Since his 1994 suicide, Kurt Cobain has been preserved as some sort of Shakespearean character of the rock community—deified, mythologized, and mourned by fans on an annual mark-the-anniversary-of-his-death basis. And with Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the first authorized documentary about the late Nirvana front man, director Brett Morgen dissolves the illusion that Cobain was some musical demigod, presenting a portrait of a flawed man more talented and tortured than most.
Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture) spent seven years making the film, which is executive produced by Cobain’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, and is more of a multi-media immersion into Cobain’s heart and mind via previously unheard audio tapes, animated diary entries, heartbreaking home movies, concert footage, and unflinchingly honest interviews with family members. The home movies, which might be most affecting for viewers, track Cobain’s transformation from a cheery toddler to a young father nodding off while holding his young daughter during her first haircut. Other intimate home videos illustrate how besotted Cobain was with Courtney Love, capturing their rivaling wits and domestic happiness in spite of drugs and other emotional demons that haunted the musician from childhood through his meteoric rise to fame.
Following the film’s emotional premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend, we spoke to Morgen in Park City. Among the subjects discussed: his decision to include such personal video footage, what he learned about Cobain after combing through the rocker’s personal possessions, and what the musician’s family thinks of the finished product.
VF Hollywood: How did you become involved with this project?
Brett Morgen: In 2007, right after Chicago 10, I received a call from Courtney Love. Courtney was a big admirer of The Kid Stays in the Picture and she wanted to do a documentary about Kurt. She said, “I have all of this art in this storage facility that nobody has really seen and these home movies that we used to take. Would you be interested in doing something on him?” So I went and looked at some of the home movies and the art.
What was the process of sifting through all of his possessions in that storage facility like?
What’s interesting is that the first time I went in there, I was like, “This is it?” The stuff is in boxes and I was expecting the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. What I didn't realize was, when I looked in that box, one box had 108 cassettes. I would say that the majority of that audio had never been heard. I didn’t know what was on those cassettes, but it ended up being part where Kurt tells the story about him losing his virginity. It ended up being him singing “And I Love Her” by the Beatles. All this stuff.
The type of films I make are not so much histories as experiences of the subject. I think history is best served for academics and people who write books. And with Kurt, I had all of the tools [for an experience]. Because he had the music, as we all know, and then there were the paintings and the drawings and the journals. And this whole visual treasure chest of material that was embedded with the DNA of his own autobiography.
In what ways?
When you see the drawings that he did when he was three, he was incredibly talented for a three-year-old. They are are so full of idealism and hope. And by seven, you see that they begin to take a darker tone and suddenly Fred Flintstone is strangling the dog. And monsters start to appear. Really, it's like an interior journey through Kurt’s life as told through his art. What makes the film so satisfying is that [in addition to the visual art], Kurt had these elaborate audio montages. The reason the film is called Montage of Heck is because Kurt has a mixtape that, when I first put it on, I was in the storage facility and surrounded by all of his art and his clothes and his guitars and all of these things that were iconic Cobain things. And I put these headphones on and it is this crazy mixtape of science-fiction sounds and horror movies and the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel and Black Flag. Just this mishmash, and it felt like a portal into Kurt’s mind.
You commissioned animation sequences to complement those unheard audio tapes, so that as Kurt talks about losing his virginity in the film, viewers see a cartoon Kurt acting out that scene of his life. At what point did you decide to animate those unheard audio tapes?
From the beginning I had intended to use stop-motion animation because I had seen some stop-motion animation that Kurt did. It was a little out of focus, but I liked that it was a medium that he liked to toy around with himself. I didn’t realize at the time that there would be two big animated pieces [in the documentary] that would be hand-drawn, 24-frame animation, at the same the level as, if you ask me, anything you’ve seen in classic Disney. That style was employed because it was specifically not Kurt’s style and I didn’t want the audience to think that was Kurt’s drawing. The rest of the film is all taking Kurt’s art and bringing it to life, and that was done by another artist. It took the better part of nine months just to do the journal photography. So it was very extensive. And yet both of those styles had to come together.
You mentioned when introducing the movie that Courtney Love pretty much gave you free reign to do what you wanted with the film. Did the rest of Kurt’s family offer any input about what should be included in the film and what shouldn’t?
I think the drug use is something that [Kurt’s mother and sister] Wendy and Kim would have been very happy to have left on the cutting-room floor. I don’t think they liked seeing Kurt represented that way. But I feel that everyone knows Kurt did heroin. And yet they never had access to what that really was like for those who were close to him. So in a way, [fans] have been glamorizing it all of these years. I felt the inclusions of the scenes of him would alter that perception.
I had a discussion with Kim Cobain where she said, “My brother was so embarrassed by his heroin use. Do you really think he would want that in the film?” And I said, “I understand, Kim, but, more importantly, what you told me in the past was that your brother didn’t want to do anything that would encourage other kids to do heroin.” I never thought of this before now, but there is a chance that that scene could end up saving a life. To me, that is a much more powerful legacy than a song. This is a film that we needed to be honest. It wasn’t about tearing down our heroes, it was about making him our friend. And understanding him as a man and not a deity.
It seemed like an especially brave decision to include the home video where Kurt is holding Frances while Courtney is giving her her first haircut, and he is clearly on heroin.
That scene to me is so difficult because you see the struggle. He is trying to be a good father, desperately. He is doting on his daughter. He is singing a Sesame Street riff. And then he nods off and is about to drop her on the ground. And you want to look at it, but you don’t want to look at it. I understand why [Kurt’s mother and sister] don’t want it in the film, but let’s stop glorifying this and look at the reality of what this is like and what it was like for Frances. And I think it was important for her to see how much her father loved her, which he truly did. But I don’t think she had ever seen that [footage].
Did you ever second guess your decision to include that sequence specifically?
For the first time in my career I was given final cut. And that is a tremendous responsibility, but it is also a tremendous opportunity, and if you know me or my work you know that I don’t like to compromise.
The film addresses the fact that some people disapproved of, and were dubious of, Kurt’s relationship with Courtney. But the film proves that they were totally in love with each other. Was that something you consciously wanted to prove with this documentary?
I’m making a movie and, spoiler alert, to understand what happened in the end, you have to understand how invested Kurt was in the relationship. What I saw, and this is my own interpretation of that footage, were two people who were very in love, in a very juvenile love, in their early or mid-20s. Love evolves. Love at 40 is different than love at 30, which is different than love at 20 is. They had that fiery love and they were equals, both so witty. They were matching each other line for line. I was like, “Oh my God, it was like Lucy and Ricky on heroin.” If it was a reality TV show, you can imagine that they would have blown the Osbournes out of the water. Also, that was the stuff that [former Vanity Fair writer] Lynn Hirschberg reported on.
It was surprising to hear Courtney Love finally confess, in one of your interviews with her, that she did use heroin during her pregnancy after denying it for so long.
At the same time, yeah they were junkies but they weren’t hurting anyone and the article really had a huge effect on Kurt’s psyche. I don’t think he ever recovered from it, because they took his child away. And the humiliation of losing your child given his background and his sensitivity to all of that stuff is just [fades off].
You essentially spent seven years inside Kurt Cobain’s psyche. How did that affect you personally?
Someone asked me if it was a difficult film because of the dark subject matter and if I would take it home, and I never did. I never felt like I was in this darkness. I related tremendously to Kurt. We were in very similar situations. We were born a year apart. My parents separated when I was 9. I felt completely abandoned. To me, it was very much an empowering moment to tell a story I related to, as opposed to [Robert] Evans’s story or the Rolling Stones. Kurt meant so much culturally to my generation, there was a real responsibility to get it right for him and for Frances.
It never occurred to me to unravel the mystery [of why Cobain committed suicide], but the mystery presented itself to me and it unraveled in front of my eyes. And when I heard the tape of Kurt [recounting his life story], there was a line in there that was my “rosebud.” That was the moment when I said, “O.K., I think I understand this now.” And I had heard the tape 100 times before. There is a point in that story where he says he had had a sexual encounter with a girl that a lot of people in his school considered slow. And Kurt said that when the kids at school found out about it, he said, “I couldn’t handle the ridicule, so I went down to the train tracks to kill myself.” I had heard that, like I said, like, 100 times. And one day I am listening and I go, “Oh.” And it was like, “He couldn’t handle the ridicule, so he killed himself.”
It’s right there. It’s in black and white. And once you lock into that, you start looking at everything else and you see songs like “Floyd the Barber”. . . “I was shamed, I was shamed, I was shamed . . . ” One of the most gut-wrenching moments for me, but I don’t think anyone picks up on it, is the end-credits song, “Ain’t It a Shame.” The last thing in that song is Kurt shouting “Shame, Shame” from the bottom of his heart. As Krist [Novoselic] says at the beginning of the movie, the clues were all there. You just have to see them.
What kind of feedback did Kurt’s family give you after seeing the film?
After Frances saw the film, I walked her out to the car and she gave me a hug and said, “You made the film that I wanted to see.” And that was what it was all about. That she felt that she understood things with more clarity than ever before. I make films to entertain people. That’s all I care about. I’m not a social documentarian. I'm not trying to change the world or anything. I just want to give somebody a smile. But to have a film connect a father and a daughter . . . that will probably be the best achievement of my career.
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck will premiere on HBO on May 4.