Cobain doc lifts lid on troubled life
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Mythmaker … Cobain killed himself aged 27. Picture: Supplied
Source: Supplied
When Kurt Cobain played the finished version of the Nirvana album “Nevermind” for his mother, Wendy O’Connor, in the summer of 1991, she almost cried. Not so much out of joy, but out of fear.
Sensing it was a game-changer for the as-yet-undistinguished punk group, she told her son, “You better buckle up, because you are not ready for this.” As the new film Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck explores, she was tragically on the nose.
The documentary — authorised by O’Connor, as well as Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, and his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain — is, without a doubt, the most painfully detailed document to date of the singer’s life.
But Cobain’s friends and collaborators claim it’s far from the whole story.
Family … Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love and baby Frances Bean attending the 1993 MTV Music Video Awards in Los Angeles. Picture: Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images
Source: Getty Images
Charles R. Cross, who knew the musician from the Seattle music scene and who wrote the Cobain biography “Heavier Than Heaven,” told The New York Postsomething often missed in examinations of Cobain’s life is his fear of poverty.
The feeling was renewed for the singer when director Kevin Kerslake sued Nirvana over allegations of copyright infringement related to the 1993 video for “Heart-Shaped Box.” (The suit was settled out of court after Cobain’s death.)
“What he told his drug counsellors was that his biggest fear was losing his money from a court case,” Cross says. “He’d been on the street as a kid, so the idea of going back to that was horrifying.”
Icon … Cobain was one of the biggest music stars in the world at the time he died. Picture: Supplied
Source: News Limited
The doc examines his troubled youth, growing up in the logging town of Aberdeen, Washington, in a way that artfully melds Cobain’s journals, voice recordings and drawings.
Also dissected is the rise of Nirvana from underground curiosity to household name in the space of a few months — and the heartbreak, public scrutiny, health problems and drug addiction that ultimately led to Cobain’s 1994 death, at the age of 27, by self-inflicted gunshot.
The film premieres at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday and will make its premiere in Australia on May 7, with a limited release.
Director Brett Morgen was first approached about the movie in 2007, as Love was a big fan of his 2002 doc, The Kid Stays in the Picture (about Hollywood producer Robert Evans), and provided unseen personal footage.
Morgen also gained access to videos and photos of Cobain as a child from O’Connor, but it’s Love’s trove that offers the biggest window into Cobain’s post-fame life and mindset, revealing a rail-thin recluse living in squalor and wilfully descending into drug addiction.
The speed of Cobain’s rise to fame was a major trigger to his destruction. The September 1991 release of “Nevermind” was, as O’Connor predicted, a turning point.
As the single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” raced up sales charts all over the world that year and into 1992, the singer’s initial euphoria was replaced by anxiety.
Nirvana … Cobain with band mates Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl. Picture: Supplied
Source: Supplied
“The [band’s] lives were maniacal, and Kurt’s face was everywhere,” Kevin Kerslake, who directed four of the band’s videos, tells The Post. “So when we talked about doing the video for ‘Come as You Are,’ almost the only thing that he told me was that he didn’t want to be in it. To me, that screamed ‘Get me out of here.’”
That’s exactly what Kurt did, withdrawing from interviews and opting not to tour for most of 1992 — at a point when Nirvana was the most in-demand band in the world.
“He wanted to stay in the apartment and do heroin and paint,” notes Love matter-of-factly in the film. In home-video footage from that period, Cobain has terrible skin, looks horrifically gaunt, and both he and Love appear to care little about the disgusting conditions around them.
Love … Cobain with baby daughter Frances Bean in California 1992. Picture: Supplied
Source: News Limited
A brief respite came with the arrival of Frances, born in August 1992.
But as the film outlines, the musician’s drug usage continued, due in part to a painful, undiagnosed stomach complaint that had bothered him his entire adult life.
One particularly harrowing scene features Cobain nodding out as he attempts to hold Frances still for a haircut. “I’m not on drugs,” he protests weakly, even though it’s clear that he’s lying.
Cobain was a ball of contradictions. He was a reckless drug addict, but owned a Volvo because it was the safest car in the world. He hated the scrutiny of fame, but feared losing the monetary benefits.
Daughter … Frances Bean Cobain says the choices her father made were his own — both in his drug abuse and suicide. Picture: Instagram.
Source: Instagram
He loved his daughter dearly, but ended up denying her a father. As Frances (now 22) noted in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, one of her few directions to Morgen was that she didn’t want the film to fall into the “romanticism” and “mythology” that so often surrounds her father’s memory.
“One of things that often gets played up in depictions of him is Kurt as the victim,” concludes Cross. “He was not a victim. The choices he made were his own — both in his drug abuse and suicide. Nobody forced him to do anything.”
