Kurt & Courtney (1998)

I watched this twice before i realized I had gained no new information about Kurt Cobain and that in fact, Courtney Love presented the most credibility of anyone in this meandering film, whose total point was to convince people that she had a hand in Kurt Cobain's death.Introduced to us by Nick Broomfield are a handful of drug addicts who don't like Courtney, her father who is trying very hard to make a living by castigating his daughter, and a very very sad alcoholic named El Duche who makes it clear he will say anything Mr. Broomfield likes if he will just pony up the beers. Sadly he dies. Plus the odd disgruntled former employee. What I never found out was anything about Kurt's parents other than they put him out at age 16, but not why or anything at all about them as people.There is a lot of pointless footage, such as a confrontation with some government official working in a building Kurt used to shoot bb's at.Anyone with any meaningful information about Kurt, his motives or relationship with Courtney apparently declined to be interviewed. Unless it was some fading Seattle punk scene leftovers who doesn't like Courtney.I thought she handled Nick Broomfield very well when he confronted her about things she did decades ago when she was young and new to celebrity. The one interesting thing I learned is that Kurt and Kourtney knew each other about 2 years before he took his own life which is very sad. Imagine having a new baby, trying to get your partner into recovery and losing him in that terrible way. And then having to carry on in spite of a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors about how you killed the guy.There are apparently people who love and care about Courtney given the trouble Nick had making his poison pen documentary but we never meet them. Worth watching for the complete freak show if you like that sort of thing.

Kurt & Courtney (1998) *** (out of 4) Nick Broomfield's controversial documentary on the suicide of Kurt Cobain and the conspiracy theories around whether or not Courtney Love had him murdered. This is an incredibly strange documentary that has "witnesses" that no lawyer in the world would put on the stand but at the same time there's no question that the film will keep you glued to what you're watching. It's hard to say how much truth is found in this documentary or if everything here is nothing more that cruel gossip but I must say that it's rather obvious that Broomfield hates Love. There are a lot of problems with this documentary with the main one being Broomfield's attacks on Love at every chance he gets. It's clear he wants to know whether or not Love killed Cobain but I think there are quite a few cheap shots taken at her. The director is constantly saying how he wanted to use certain music but Love wouldn't allow it. Well, duh. Any music rights owner isn't going to let you freely use something so considering this film ran out of backers it's clear that they wouldn't have had the money to buy the music even if they were for sale. There's an episode at the end when the director could have asked her a question but didn't and instead gets on a stage and does it in public. Another cheap shot. With that said, the murder conspiracy is just something hard to wrap your brain around. Even if it was true, the witnesses here are cracked out heroin addicts so it's really hard to take what they say as the truth. You could argue that Kurt and Courtney were a part of this crowd, which I guess would be fair but I do wonder what motive some of these people had. It's clear that Love's father hates his daughter so his motives are certain. Others claim that they're terrified of Love yet they come out and say she murdered Kurt. No matter what your opinion on the truth is, it's hard to take any real evidence out of this documentary.

The damning evidence, pointed one way or the other, is not to be found in Bloomfields' "Kurt & Courtney". There is no smoking gun contained in the last few frames or words. I believe this film maker had honestly set out to dig to the bottom of the supposed scandal, perhaps even moreso excited about the prospect of finding this intangible truth when many attempts fell through in the past. At this, he does appear biased at first; his initial questions have a tendency to steer his interviewee toward some desirable response, but as the film progresses and his attitude and convictions sway, you find that he wasn't trying to force an answer but rather he is quite graceless at interviewing. Half of the time I wanted to yell at him to stop interrupting. The backdrop of the film is Courtney, not just in her important link to the story but in the climate she distantly molded before the filming even began. In some obscure legal context, she tightens the screws from an affiliated production co. on Bloomfields project and ultimately has them cut off. Needless to say, she has a tendency to pick on little guys (shown in the film) and intimidate/threaten similar journalists who show interest in getting near the same subject at hand. The film, and all of the "evidence" within, becomes about Courtney. Insinuations about her past in relation to how she handled Kurt poses some interesting perspectives on a possible agenda she had been harboring. Not to mention her violent disposition (rolled in to her constant death threats to various journalists and people they reached), and the near-smoking gun of a half-assed confession from El Duce on the subject of being approached with the kill contract. A lot of it is incriminating, none of it evidence. But Bloomfields project, truncated as it feels, was not at a loss for purpose. Despite a lack of forensic proof, and the shaky testimony of peoples involved, Bloomfield carves out a clear and infallible MOTIVE for the murder of Kurt Cobain, and that is perhaps this movies achievement. It is worth it to watch and judge for yourself.

First of all, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Lovestein were both morons. Pure and simple. This is not a documentary about "visionaries" but rather about two (or more) jaded rock junkies, both having serious mental problems, the one major difference being that one of them had actual musical talent, while the other was merely a groupie-turned-bad-singer. Courtney managed to prevent this documentary from being released for several years (if I'm not mistaken) and has probably successfully hampered its distribution later on. The reason for this is two-fold: in K&C she is (in)directly being accused or at least suspected of murdering Kurt (through whomever), but even more galling to her must be the way the film portrays her character; she is presented as an ugly woman from a dysfunctional family, suffering greatly from an inferiority complex which had driven her in her entire life to succeed, thereby trying to prove that she was "worthy". She is portrayed as mean-spirited, hypocritical, stupid, envious, primitive, untrustworthy etc. I, for one, tend to think that is a pretty fair assessment. The fact that Kelly Osbourne once described Love as "the most intelligent person I ever met" should pretty much confirm this rather than dispute it...As for Kurt, I followed the rise and fall of Nirvana from late 1991 onwards, and was immediately struck by the totally phony disinterest the three of them supposedly had for their sudden fame. They wanted everyone to believe that they were too "cool" and "artistic", i.e. not "shallow enough" to enjoy their new-found status as rock gods. This fake image was something that pervaded much of the grunge scene. Nothing could have been further from the truth, least of all in Kurt's case. 13 years after his death, a lot of the less-than-flattering truths about him are rising to the surface. Apparently, he had dreamed about becoming a rock star half his life, a typical attention-seeker, his ambition probably fueled - like Love - by an immense sense of non-worth. Kurt loved money and was very interested how much Nirvana was selling hence how much money would be going into his own pockets. Grunge music was a major scam, at least from the non-music side of it. No-one who cares only about the music and the "higher ideals" (that's a laugh) signs to a major record-label and then proceeds to make videos for MTV. Steven Sutherland, a British music journalist, has described Cobain as a hypocrite and a generally very unlikable guy. Sure, his life is a sad story - at least his childhood and mental disease - but this is also a guy who not only got along with a trash-floozy like Love, not only dated her (which is bad enough), but actually MARRIED her! That must speak volumes both about his character and his intelligence. Plus, he had an enormous ego. Just like Bono or Michael Stipe, he hid behind a phony facade, while raking in millions, all the while being "the man of the people". Only mental disease distinguished him from the above-mentioned posers. Broomfield's documentary includes a segment in which Kurt threatens a journalist just because she dared write a critical piece about his darling comrade-junkie-in-arms, Love.As for Nick Broomfield, this man doesn't make documentaries that can be taken at face value. He is very far from being a manipulator, propagandist, and liar of the Michael Moore sort, but he isn't exactly naive either. His film about the (very guilty) female serial-killer Aileen Wournos takes an astoundingly biased pro-Wournos stand, and this fact alone must make one question his objectivity. The other film he made I saw was the one about Heidi Fleiss, the "Hollywood Madam". That was a fascinating film and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed K&C.Apart from the immense struggle for fame which characterized both blonde junkies, another central theme is the "mystery" regarding Kurt's death. Courtney? Broomfield really lays it on thick, hoping his movie would make a solid enough case for a murder rather than suicide, which was supposed to give the movie great notoriety hence make Nick a very rich man. Of course, he doesn't go too far with the accusations for legal reasons. There would have been no problem with Nick's ambition, except for the simple fact that it should be more than obvious to anyone that it really was suicide. Il Duce, a fascinating singer/hobo, tells how Courtney offered him 50,000 dollars to clip Kurt. Testimony is only as reliable as its source. The fact that he died only months after giving the interview for this film does not prove anything.The film also features Kurt's good friend and drug-dealer, the singer from Earth, a stoner rock band. The way this guy looks and talks is fascinating. Another highlight is when the hypocrisy of Hollywood is exposed at the end of the movie when Nick "invades" some pathetic PC gala dinner with Courtney - of all people - as one of its main speakers.As far as Kurt's death goes, it has nothing to do with either fame or the even more ludicrous notion that he killed himself because he supposedly "sold out" musically. But it has a lot to do with his manic-depression (which can often end in suicide), his drug use - which was a major part of his life BEFORE he hit it big with Nirvana, and last but not least genetics; he had a history of suicides in his family. Besides, does Courtney seem bright enough to pull off a murder of a famous person, a murder so perfect that it would fool all those detectives and forensic experts? Forget it.There is an aspect of Kurt's death that is very tragic, but that never gets mentioned, and this is the fact that his death lead to the creation of the Foo Fighters. Now, THAT is a damn shame...