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ALL APOLOGIES
"Kurt and Courtney" documentary premieres amid controversy
Back before she was known as Courtney Love, Courtney Harrison dated Rozz Rezabek, the singer of a popular Portland punk band. An aspiring chanteuse even then, Harrison drafted up a list of the things she needed to do in order to get famous and gave it to Rezabek. Among the more obvious listings, like "Gig a lot locally," were "Make a movie. Sign a deal. Meet Michael Stipe." After reading from the list, Rezabek rails about Harrison's less-than-stellar performances in bed and how she single-handedly destroyed his burgeoning career.
A sad scene from a dimly lit dive bar on a Tuesday afternoon? No. It's actually one of the many stabs at Courtney Love found in Nick Broomfield's controversial new film, Kurt and Courtney. The film -- removed from this year's Sundance Film Festival after Love threatened to sue for defamation of character and non-clearance of music rights -- premiered Friday at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco amid faxes and phone calls from Love's lawyers. If Love continues to wield her considerable media power against the film, however, Broomfield faces a serious challenge in bringing the film to a national audience.
The bitter Rezabek actually makes for one of the film's more reliable interview subjects -- although that's not saying much. Aside from Kurt Cobain's ex-girlfriend Tracy Miranda and his aunt Mary, who plays tapes of a two-year-old Cobain singing the Beatles' "Yesterday," the hodgepodge of fringe characters who offer opinions on Love's heroin use, her purported involvement in a Cobain murder conspiracy, and her role in Cobain's general demise hardly comprises a witness dream team.
But even after casting some of the more outlandish accusations aside (most of which are charged by Love's own father, who attended Friday's screening), a picture of Love as a manipulative, power-hungry harpy emerges -- not so much via the character descriptions offered, but through scenes depicting Love's attempts to stop the making of this film.
After catching wind that the film was being made, someone from Love's camp -- possibly Courtney herself -- reportedly contacted the president of MTV to complain. Since Broomfield's film was being financed by the cable network Showtime (owned by Viacom, which also owns MTV), the film posits that Love was able to use her hefty musical clout to force Showtime to withdraw funding (In the end, Broomfield was able to finish the film with assistance from the BBC and private investors). Here lies the film's subtle thesis: In today's increasingly consolidated corporate world, it's far too easy to suppress artistic projects that are perceived to conflict with a corporate asset. And Showtime isn't the only establishment entity shown to be bending under Love's will; in one of the film's highlights, Broomfield is thrown out of an ACLU dinner after he questions why the organization chose Love as its featured speaker when she has physically threatened journalists for years.
As a documentary, Kurt and Courtney is seriously flawed. By interviewing only people whose credibility -- and in many cases sobriety -- is suspect, Broomfield hardly presents a defensible character portrait. But allowing Courtney Love to tell her own story through countless nefarious episodes and litigious attempts to protect her current status as Versace Tamagotchi, the film is a fascinating voyeuristic success.
ERIC HELLWEG
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHERS
Hole dads scuffle at 'Who Killed Kurt Cobain?' lecture
The father of Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur was physically ejected from a multimedia presentation called "Who Killed Kurt Cobain?" in Montreal, Canada, last Thursday. Nick Auf der Maur was attempting to publicly condemn the event and its three producers, one of whom is Courtney Love's estranged biological father, Hank Harrison.
Auf der Maur, a well known Montreal columnist, along with former Montreal Gazette music critic Juan Rodriguez walked on stage at a press conference announcing the cancellation of the main event due to legal pressure from Love and began berating Harrison and co-presenters Ian Halperin and Max Wallace, the authors of a soon to be published book entitled "Love & Death: The Story of Kurt & Courtney," which infers foul play in the April '94 suicide of Cobain. Both Auf der Maur and Rodriguez were removed from the hall by venue bouncers.
Montreal was the last stop in a four-city tour that included Ontario's Hamilton, London and Toronto. The Toronto engagement was attended by roughly 200 Nirvana addicts, curiosity seekers and occasional hecklers who paid $12.50 for the festivities. There, Jack Palladino, a San Francisco lawyer retained by Love, interrupted Harrison and authors Halperin and Wallace and debunked the evidence and its presenters.
Halperin told the Montreal audience of about 80, "I've been harassed, I've been followed -- I'm not backing off this. This story goes further." He told Rollingstone.com that Palladino has been dogging him for months and the Love camp had even gone as far as to take out ads and make phone calls to various book publishers warning them off printing their manuscript as well as a similar book written by Harrison called "Kurt Cobain: Beyond Nirvana."
Halperin says that the publishers have been balking. "They're not concerned with the legalities of our book," says Haperin, who contends that a lawyer has already cleared their manuscript. "They're concerned with having to incur the legal costs of any action taken against them."
Halperin adds it was originally Harrison's lecture series. "We heard about it," says Halperin, "and thought we should get involved because we could present a more educated view of the case because he tends to mouth off a bit. He actually does accuse her of murder." He adds that his and Wallace's book doesn't accuse Love of anything, it just suggests the case should be re-opened.
Hole's manager Brian Celler refused to comment on the proceedings and would neither confirm nor deny Love was trying to stop the book from being published or that they were trying to stop the series, which Halperin says will continue in the States next year. But Love's camp is obviously putting on pressure. Toronto-based promoter Victor Shiffman was sent a letter from the New York law firm Gendler, Codikow and Carroll threatening legal action if the tour continued.
Similar letters were sent to the venues including one addressed to the Opera House in Toronto that said, in part: "We are shocked that you are providing Halperin, Wallace and the grotesquely pathetic Hark Harrison with a forum for their vicious and defamatory accusations. Any person or entity which publishes or republishes defamation with knowledge of its falsity is liable for the damages caused whether or not that person or entity endorses the falsehood."
Promoter Shiffman confirmed to the Canadian Press wire service he wasn't legally ordered to stop but he told the service "the pressure was too much" and he pulled the plug on Montreal.
The lecture builds a murder conspiracy theory around Cobain's suicide and contends: Love was looking for "a vicious divorce lawyer" to fight a reported prenup that favored Cobain; there was a $50,000 contract out on Kurt's life; that no fingerprints were present on the shotgun found with Cobain's body; that an autopsy ruled the singer had a "double-dose" of heroin in his system; and that a portion of the suicide note is in someone else's handwriting. They also trotted out video taped interviews of coroner Dr. Nikolas Hartshorne admitting he and Love were friends, and footage of private investigator Tom Grant, hired by Love to track Cobain down when he went AWOL from a drug rehabilitation center just prior to his death, saying he believed there was foul play.
The Canadian media almost universally panned the lecture and dismissed the arguments as thin at best. Canada's Jam! showbiz news wire portrayed Harrison, who has penned three books about the Grateful Dead, as a rambling, aging, overweight hippy with a bone to pick with estranged daughter Love and called the presentation a cultish "three-hour amateur freak show." The Toronto Sun used the adjectives "crude," "oddball," and "bizarre."
REVENGE OF THE NERDS
Kurt Cobain of Nirvana
As his song 'Negative Creep' suggests, Nirvana's lead singer was kind of anti-social. But it's hard consider one of the 20th century's most influential and undoubtedly talented songwriters as being anything less than Mr Popularity at high school. Yet Kurt Cobain's lyrics are littered with references of how much he hated school, hated authority and hated the in crowd ideal. 'School' rocks with repetitious lyrics said to diss Seatlle's cliquey music scene and Kurt's belief that it was like being back in school. 'Come As You Are', (about how people act and how society believes they should) and 'Breed' on being trapped in middle-class America. It's fair to say that the man who brought 1970's punk ideals to a new grunge audience had something of a problem with the idea of conformity. He may not have been spending lunch hour in the library brushing up on those dungeons & dragons moves, but Cobain was definately and ultimate high school misfit
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