Kurt Cobain biopic - Montage Of Heck

Anybody looking forward to this Kurt Cobain documentary? I love Nirvana, so this is something that I've been looking forward to for quite a while.

 

Really looking forward to this one. The trailer looks fantastic.

 

Always ready for more Kurt.

 

I saw a screening Sunday at the Atlanta Film Festival. It's very powerful and I want to see it again. Here's a link to a blog post I wrote about it: http://ellingtonic.com/montage-of-heck/

 

It isn't playing anywhere around her, so I have to wait until next month!

 

100% so far on Rotten Tomatoes >>>
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kurt_cobain_montage_of_heck_2015/

 

They said the only other place it screened was SXSW. HBO was one of the sponsors of the Atlanta Film Festival and Montage of Heck was a last minute addition.

 

Went to see it earlier. It's pretty well done and builds an interesting picture of who Kurt was as a person.

 

I posted this in the bootleg discussion, but it's also relevant here. Quite a bit of the music in "Heck" will be unknown to even bootleg collectors. I remember hearing the "Montage of Heck" track itself in the early 90s.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...ntary_transported_me_back_to_a_childhood.html

 

Saw it here in Seattle a couple weeks ago. It's a very powerful film, and not at all easy to watch - not just for the downward spiral toward the end, but pretty much throughout his entire troubled life. I'm not the biggest Nirvana fan (I only own Nevermind, honestly), so I have no idea how much of what's in the movie is new/unreleased (though Morgen talks about "80% of it being rare and unreleased"), but there's a lot of home audio (lots of demos, lots of Kurt reading from his own journals, etc.).

 

The UK Blu-ray has already been released .

 

I was somehow disappointed after watching Montage of Heck...it didn't feel like "the definitive film on Kurt Cobain" at all.
The animated journal entries were nice for a minute but after that it was just distracting...the cuts were too fast, the animations
felt like a gimmick after a while. Information overload.
Why didn't the director interview Krist Novoselic but not Dave Grohl? I don't get it.

 

Agreed on the animation and I also thought they could have cut out a lot of that home movie stuff. Supposedly Grohl isn't in it because of some scheduling difficulties, but I would bet it has more to do with Love not wanting him in it. But that's just a guess.

Also:

Spoiler

I thought using 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night' from Unplugged was a pretty predictable and lazy way to end the movie. That show was five months before his death and wasn't his last performance, and it just seems like using that footage in that way is very much a Cobain cliche at this point.

 

Scheduling conflicts. Grohl did eventually get interviewed, although at that point the movie was pretty much completed. And remember, this isn't a movie about Nirvana, it's about Kurt Cobain. Krist was really Kurt's best friend from the time they were teens, so it would make sense that they would interview him.

 

"Scheduling conflict" is a P.C. answer, but a cynic like myself can't help but point out the documentary was obviously made with a lot of input from Courtney Love. And Dave Grohl and Courtney Love do not see eye to eye.

 

One of the articles I read had Morgan saying that all of the interviews were done in rented locations and not the subjects' homes as it might appear. Nothing wrong with that except that the room and the furniture chosen for the Don Cobain segments are obviously chosen to sort of paint a picture of who he is that might not be accurate at all. I don't know, just seems a little weird.

 

Actually, she's on pretty good terms with both Grohl and Novoselic now. And it wasn't made with a lot of input from Love; in fact, she had nothing to do with it really until her interview. She did want Morgan to do it, but Kurt's daughter was really the driving force behind it. And his daughter and Love haven't really been in good standing with each other until quite recently.

 

Saw it last night on HBO and LOVED it! It's a great insight into who Kurt was on the inside. Very personal and intimate... and so damn sad.

Two interesting points I've been discussing with fellow fans are Wendy's recollection of him as a charismatic child from the start (and the video does demonstrate that) and Courtney's assertion that he attempted suicide because she was contemplating cheating on him. That second point has been way more controversial, I'll admit...

 

Illuminating and depressing. Cobain's talent often seemed at odds with his contempt for fame and stardom, perhaps even his contempt for himself. Depression is an insidious disease.

Between the roller coaster of his career and the disfunction in his personal life, he had little chance without major changes being made.

His daughter seemed to be the one positive aspect of his life, but was not enough to bring him to seek help for his miriad of personal struggles.

 

I realize this documentary was about Kurt and not Nirvana. But I think Dave's complete absence from a 2+ hour documentary is difficult to ignore. If both parties were truly interested in making it happen I'm sure they could've found some time for an interview.

 

They did do one. Morgan felt that the movie was already 'perfect' the way it was. There's a good chance that Grohl's interview will be on the DVD release.
Truthfully though, what's the point? Because he was the drummer when they 'made it big'? Why not interview Chad Channing, the previous drummer?

 

Yes, Grohl and Channing should have been interviewed and it's weird that they are conspicuously absent. I found the interviews with Novoselic very interesting, so I figure any "survivor" who lived and breathed with the guy previous to his fame could have shared some very important insight.

Those criticisms aside, I found the film quite engaging, but I actually agree with Novoselic here:

http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/news...wn-away-by-the-first-23-and-hated-the-last-13

The first 2/3rds of the film actually sheds some light onto Cobain's upbringing and perspective... the final 1/3rd is more just like a log of events.