Picture it: The year is 1991. It’s central Minnesota. I’m in my bedroom, face festooned with zits. My favorite bands at the time are Guns N Roses and Metallica, whose recently released Black Album was receiving heavy airplay. Which explains why I’m listening to WHMH, the local rocker, in the hopes that they’ll play Sweet Child O Mine, Patience or Enter Sandman. And I can get my rock on.
Instead, something called Smells Like Teen Spirit happened on the radio. By some band named Nirvana. Who knew Buddhists could scream so sweetly? Instantly, I was hooked. The song rocked. To my 15-year-old virgin brain, life didn’t get any better than this.
Nevermind later became the first CD I ever purchased. It still may be the best.
Nirvana ushered in a new era. I felt connected to them in a way I’d never really connected with any other band. Maybe it was their small-town roots, their punk rock ethics or just how different their sound was from anything that was getting airplay at the time, but in some small way Nirvana spoke to me. In many ways, they were the Beatles of the 90s.
Flash forward three years. It’s an April day in Central Minnesota. My musical horizons have broadened a bit since 1991, but I’m still in love with Nirvana. And I’m still pretty zitty. To this day I don’t remember how I heard of Cobain’s death. Given his recent overdose and suicidal public image, I don’t think it came as a shock. Though, at the time, I remember it being one of the saddest days of my life.
And we’re back to the present. I rarely listen to Nirvana, having overplayed those bursts of energy in my teenage years. I’m old now, the innocent passion of youth replaced by the cold hard logic of middle-age. So when Kurt and Courtney, the 1998 documentary that set out to explore whether Cobain was the victim of his own hand or the victim of murder, entered my house via Blockbuster, I let it languish on the shelf for a while.
When I finally plopped it in, it wasn’t because I’m the passionate Nirvana fan I was as a teenager. I just had some time to kill and it was the first DVD I could find that seemed interesting.
Immediately, I was hooked. My long-forgotten love for Nirvana flooded back as documentarian Nick Broomfield thrust himself into the story, going back to Aberdeen, to Olympia, to Seattle, to Portland, to LA, in a quest to track down rumors of a Courtney Love-ordered whack.
All-in all, it’s a fascinating ride through the seamy underbelly of fame. There are lots of dive motels, lots of people disfigured by years of drug use and more than a few deep, dark looks into the closets of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain.
And the characters populating the documentary aren’t your everyday normal folks.
1. Love’s own father seems to think his daughter has something to do with Cobain’s death. And has written two books about it, one of which he made sure to display – out of the sunlight’s glare – during his interview. Now we know who Courtney got those media-whoring, money-grubbing genes from.
2. A nanny who quit a week before Cobain’s death says a lot without saying much at all, insinuating that Love dominated Cobain and was really only interested in making sure he didn’t modify his will.
3. The odd El Duce, leader of the “rape rock” band the Mentors and an acquaintance of Love’s for years, claims on camera that Love offered him $50,000 to kill Cobain. He said he didn’t do it, but knew who did. His claims even passed a lie detector test with flying colors. A week after his interview, he was hit by a train behind his house.
4. Courtney’s ex-boyfriend Roz, once a lead singer in a Portland-area band whose star was rising, is relegated to a bizarre anti-Courtney rant in his basement.
5. Courtney herself. Let’s just say this movie doesn’t paint strong picture of Love as a loving wife. But it does paint her as a master manipulator interested only in fame and fortune.
Sadly, even Broomfield himself becomes a part of the story. He claims the movie started as an attempt to determine if Cobain did actually kill himself. After great build-up and telling interviews with the fascinating cast of characters, Broomfield quickly changes course, coming up with a quick answer as to whether Cobain killed himself or not, and then moving on to attack Courtney Love for putting pressure on the financiers of the documentary, who subsequently pulled out.
What follows is a bizarre sequence of events that has Broomfield and some hired celebrity stalkers trespass during Love’s tour rehearsal, trying to ask her embarrassing questions. Their camera battery dies, so they decide to hit up Love at an ACLU award. Broomfield asks a few questions of Love, then, after her speech, rushes the podium and insults the ACLU for having Love on because she once threatened the life of a reporter.
What started as a promising look at the life and death of Kurt Cobain became the egotistical director’s personal vendetta against Courtney Love. All because she pressured MTV to pull out of funding his film.
Which explains why, in the end, this film left a bitter taste in my mouth. Like so many people before and after Cobain’s death, Broomfield was trying to ring the register on the Cobain cash cow rather than mimic Cobain and make art for art’s sake. Which, in the end, is why Cobain was successful and Broomfield is not.