Kurt Cobain: About A Son (DVD)
I got this purely on a whim the other day. I was browsing the documentary aisle at Best Buy and the pickings were slim. I ended up buying this for two reasons. One, I grew up as a teen in Seattle and used to see Nirvana play at small all ages shows. Two, there was a list of bands on the back whose music are featured in it, including Bad Brains, the Melvins, Butthole Surfers…my kind of stuff. When my husband saw it, he said, “I wonder if there’s any footage of us in it?” I figured chances were slim, but maybe there might be some footage from a show we were at.
The movie is a bunch of taped conversations Kurt Cobain had with a journalist who was writing a book about Nirvana. The entire narrative is Kurt talking. The video shown is mostly footage of towns he lived in. There’s some still shots of Nirvana shows, which to me were probably the best part of it. Masses of people with their hair flying, someone’s legs in the air as they crowd surf, band members rolling around on the floor of the stage—that’s my youth depicted right there.
The footage of the places he lived, Aberdeen/Montesano, Olympia, and Seattle, are all current shots. Video taken recently. Which distracted me a bit, especially when they’d show things like the EMP or the Seattle Public Library—which didn’t exist when he was alive. It starts with him talking about his childhood, with footage of Aberdeen and Montesano, the two rural Washington towns he grew up in. They’re lumber towns, and they still look the way I remember them—poor, gray, run down, depressed and depressing.
The footage of Olympia tripped me out. Kurt lived there after high school. So did I. I went to school at the Evergreen State College. I saw Nirvana play at a dorm party there once. He talks about Olympia being an artistic town with a lot of culture (compared to where he was from). To me, it was a hippy town. The culture there is very much driven by the college students, and Evergreen is a hippy school. There’s no grades there. Instead they have “evaluations.” I first learned about the horror and inhumanity that are public zoos at Evergreen. It’s a very free and bohemian town, that’s for sure. It was interesting to see it through Kurt’s eyes.
Every so often the film will show everyday people. Usually a shot of their face, close up, and sometimes a shot of them further back, so you can see them more in context of their surroundings. A girl in a record shop. A man on the street. A cop, a lumberyard worker, just average people. Kurt mentions more than once his hatred for everyday, average people. He mentions not being able to stand being near them without telling them he hates their guts. When he said that, I thought, this isn’t just a maladjusted person. He really sounds like he can’t see past the end of his nose. Later on, though, he mentions growing out of that. He eventually realizes how judgmental he was. When you hear about his childhood and how he was treated in school, you can understand how he felt.
Near the end of the movie we got a little tired of hearing him talking. It’s all the movie is—Kurt talking. He’s not all that interesting and he points it out himself. But there are captivating moments. Like when he’s talking about how the press has treated him and his family, and he wonders how Francis, his daughter, will feel when she turns 12 and reads that they were on heroin when she was born (or whatever it was the press said). What’s heartbreaking about that is she’s currently a teen and her mother has been in and out of rehab, and hasn’t always had custody of Francis.
He talks about the stomach pain he endured for years and how the drugs helped curb it. He talks about being so sick of the pain he wanted to shoot himself in the head.
Which he did a year after these interviews were done.
Besides the live stills featured occasionally throughout the movie, no pictures of Kurt are shown until the very end, lending them a very poignant significance. You only hear his voice for so long, and then to see pictures of him and realize he’s gone, and at such a young age, it’s very sad.
My husband said he sounded crazy. He said Kurt reminded him of my sister who was schizophrenic. My sister would have moments where she’d say something completely screwball, and then realize she’d said something crazy, and try to distance herself from it. Kurt didn’t say things as crazy as my sister would, but there was a sort of similarity there. Whether he was drunk or on drugs during any of the interviews, I couldn’t say, but I wouldn’t be surprised. They take place late at night. All of it was sort of hard for me to take too seriously. You ask someone like Kurt Cobain to talk about himself for hours, in the middle of the night, you think you’re going to get a lot of accurate information? Who can say.
To me, he seemed most sincere when talking about his family. There’s a touching part where you hear Courtney in the background ask him to bring a bottle upstairs for the baby when he’s done. I wonder how Francis feels when she hears it.
EDIT: Here’s the trailer.
OK, so now I want to see this, even though I have no tie to Cobain or even real love for Nirvana. Thanks for the excellent review, Susan.
Comment by Supergenius — March 24, 2008 @ 2:17 pm
I’d suggest renting it. I’m not sure if it’s something a lot of people will be that interested in—it was mainly interesting to me because of the sort of shared history I have with Kurt.
Oh, but you live in Seattle, and the footage of WA is interesting too. There’s some great shots of the city.
And the soundtrack is great.
Comment by Susan M — March 24, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
i learned about co-ops and carab-fake chocolate (blech!) at Evergreen!
Comment by Jen — March 24, 2008 @ 2:32 pm
Co-ops! Haha. Jen and I were roommates at Evergreen. We also learned there are people who don’t believe in bathing more than once a month. And those are people you don’t want for roommates.
Comment by Susan M — March 24, 2008 @ 2:36 pm
Oh, don’t forget the people who don’t beleive in using soap or deodorant. I discovered them around the same time as I found the co-ops.
Comment by tracy m — March 24, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
Susan,
Thanks for this.
Nirvana is pure early 90′s zeitgeist for me, a time I never really grew out of. I was a serious Nirvana obsessive back then. I don’t listen to their music much anymore, but given that In Utero was such a great follow-up to Nevermind, I think Cobain had plenty of other places to go musically. Shame.
I thought about renting this DVD, but am I right in assuming there’s not much in the way of Nirvana music on it? Given my own geographical horizons, it’s the music that interests me not Aberdeen, Wa. lumber yards!
Comment by Ronan — March 24, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
I don’t remember a single Nirvana song. Lots of bands that influenced them, though.
I was especially interested to hear that it was Buzz from the Melvins who made Kurt a mix tape to introduce him to punk rock.
Kurt does talk about eventually going solo and trying out different sounds. Oh, and there’s a bit where a bunch of guys are sitting in a room smoking and goofing off, and he’s talking about how being on the cusp of breaking big is the best place to be, and if he could, he’d form a new band every two years to recapture that. Then the guys get up, walk down a hallway and onto a stage, and you realize it’s Band of Horses.
Comment by Susan M — March 24, 2008 @ 5:39 pm
Oh, and the interviewer asks him if it’s true he pulled off the freeway to call a request in to KCMU (UW’s radio station) for “Love Buzz,” their first single, and waited until it came on.
He said yeah, he was about to drive out of range of the station, so he waited there for it.
Comment by Susan M — March 24, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
I just added the movie trailer to the post. It gives a good idea of what it’s like.
Comment by Susan M — March 24, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
I never got into Nirvana until later. Right after Cobain’s death. To me it was Unplugged that did it. Especially that Leadbelly song. Wow. Every time Susan dishes them I just think to that album and go, “wha?”
I would agree that Cobain seems immature and probably dysfunctional at best. (Not Courtney Love messed up – but not good) They had an interview with Dave Grohl on Fresh Air I heard last month. He comes off as really normal, humble and down to earth. It’s kind of interesting how talented he was, but was not allowed to do a lot in Nirvana. (Not that I’m a big Foo Fighters fan, but it’s undeniable he’s talented) While he’s probably a tad too respectful of Cobain it’s understandable. Some of his anecdotes are funny though. I hadn’t realized he’d come from back east to play with the band though.
Regarding that whole immaturity to all the locals. Didn’t Cobain come to hate Smells Like Teen Spirit simply because it was popular with everyone he hated?
Comment by Clark — March 24, 2008 @ 7:52 pm
I don’t know, he didn’t mention anything about specific songs. But it sounds likely.
Speaking of Nirvana’s Unplugged, I saw the Meat Puppets again this weekend, and they were amazing.
Comment by Susan M — March 25, 2008 @ 8:17 am
I’ve loved Nirvana since I first heard them back in 1989 or so. But like Clark, my favorite album, far and away, is Unplugged.
At the same time, it can scarcely be denied that Susan has impeccable taste when it comes to such issues. I’m glad to see I’ve at least got some company with this cognitive dissonance.
Comment by Randy B. — March 25, 2008 @ 8:44 am