Kurt & Courtney (1998)
Grade: B
Director: Nick Broomfield
Rated R for language, some sexuality, violent and drug-related dialogue


There is a scene in “Kurt & Courtney”, the wildly unsuccessful but enormously entertaining documentary exploring the mystery of rocker Kurt Cobain’s death, in which the director, Nick Broomfield, is interviewing the man who claims to have been turned down an offer of $50,000 to kill Kurt Cobain—from Cobain’s psychotic singer/actress wife, Courtney Love. The issue is this: the man, named El Duce, is a complete psycho himself. He could be telling the truth, sure, but he could be lying; hell, he could be telling us what he believes is true but is actually not. There is a point during their frequently bizarre Q&A in which Broomfield says, “Some people may not consider you the best source of information…” (These kind of on-the-edge-of-rudeness comments are uttered frequently by Broomfield throughout the film, but one suspects it is less because he is an asshole and more because it’s his way of getting better answers out of his subjects.) Without hesitation, El Duce shoots back at him, “Well too bad…some people may not think you’re the most reliable source of information either”. The audience agrees.

Why? Because “Kurt & Courtney” is almost a complete failure. The film runs for 95 minutes, and I would guess that a bit more than five of those minutes are spent with Broomfield describing how he wishes the film could be. There are so many things that went wrong in the making of this film that one suspects Broomfield’s determination to get it made had to have been awfully strong. Exaggerated paraphrase: “I was going to place [insert song here] in this scene, but Courtney Love threatened legal action if I used any of Kurt’s music. Instead, this is one of his best friend’s roommate’s band’s debut LP’s deleted tracks.” [Song plays as we see Broomfield driving a car through the suburbs.]

And yet…“Kurt and Courtney” is as intriguing as any documentary I’ve seen. The 1994 death of Kurt Cobain is officially declared a suicide. “Kurt & Courtney” is, at heart, most interested in the conspiracy theories that have found contradictions to the suicide theory. The premise all of these conspiracy theories rest on is that Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain and instructed the killer to make it look like suicide. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Love and Cobain were constantly fighting; Love had a violent reputation; there were no fingerprints on the gun; the suicide note looks as if it was really a note that stated his leaving from the band, and the last four lines were added by someone else; and evidence seems to state that there was too much heroin in Cobain’s system for him to function well enough to shoot himself. And I’m not even listing the rest of the evidence.

But on the other hand, maybe suicide is correct. Maybe the heroin didn’t kick in right away and Cobain had time to shoot himself. After all, we learn, Cobain was always insecure and depressed—possibly suicidal. He hated how skinny he was, and when he broke into the realm of celebrity, he hated fame. Before his death, he told his loyal best friend he wanted a gun, and he got it. His marriage was on the brink of ending, and the pressure to top Nirvana’s previous efforts and to quit his drug habit may have finally been too much for him.

Finally, the film is neutral. We get Broomfield’s opinion, but the film wisely keeps the viewer’s options open, not resting itself on Broomfield’s belief alone. That is definitely a good thing. No matter how great some mysteries of entertainment can be, it is the real ones that fascinate us the most because we know they may never be solved. It rouses our inner recesses to which dark real-life mysteries like this appeal to, and damned if it doesn’t only enlarge the existing question mark—and underline and italicize it, too. That is a victorious feat, in my opinion. I wasn’t surprised to hear what Broomfield thought—he hadn’t held back his thoughts before then, had he?—but I was surprised, pleasantly, that the film didn’t base the rest of itself on Broomfield’s theory alone.

There is one overly biased opinion of Broomfield’s however, that manages to make its way into the film: he hates Courtney Love. He never says this directly, but the implication is as extreme as El Duce is weird. Love is frequently described as a, and don’t quote me here, overbearing bitch, and by the end I couldn’t tell if Broomfield wanted it that way or he just couldn’t find anyone who liked her. Ironically, despite what appears to be a hate between Broomfield and Love (he even gets on stage at a Freedom of Speech benefit and asks the audience why Love should be invited), Broomfield thinks that Cobain’s death was a suicide.

What do I think? I don’t know. “Kurt & Courtney” doubles our questions and divides our answers in half. As a documentary, it is eye-rollingly incompetent. As entertainment, it is spellbinding. The only notion “Kurt & Courtney” leaves with us is a haunting one: it doesn’t matter how Kurt Cobain died. What matters is that after a lifetime of unwanted failures (a dysfunctional family) and unwanted successes (the fame he wished he didn’t have), Cobain finally got what he wanted: an end to it all.


-Alex, September 2002