'Kurt Cobain: A Montage of Heck' News: Allows Insight Into Music Icon's Life
Over the years, the world has seen countless of documentaries about late Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain. But not even one was able to paint a picture of Cobain as vivid and raw as "Montage of Heck."
Lifted from the title of his unreleased 1988 mix tapes, "Montage of Heck" documents the entirety of Cobain's life – from his childhood to his untimely death.
Rights to use Cobain's notebooks, drawings, and mix tapes were given to Oscar-nominated filmmaker Brett Morgen, who also had the opportunity to talk to immediate family members, Cobain's wife Courtney Love, and daughter Frances Bean.
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A large part of the film include never before seen footages such as the Super 8 home videos that shows Cobain's first three years of life. The start of the film already gives a peek into the family dynamics that the singer grew up in. The audience will see his personal struggles and feelings of rejections that he poured out to his audiotapes.
"Montage of Heck" attempts to show a different Cobain – away from all the fame and glory – the fragile human that he really is.
"People didn't realize how very funny Kurt Cobain was, or how romantic he was, or what a doting father he was. Ultimately the mythology of the man is that he was in pursuit of fame, and then he didn't want fame anymore. I hope this film shatters that illusion," Morgen told BBC.
"I think Kurt, the child of divorce, was in pursuit of family his whole life, and when that became defiled that's what ultimately led him to take his own life. But I didn't make this film for fans. I made it for Frances," he said.
Although Morgen only worked with Cobain through the documentary, he had the opportunity to work with Cobain's daughter Frances Bean, the film's executive producer.
"When Brett and I first met, I was very specific about what I wanted to see, how I wanted Kurt to be represented … I told him, 'I don't want the mythology or the romanticism,'" the artist told Rolling Stone.
"Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck" premiered during the Sundance Film Festival last January 25, 2015 and will have a television premiere on HBO on May 24, 2015, following a limited theatrical run this April.
