Years before they were onscreen buds in The Wrong Girls, Alia Shawkat and Kristen Stewart were jamming together as the titular rock “Queens of Noise” in 2010’s The Runaways.

At a recent screening for their upcoming Dylan Meyer-written/directed Neon stoner comedy, which premieres Aug. 14 in theaters, Shawkat recalled they “were children” on the set of the Floria Sigismondi-helmed musical drama, which starred Stewart as Joan Jett.

“You barely talked on that movie,” Stewart recalled to Shawkat in a video from the Q&A.

Shawkt explained, “Yeah, I literally was not allowed to speak in that movie, because the character I was playing became an entertainment lawyer and was like, ‘I don’t want to be involved in the film.’ And I found that out my first day on set, after I’d learned all the songs. They were like, ‘You can’t speak for legal reasons.’ And I was like, ‘OK, cool. So, just like holding a guitar in the background?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, just stand to the left a little bit.’”

Tracing the roots of the 1970s “Cherry Bomb” rock group, The Runaways also starred Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie, Stella Maeve as Sandy West and Scout Taylor-Compton as Lita Ford. While Shawkat is credited as Robin Robins in the movie, her character is a stand-in for bass guitarist Jacqueline Fuchs (aka Jackie Fox).

“Anyways, it was still a cool project. And we hit it off, but we weren’t hanging all the time,” said Shawkat, as Stewart recalled she thought her co-star was “so fucking cool.”

In The Wrong Girls, Shawkat and Stewart play codependent stoner best friends Molly and Frankie, who are one day away from being evicted when they discover a mind-altering drug that gets them caught up in a chaotic case of mistaken identity.

“This was the first time we actually got to hang out properly and play friends,” explained Shawkat. “We hadn’t reunited until we made this movie, and it felt like it was a moment where we were able to capture something that was always there, that luckily enough, we got to play best friends in this rad movie.”

Stewart added, “We wanted to kick it forever, and then we got to make a movie, which is like the best way to kick it with anyone.”

The pair stars alongside LaKeith Stanfield, Zack Fox, Tony Hale, Seth Rogen, Kumail Nanjiani, Geena Davis, Kate McKinnon and Cate Blanchett.

Alex (Ani Mesa-Perez, also the film’s co-writer), a young woman from New Jersey, tries to escape a claustrophobic home life by running away with a rowdy band of hard-partying in-line skaters in Erin Vassilopoulos’ freeform but engaging drama, Destroy All Girls. The film’s provocative title comes from a message a niche Californian skatewear company once wove into their clothing line’s care labels as a joke, a sample of which is seen here. But it hints at how a low-key misogyny can sometimes be palpable under the surface in the skater dudes’ bro-centric culture, even if at first the guys seem pretty chill.

Even so, the film’s gaze is more anthropological than polemical, especially given the faux-doc vibe created by its abundant handheld camerawork, seemingly filmed sometimes by the actors themselves. Premiering in Locarno’s Cinema of the Present strand should give this a good launch on the rolling concrete ups and downs of the festival skatepark circuit.

First met in happier times rolling around the streets of a Jersey town just across the river from Manhattan, working-class Alex is especially close to her big brother Gabriel (Gil Perez-Abraham, who also collaborated with Mesa-Perez on the script, as did Flo Baumann and Vassilopoulos). Gabriel was a talented skater with access to the latest in skate designs, but an abrupt flashforward finds him paralyzed after a car accident, the particulars of which are explained later.

Alex, pointedly called Alexa by her mother (Florencia Lozano), who hates Alex’s tomboyish style, works in a bodega and looks after her brother a lot. Constantly bickering with her mother and burdened by her brother’s care at home, Alex finds joy mostly when she’s out skating herself, or filming others at the local skatepark with her minicam.

One day down at the park she meets Cameron (Dominic Bruce), a lanky white guy with an odd accent (he’s Scottish but with all the glottal stops and gutterals sanded down) who is a real showboat on the jumps and ramps. Cameron is the de facto leader of a little non-violent gang-ette that call themselves Prospers. Together, they travel from skate park to skate park, getting high often on weed and beer, and hoping that they’ll get taken up by a sponsor so they can compete out in California professionally. It’s not exactly clear how they support themselves, let alone afford the gas to run the refurbished short bus they live in, but maybe they sell the footage shot by Cole (Malcolm Heard) or deal a bit of drugs on the side. Who knows, maybe they have trust funds.  

Alex certainly doesn’t ask too many questions and is just happy to keep hanging out with them in New York and points beyond, living in the bus. She starts shooting the B-roll for Cole’s ongoing doc, and learns a few tricks from Cameron with whom she soon starts a romantic liaison, although he’s upfront about having a child with another woman.

While the script may have four names attached to it, the dialogue often feels spontaneous and semi-improvised and Vassilopoulos does a good job at relaxing the young cast so that they sound like regular zoomers as they banter and bicker. The road movie atmosphere may conjure features set in a similar milieu, like Andrea Arnold’s American Honey perhaps, or early Harmony Korine or Larry Clark movies, but with less tension or violence.

Indeed, not much really happens apart from skating and partying, the latter reaching its high pitch when Alex and Cameron take mushrooms and check into a motel room for a night of hallucinations and sex. But the voice messages from her family that Alex occasionally listens to start to pull her back to her old life. Will she go home or stay with sweet but self-absorbed Cameron? Alex’s androgynous dress sense suggests that she might not be that into him, and possibly may be more taken with lithe skater punk Silvia (Silvia Kambouridis, luminous in just a few scenes).

The resolution when it comes is satisfying if slight. The way Vassilopoulos and her team have chosen not to define things like Alex’s gender identity feels very of the open-ended, label-resistant ways of the younger generations. Identity here is very much in motion, much like the young athletes themselves.