Courtney Love On Kurt at Tribeca Film Festival Screening: “That Was a Soul Mate Thing”
Courtney Love with filmmaker Brett Morgen at the Tribeca Film Festival screening of Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. Photo: Getty
“There are a lot of myths, and I really wanted someone to tell the truth,” Courtney Love said, explaining why she gave filmmaker Brett Morgen free access to her family memorabilia for the documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, about her late husband, the Nirvana front man. The stash included previously undiscovered audiotapes made by the rocker, who took his own life in 1994, and home movies with footage that is sometimes heartwarming, and, at other times quite raw, with scenes showing Love and Cobain drug addled and living in squalor.
The Tribeca Film Festival screening on Sunday evening was Love’s fourth time seeing the film. “I experienced some shame this time,” Love told the audience at a post-screening Q&A. “Mostly I get really sad, when I watched it before, but [today], you know, guilt, and what I could have done,” she said. “I said I wouldn’t see it again, but I did, and it’s kind of self-punishing, but it’s such a beautiful movie.”
The first time Love saw it was with her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, who produced the film. “It was beautiful, because I got to spend a little more time with Kurt, and Frances,” Love said, her voice breaking.
There were light moments during the discussion, too, like when Love explained how a short scene of the couple in bed made it into the movie. “Brett found the sex tape,” she deadpanned. “You know, me and Kurt only had this one tape, and we recorded over and over and over that,” she said. “Everyone makes one sex tape once in their life, and so we did, and I thought, he’ll never catch those frames, and he caught ‘em,” she said, laughing.
Someone asked who shot footage of Love and Cobain frolicking in the bathtub with baby Frances. “Oh, this is weird,” Love said, and explained that it was a member of her band, Hole, Eric Erlandson, whom Love used to date. “And then Eric would come over to our house, and he would shoot really intimate stuff of me and Kurt. And I love Eric, he’s a great friend, but when you really realize it’s Eric shooting that, it’s kind of…creepy.”
Director Morgen said that freaked him out as well. “He came over, and said, ‘I have this tape, but I don’t know what’s on it.’ And we were screening it, and at one point I stopped, and said, ‘I’m sorry, what’s your relationship to them? I’m a little confused.’ And he goes, ‘Well, I used to go out with Courtney.’ And I was, like, well, that’s f—ing weird.”
Love, now age 50, defined her relationship with Cobain as young love. “At that age, it’s that punch drunk thing, where you met your soul mate, and you’re 25, and you’re just fucking, and you’re talking, and fighting. So there’s other kinds of love, more mature love, but that was like a soul mate thing. We were best friends, and, you know, I’ve had great boyfriends since, but I’ll never have another friend like that.”
She feels that Morgen’s film gets to the essence of Kurt Cobain. “I think Brett spent a lot of time with Kurt’s spirit, and I think his spirit definitely comes out, which is why I keep coming back for more punishment,” she said. “You know, I get to see this beautiful man I was married to 21 years ago, and spend a little time with him, and it’s really sad, and brings up different emotions. It’s heavy, but I think it’s as close to the truth as anyone’s ever going to get.”
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