By Gregory Crofton
Buzz Osbourne, leader of the rock band Melvins, landed a solid body blow on the much-praised documentary MONTAGE OF HECK about his friend Kurt Cobain by calling it 90% bullshit in a web post. Morgen’s version of a defense came via Twitter where he blamed fictional story lines in his film on the act of embellishing something for the sake of art.
My mind is spinning. I just heard that some of Kurt’s art was embellished. Fuck me. Get this, he never even knew a barber named Floyd!
— Brett Morgen (@brettmorgen) June 9, 2015
After 3 days meticulously fact checking Kurt’s music and art, I’m afraid I have discovered that he was not an albino or a mosquito. Stand by
— Brett Morgen (@brettmorgen) June 9, 2015
Morgen’s film coasting on the power of Cobain’s music, in a sense resurrecting what was great about the punk rock superstar, as writer Robin Wasserman so explains in her review. But apparently there was gross negligence by Morgen, so much that his film is wrecked.
MONTAGE OF HECK is full of art that makes Cobain’s daughter Frances happy, and that’s nice. It makes Courtney Love, Cobain’s wife, really happy, because the story ends exactly the way she wants it to. And it would likely leave Kurt Cobain satisfied because he was, according to Osborne, “a master of jerking your chain” and apparently liked to just plain make things up a la Harmony Korine.
But there is nothing new to see in MONTAGE OF HECK. We now know that. It’s a film about the cult of celebrity and how everyone, including a documentary director in search of acclaim, can get caught in its web.