TRIO Twenty: Ron Morgan

G21 Contributor

"Kurt & Courtney

SAN FRANCISCO - "Kurt and Courtney", a documentary film by Nick Broomfield, is being presented in a historic three week run at a small art house, the Roxie Theater, here in San Francisco. The film is ostensibly about late rock musician Kurt Cobain, of the band Nirvana, and his widow, Courtney Love.

The film was originally slated to open at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival, a must for lucrative distribution deals, but was pulled when Courtney Love, Cobain's widow, threatened through her attorneys to sue Broomfield's pants off because of unauthorized use of Nirvana songs in the soundtrack. Although Broomfield pulled the offending songs from the print being shown at the Roxie, Ms. Love's attorneys have been making grumbling noises still. It's not hard to see why she would be upset.

Broomfield, who has made a career of filming documentaries of trangressional females, from serial killer Eileen Wouronos to Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss, has focused "Kurt and Courtney" on the various conspiracy theories concerning Kurt Cobain's demise. It gives lots of screen time to those who accuse Love of arranging Cobain's death. But that's just the set up, the hype, and the reason that throngs of the morbid, the curious, and the morbidly curious are lining up to see this flick. Let's talk about the movie itself.

FLISS USSHER's G21 EUROPE column LONDON CALLING! changes venue to kick off our With Passion Issue: This week, from San Quirico, Italy... G21 ASIA new contributor RAOUL TESLA reports from Manila, Philippine Islands. BARE KNUCKLES: JEFF WINBUSH won't be seeing "Titanic." Read why here. TRIO: San Francisco's RON MORGAN on "Kurt & Courtney." POWERSBOOKS talks with "Notorious Victoria" author Mary Gabriel! Another G21 Exclusive Interview! HOT LINKS (Not From Louisiana) bestows an all-new SILVER SURF AWARD! STONEWALL VIEWS. Premiere! PHIL MARTIN on the Challenge of "Growing Up Gay" in our new feature. CULTURE CAST on people who call Cults their HOME. More meta-criticism of pomo American life. ANOTHER Great Joke of the Day in THE HOUSE OF CARDS! JENNIFER BLUE's PLANETARY MADNESS looks at YOUR influences! Hello! Use The Message Board

This film should be called "Nick Broomfield Chases his Own Tail". The film is about five minutes old when Broomfield starts interjecting comments about his difficulties in contacting, dealing with, and interviewing Courtney Love. She was in the middle of the "People Vs Larry Flynt" promotional tornado, suspicious of the Nick's motives, and kept putting him off. Thus begins a series of disappointments and letdowns, which are so blatantly telegraphed to the audience that whenever Broomfield entones in his deadpan voice-over that someone (anyone) had promised him a face to face, or a photograph of Courtney and Kurt shooting up, or anything substantial or titillating, you know he's not going to get it and we aren't going to see it.

Much of the action takes place in Broomfield's car, as he drives around depressing looking neighborhoods looking for people to talk to him about Kurt Cobain. Broomfield conducts his own interviews, as well as acting as sound tech; we see lots of shots of him wandering around with earphones and a microphone.

He talks with Courtney's Dad, a shameless con man who shows us her flowery and awful adolescent poetry. He interprets this drivel as somehow foreshadowing Courtney's alleged pay-to-slay scheme. He has written a couple of books about what a bitch his daughter is. Thanks, Dad. It becomes apparent that if she were serious about arranging to have somebody's ticket punched, charity would begin at home, if you know what I mean.

Frustrated by Courtney's continued snubs, and the obstacles she's presented, Broomfield teams up with a couple of chumps he describes as "stalkarazzi", experts in the whereabouts of celebrities. One of them appears on camera wearing a baseball cap, black RayBans and a motocross dust mask --- an antic, over-the-top, Zapatista effect that gets the audience hooting. They find Courtney rehearsing in a studio with her [own rock] band, Hole, but, in typical gutless fashion, do not confront her. Quote: "I can hear Courtney in here! (shot of closed door) She's right in there!" The "stalkarazzi" run him around in circles, and seem like psychic parasites in general, but they do point him to the most amusing person in the whole damn film.

They tell him that a guy named Il Duce, the lead singer for the Mentors, has been known to confess that Love offered him money to do in Cobain. They arrange for Broomfield to meet Il Duce, who is shown in music videos in his trademark executioner's mask surrounded by naked women masturbating and pouting. We know we have crossed the border into Tabloid Nation when Broomfield informs us that the man driving him to Il Duce's shack on the edge of Riverside, Ca., is Divine Brown's pimp. You may remember Divine as the hooker caught with English stiff-neck Hugh Grant some years back. Broomfield's one sentence explanation of the man he is traveling with speaks volumes about the demi-monde of obscure characters lurking in the margins of our culture of celebrity. Not famous, but linked obliquely to fame, Divine Brown's pimp, or someone like him, is there to waiting to show us around the junkyard just on the edge of Fame City.

The film ends at the Century Plaza Hotel, for the American Civil Liberties Union's Annual Awards Dinner, where Courtney is a presenter. Sensing that he must seize the day, Broomfield leaps to the podium after Love's speech and asks, somewhat rhetorically, how the ACLU can choose a presenter for their Free Speech Award who devotes so much time and energy attempting to stifle and threaten the people trying to document her life. It is Broomfield's shining moment, but it's short-lived; bouncers take Broomfield outside.

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