I just watched the 2015 Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck, which is probably the most satisfying biopic of the late star and of Nirvana, at least as far as I have seen. Highly recommended (at time of writing, it’s streaming on HBO Max).
While I applaud Gus Van Sant’s effort to depicting a misunderstood and alienated musician who might or might not be Kurt Cobain in Last Days, I ultimately didn’t really connect with that film at all. Montage of Heck does a great job at showing the sadness of Cobain’s early life, his rise to stardom in a scenius of forward thinking musicians and bands, and the tragedy of his later life, addiction, and suicide.
Aside from reminding me how utterly earth shattering Nirvana was in the 1990s, both culturally and musically, I really appreciated that they had some cool animated sequences showing (what the filmmakers imagine) his lone songwriting process might have been. I’m not sure if it’s at all accurate, but seeing a young Kurt playing guitar on a couch by himself, screaming lyrics in a closet, and whispering weird noises into to a tape machine really set me thinking about the 10,000 hours he put in finding his voice, writing songs, and defining a sound that would ultimate change rock music forever. Nirvana and the grunge movement was kind of the last big thing to happen to rock and roll before its ultimate self destruction.
Speaking of self-destruction, the MTV appearances in this movie reminded me of how gargantuan that TV station was in the 1990s. I mean, MTV truly was a force of nature back then. MTV controlled youth culture to a degree that is really hard to understand for people that were born after 2000. I can’t even think of a modern analog. TMZ, BuzzFeed maybe? But those comparisons really don’t get at the power MTV held, though.
Then there was Tabitha Soren, Kurt Loder, Bill Belamy, Riki Rachtman… they were more than just news anchors or VJs—they were kind of celebrities in their own right and part of the scene. MTV also organized a lot of events that artists performed at, including the Unplugged series, the movie and music award shows, and more. MTV was a cultural behemoth that didn’t survive the Extinction Event that was the internet.
Lastly, Montage of Heck is a great encapsulation of what celebrity looked like pre-internet vs post. By and large, artists and celebrities now are PR machines, with well oiled social media content engines pumping out on-brand messaging 24/7/365. They are on, all the time, and their look and style and sound is very calculated, at least it feels that way to me.
Nirvana, and bands in general in that pre-Internet era, had a much more punk ethos. There are some really great interview moments in the film where it’s clear the band is intoxicated and really doesn’t give a crap that the cameras are rolling. It’s refreshing to see that. I wish there was more of that today, to be honest.