.”

Though they were talented musicians who helped write their songs and were ferocious live, they were often written off as a slutty, manufactured novelty act by the male-dominated ‘70s rock press and heckled by male musicians, even those they appeared with. “The attitude was that women couldn’t rock ‘n’ roll,” said Ms. Currie, who joined when she was 15. “We were a real threat, especially being teenagers.”

After the actors were signed, rock school began. The women took lessons in their characters’ instruments so they knew how to hold and wield them correctly, and Ms. Fanning and Ms. Stewart trained to sing exactly like the women they were portraying. “The first time I heard a tape of Kristen singing ‘I Love Playing With Fire,’ I thought it was me,” Ms. Jett said.

Ms. Currie hopes the film will bring a reconsideration of the Runaways’ legacy. (“When I saw Madonna in a corset for the first time, I was like, ‘Hey, I did that first,’ ” she said.) The band’s pioneering status is often underplayed in music histories, even though Ms. Jett became a platinum-selling rocker with the Blackhearts in the ‘80s and a feminist symbol . Lita Ford, the lead guitarist, became the rare female heavy-metal shredder.

And after forays into acting in films like 1980’s “Foxes” and substance abuse counseling , Ms. Currie may have the most appropriate post-Runaways career of all: She is a chain-saw artist, carving sculptures out of wood.

“It’s just me, a chain saw and a log,” she said. “And no one’s telling me what to do.”