Review – Kurt and Courtney

Director/writer/interviewer/boom man Nick Broomfield doesn’t seem to like creating films with their own subjects. Instead, he appears to prefer making documentaries about how he could have made a documentary if he hadn’t been thwarted by sinister forces conspiring against him. When he tried to make a film about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, his production ended up being about how her lawyer and adopted “mother” wouldn’t help him get access to her. And here we get an hour and a half of seemingly endless whining about how he couldn’t use Kurt Cobain’s music in his film because the dead musician’s widow wouldn’t give him permission. The truly astonishing part is that Broomfield seems genuinely surprised that Courtney Love doesn’t want to cooperate with the production of a movie about how she conspired to murder her husband. As a result, the final product turns out to be a parade of assorted nuts and hangers-on, all of whom have their own little theories about the events leading up to Cobain’s suicide (or was it?). Any pretension at serious film-making is swept away by the farce of Broomfield’s performance at a celebrity-studded ACLU benefit, where he finally corrals Love but ends up so star-struck that he tosses her a couple of softballs and calls it even. In order to make up for his lost cinematic manhood, he then gives a speech to the attendees about how Hollywood should answer for its attempts to stifle creative expression, a diatribe that led to him being dragged from the stage. Thank goodness for socialized television, I guess. Without the BBC, Mr. Broomfield would no doubt be Mr. Broom Pusher. Wish I’d skipped it