Being the recent anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain Hulu.com recently promoted that they had this doc on their website, I had seen it before years ago and thought it may be interesting to see it again since it was a long time since I had seen it.
The doc was done by Nick Broomfield a British film maker, and from the outset you can tell the film was done on the real cheap and you find out why about 1/2 of the way through the film. If you want something slick you will not like this at all.
The film starts as an examination of Cobain's relationship with Courtney Love and a look into his early life. We see the typical Cobain bridge in Seattle shots, we are taken to his school and hear from a teacher of his and an aunt. All say he was sweet but lonely in different ways and all look very unprepared for the meetings (A running theme throughout the movie). We go to a pre-fame girlfriend who has held on to a lot of Kurt's artwork from back then. You start to notice a lot of odd silence in the movie were the interviewee is nervously staring at the interviewer waiting for a sign on what he wants, Mr. Broomfield needs an editor badly.
This gets us to his relationship with Courtney. Looking back it feels like they were together for a long time, however the movie states it was only 2 years. He tracks down an old friend that the couple did drugs with, a friend who was repeatedly (and sadly) shunned by Kurt's handlers. Then it starts to get a little strange. The drug friend seems to be out of it, not that she is on something right then, but you can tell the years of drugs has killed most of what she may have been. Then we get to see some of Courtney's "people"... A father who has basically disowned her and a ex boyfriend/rockstar who claims Courtney's drive for fame drove him away from fame.
Courtney's father comes off in the film as a man angry at his daughter for her wild actions or just trying to peddle his books about the grunge couple. However after further research you find out that this man was a big force behind the Greatful Dead and has published many books on his own, most having nothing to do with Kurt or Courtney. But in the movie he comes off as a revengeful, sour man.
Next is Rozz Rezabek. He is a former Seattle phenom who Courtney tried to push to be famous. It got so crazy that he moved far away and dropped out. His thoughts are that Courtney wanted to be famous riding on the coattails of her famous boyfriend or husband, this is her game plan and he has her old writings to back his theory. Another weird, angry person in this story.
Now the film turns to a conspiracy movie. Did Courtney have Kurt killed? As odd as people had been... We ain't seen nothing yet... Welcome El Duce! We find ourselves in a vehicle being driven by "Divine Brown's pimp"!?! (Yes.... The "Hugh Grant" Divine Brown) And he claims to know someone who claims Courtney offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt and his name is El Duce, a singer for a band called The Mentors. We get some awful Mentors video. As they pull in they are greeted by a broken privacy fence and a barking dog, then a crazy, degenerate looking man who is introduced as El Duce. He says on camera the story of Courtney and $50,000 as best as his drunken self can. He also mentions a man named Alan then says "Ooops.... I'll let the FBI find him!" followed by laughter. It has been assumed by many that "Alan" killed Kurt, we may never know as El Duce dies two days later after passing out on a train track after leaving with some unknown individual.
We also get Tom Grant, a former cop who is now a PI who believes Courtney had Kurt killed. He even has an interesting site about it http://cobaincase.com/index.htm . The movie spends a lot of time with him really focusing on two things, the lack of fingerprints and the amount of heroin in Kurt's system (2 times a lethal dose) the latter is debunked by a doctor by showing a man standing on one leg with what is assumed is the same amount of heroin. There is a mountain of evidence on the site though that is better then these 2 items (Though they are bombshells themselves), I would recommend a look at the site if you are into this type of thing.
The film takes another turn as the films financing starts to be denied. A big financier is MTV and at the time "The People Vs. Larry Flint" is out and in the Oscar hunt, and Courtney is a big star on the rise. She is threating lawsuits against everyone who says or does anything remotely negative about her or Kurt. Nervous people start pulling the plug on the film and no we have gone from relationships and examining childhoods to a murder mystery to a movie about censorship.
We also get a visit with Dylan Carlson, Kurt's best friend and a very odd, screwed up individual. One thing you should keep in mind is that all these people had scheduled interviews and supposedly knew the subject matter, yet almost all seemed oddly lost. Dylan thinks that all the odd circumstances are just coincidence and then makes a very unconvincing threat saying that Kurt couldn't have been killed because if he had been then Dylan would have killed those responsible. We also go back to Courtney's dad for some more crazy threats to her and to the friend who was shunned by the handlers, she says she is scared of Courtney, we get a similar story from a journalist who had done a story on the couple when Courtney was pregnant, everyone in Seattle seems to be frightened of Courtney who is coming off as a psychotic lunatic who now has lots of money. We also go back to the druggie friend from earlier who claims to have pics of all three of them shooting up, which she never produces.
We end up with Broomfield finding Courtney at an ACLU gathering where she speaks of freedom of press as she is shutting down access and threating lawsuits behind the scenes. Mr. Broomfield somehow finds his way to the stage to call out Courtney but is quickly taken offstage after his comments, pretty ballsy stuff.
In the end Mr. Broomfield claims that he has not seen enough to say Kurt was murdered, but he is definitely not a Courtney fan. The doc is OK, a little messy, not very well produced, but worth it for the characters that the film comes across. It would have been nice if it could have used some Nirvana music, however Courtney killed that, but I doubt I had to tell you that, lol. I would recommend watching it if you like the music or are into conspiracies at all, just be ready for a slightly disjointed movie
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