 Here you'll find reviews of 'Kurt & Courtney', that I've found in magazines etc. - - - - - - - - - - - - - SAN FRANSISCO CHRONICLE Cobain Film A Hatchet Job On Courtney Director hints that Love had her husband killed. - Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Critic KURT AND COURTNEY: Documentary. Directed by Nick Broomfield. (Not rated. 99 minutes. At the Roxie Cinema.) Looking at "Kurt and Courtney," a pot-stirring documentary that opens today at the Roxie Cinema, one has to wonder if Nick Broomfield, the film's heavy- on-chutzpah British director, has ever heard of ethical standards. An exploration into the demise of rock star Kurt Cobain, whose death was ruled a suicide when his body was found at his Seattle home in 1994, ``Kurt and Courtney'' raises the possibility that Cobain's musician- actress widow, Courtney Love, hired someone to kill Cobain so she could enjoy his considerable riches. That's an awfully tawdry premise for an investigative film but one that Broomfield, a veteran filmmaker whose works include portraits of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and Florida serial killer Aileen Wuornos, was apparently powerless to resist. Never mind that ``Kurt and Courtney,''which was dropped from the Sundance Film Festival last month, lacks reliable evidence, solid research or reputable sources: The subject alone, it seems, was enough to trigger Broomfield'sbottom-feeding impulses. HALF-TRUTHS AND ACCUSATIONS Broomfield traffics in hearsay, half-truths and reckless accusations. He offers specious testimony from Love's ax-grinding ex-boyfriend; her bitterly estranged father, Hank Harrison; and a Courtney Love look-alike named ``Amy'' who says she knew Love and Cobain but can't produce photographs supporting her claim. There's also a burly, tattooed musician called ``El Duce'' who appears drunk, flips the bird at the camera and claims with a psychotic leer that Love offered him ``50 grand to whack Kurt Cobain.'' Broomfield paid the man $100 for that interview -- a fact he acknowledged in a recent interview but doesn't include in his film. ``Kurt and Courtney'' apparently started as an earnest effort to understand Cobain, his background and his legacy. Broomfield opens the film in Seattle, where Cobain's band Nirvana started its career; visits Aberdeen, the Washington town where Cobain was reared; and interviews Cobain's aunt, his ex-girlfriend Tracy Miranda and a friend who lived with him in Olympia. So far so good, but when ``Kurt and Courtney'' veers into speculation and gives voice to bizarre and unreliable witnesses, it reeks of tabloid excess. ``You stole my career!'' shouts Love's ex-boyfriend during a tirade he delivers to Broomfield's camera. ``I don't care if you are Jesus and your lawyers are the 12 disciples!'' For all its flaws, ``Kurt and Courtney'' is perversely entertaining. The scariest moments belong to Harrison, an opportunistic hothead who wrote two exploitation books after Cobain's death and is now bent on suggesting to the world that his daughter is a murderer. ``It's a great war,'' Harrison says of the rift. ``and I hope the public sees it.'' Broomfield challenges Harrison and his grim determination to malign his daughter, but the fact that he includes Harrison's vicious spew in his film instead of filing it in the nearest dumpster indicates Broomfield's preference for sizzle and sleaze over the truth. Courtney Love is no saint, as we see from a threatening letter she wrote to Vanity Fair journalist Lynn Hirschberg. Obsessed with controlling her image and Cobain's legacy, Love also left hysterical answering-machine messages with Cobain biographer Victoria Clarke -- which Broomfield includes in his film. DISARMING CHARM Broomfield's style of journalism is pure kamikaze, but he seems to get away with it, thanks to charm, good looks and a soft British accent. His film is so unprofessional and so lacking in proportion, though, that you can't help siding with Love -- whatever her defects and excesses -- and discounting her accusers. There isn't much Broomfield won't do to get a story. At one point he enlists the help of two Hollywood ``stalkerazzi'' to nab an interview with Love, and then includes footage of himself rushing the stage at an ACLU awards dinner in Los Angeles and denouncing Love, who was invited in connection with her breakthrough performance in ``The People vs. Larry Flynt.'' Broomfield gets strong-armed off the stage, and we're supposed to think that the ACLU, which works to preserve First Amendment protections, is hypocritical for silencing this lone crusader for truth. What a load of c-- ! - - - - - - - - - - - - - E! Online - Gossip Whom do you want first? The big diva comic, the little diva comic or just the plain ol' diva? Let's go with the real girl first, shall we? That be Miss Courtney Love--the middle one being the nouveau political rebel and the latter being that Whinefeld dude. And I don't know 'bout you, but I've just about had it with his show's demise being considered the equivalent of Leo DiCaprio dating a woman who actually eats. There's a guy named Nick Broomfield who has done documentaries on gals like hooker Heidi Fleiss, killer Aileen Wournos and Parliamentfrau Margaret Thatcher. His latest is called Kurt and Courtney, which Ms. Love, for good reason, has been trying her bestest to keep from our eyes. No wonder. The flick pretty much says she's an unpretty combo of all Broomfield's past subjects. So, with his black Rolex gleaming next to his greasy lunch, N.B. and I had a little Hollywood chat. Read on. (For the record, Ms. Love says she's "not interested" in helping Broomfield "make money" off of a tragic time in her life; she also says she's satisfied with the Seattle police investigation.) You have a thing for notorious women, don't you? I find women more interesting than men. Women have reinvented themselves more than men have. Does Courtney have more in common with Margaret Thatcher or Heidi Fleiss? Thatcher, definitely. She's very determined. Measured. I'm sure they both write lists. Are you afraid of Courtney? No. Have you had any threats or contact from her? Just her lawyers. They threatened the Roxie [in San Francisco, which showed the film] and radio stations and indicated that they shouldn't do interviews with me. Is it foolish of me to be doing an interview with you? Am I endangering myself? Well, she'd probably be delighted if you did an assassination job on me. You'd probably get a great interview with her. What I have written so far is that my personal impression of Courtney and that of your film couldn't be more different. Look, I didn't expect any of this stuff to be true about her. I went in expecting to like her. I expected her to be rather like Heidi, which is to start off with a bad impression and then come to like her in the end. That's a much more satisfactory ending than the one I've got. What attracted you to this project? Kurt. What an icon he is. To this day, I don't find Courtney a very interesting person. I'm not at all fascinated by her. But because of the problems that occurred, I inevitably ended up focusing on her. The steps she took to remove my funding were significant. So many other people have had the same problem--people have lost their funding, books haven't appeared, articles haven't come out... Do you think Courtney is a murderer? On the basis of the evidence that's out there at the moment, I could never call her that. But I feel there are a lot of strange circumstances surrounding Kurt's death. And yet the Seattle Police Department says it's a closed case. The autopsy report hasn't been made public. There are a lot of questions--valid questions--that need to be answered. I have no doubt the case will be reopened. Do you think Courtney drove Kurt to kill himself, as the film strongly suggests? I believe what their nanny says. She was there. Also, I heard it from a lot of other sources. Now, obviously it takes two people to make that decision. There had to be elements in him [to kill himself]. Then you throw in the drugs that make people wonky anyway. But I think it's significant that she has never talked about it. But, come on. If my partner committed suicide, I certainly wouldn't want to talk about it. There are too many bizarre things, so many things that don't make any sense. Like, why did she hire a private detective from the yellow pages--a detective who didn't know Kurt--to find him? There was somebody in the house who knew Kurt was in the greenhouse [where Cobain killed himself]. He was there for four days. Do you really believe nobody knew where he was for four days? These are just layman's questions, and as a layman, I think there are a lot of weird things that don't add up. What advantage would Courtney have in Kurt's death? In the the state of Washington, you automatically get everything if your spouse commits suicide and there's no will, which Kurt didn't have. How many times did you take these accusations to Courtney? I must have made at least--between calling Courtney's two lawyers, agents, her publicist, her makeup artist--at least 35 phone calls. I genuinely wanted to get her side, but they were all extremely defensive. Have you hurt Courtney or her career? Look, I've got a lot more stuff that is a lot more extreme and that isn't in the film. This is the tip of the iceberg, I assure you. I took out sections with Kurt's aunt, for example, where she was fighting with Courtney over Kurt's funeral, and how she thought Kurt had "married his mother" because they were both so controlling. Horrendous stories that were really more about Courtney as a mother, and I felt uncomfortable with those things. How powerful is Courtney Love? I think she knows a lot of powerful people. Agents from ICM were calling up distributors and threatening them to not buy my film, for example. What about your power? Well, I don't have any lists. I'm thinking of taking it up. I highly recommend it. - - - - - - - - - - - - - SAN FRANSISCO EXAMINER Documentary chronicling Cobain's life and death less illuminating than obsessive and whiny Nick Broomfield's new documentary, "Kurt and Courtney," has gathered a lot of publicity after being pulled from the lineup of this year's Sundance Film Festival, allegedly because of the growing clout Courtney Love, one of the film's primary subjects, has gained recently in Hollywood. The film, which proposes to chronicle the life and tragic death of Nirvana guitarist and lead singer Kurt Cobain and his complicated relationship with Love, his wife, is unfortunately such a mishmash of speculation and pomposity that it comes across almost as a dark comedy. Broomfield is so obsessed with Love's attempts to curtail the film, and his own difficulties in obtaining funding for it, that he sounds like he's whining half the time. The film begins a run at the Roxie in San Francisco Friday. Broomfield uses much of the movie to explore whether Cobain actually committed suicide, as all the official inquiries have concluded, or whether something more sinister was behind his death. Unfortunately for Broomfield, the people he talks to in the movie, including Love's father and a private eye who is obsessed with the murder angle, come across as paranoid conspiracy theorists at best and just plain weird at worst. This is not to say that "Kurt and Courtney" doesn't have its tender moments. Cobain's aunt, who is interviewed extensively, shares recordings of Cobain singing when he was only 2 years old, with the joy in his voice a startling contrast to the troubled heroin addict he later became. But the film is so starkly biased to portray Cobain as a saintly, tortured soul and Love as a money-hungry, manipulative, violent shrew that you can't help thinking the truth lies somewhere more in the middle. Broomfield doesn't much help his own cause with his droll British approach. He constantly is turning his camera on before people realize they are about to be put on film and spends an inordinate amount of film depicting drives up various streets where Cobain lived at one point in his life. It sinks to almost Monty Python-like, mock documentary style at times, even if Broomfield struggles hard to keep up the proper front. Serious tone of voice does not always make for serious filmmaking. To Broomfield's credit, however, he does eventually come around to the conclusion that all the speculation that Cobain may have been murdered was just that - speculation. He may have been convinced ultimately by an interview he has with a rocker who identifies himself as "El Duce," who claims Love once offered him $50,000 to blow Cobain's head off with a shotgun. "El Duce" is so unbelievable that even the unflappable Broomfield has to laugh as the guy spins one seemingly tall tale after another. It does seem to be believable that Kurt and Courtney may have been going through a rough period toward the end, as their former nanny talks about all the time spent in the home speaking of the status of the couple's wills, for example. Toss in some liberal drug addiction and you can't have a very stable household, to put in mildly. Love's attorneys succeeded in getting the film pulled from Sundance by claiming that Broomfield did not obtain the proper licensing arrangements for some of the film's music. Consequently, for a movie based on the lives of two rock stars, the film is certainly lacking in use of the music of either Cobain or Love to help explain their immense popularity. Broomfield tries to get around this by flatly stating at points in the film, "This is where I wanted to use these songs, but I couldn't." It's pretty weak, and brings up the whining angle once again. "Kurt and Courtney" is a very strange movie, with some amusing aspects. Unfortunately for Broomfield, most viewers are likely to see it more as a one-sided rip job on Love. She may not be a saint, and may even be as manipulative as she is portrayed, but even Love deserves a little more objectivity than Broomfield brings to this film. - - - - - - - - - - - - - ROXIE THEATER WORLD PREMIERE Friday Feb 27 to Wednesday Mar 18 Kurt and Courtney (World Theatrical Premiere) Fresh from its conspicuous absence at the Sundance Film Festival, the Roxie Cinema takes on Nick Broomfield's controversial new film, Kurt and Courtney. From the subversive director who brought us Heidi Fleiss, Hollywood Madam and Fetishes, comes a fascinating new work of investigative journalism and macabre parody. The story of grunge music icon, Kurt Cobain, and punk's bad-grrrl turned movie star, Courtney Love. Cobain's death in 1994 shocked his fans, and despite its official ruling as a suicide, there have been a number of allegations since, insinuating more sinister forces at work. Beginning with a poignant portrait of the young Cobain, the film continues on a bizarre journey that brings Broomfield in touch with some of the strangest characters (sources, friends and family, and ex-lovers) imaginable. When Broomfield starts to question Love about her possible involvement with Cobain's death, the film becomes a startling commentary on documentary filmmaking and tabloid sensationalism, with its subject expanding from Kurt and Courtney to the cult of celebrity and the ethics of journalism. "The most talked about film at the Sundance Film Festival is the one they were afraid to show. Disturbing and luridly entertaining, Kurt and Courtney is a freakish journey into the sleazier corners of the entertainment world." (from Newsweek, written by David Ansen) - - - - - - - - - - - - - |