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cheap made-for-VCR documentary
Saturday, March 13 1999
Kim and I went on an electronics shopping spree at Fry's today. I traded in for yet another DIMM (which was later to prove just as worthless as all the others) and Kim bought one of those TV/VCR combinations in a decidedly non-contemporary shade of white. But when we brought it home, the thing actually worked.
We picked up some movies at the Midway Shopping Center in Point Loma and then ordered food to go at a nearby Thai restaurant. The woman who waited on us was the kind who uses short dry bursts laughter as a form of punctuation. The place was heavily decorated with dog-themed brick-a-brack, curios and notions. A comic little porcelain Chihuahua sat at attention upon prime counter real estate, its little head wobbling hypnotically with the slightest disturbance. I wondered if all the inexplicable dog decorations were a means of demonstrating this restaurant's sympathies for dogs, a means of nipping in the bud the common American fear that southeast Asian food contains substantial fractions of sliced-up Fidos, Rovers and Fluffies.
In the afternoon Kim and I watched Kurt and Courtney, a low-budget made-for-VCR documentary investigating the death of reluctant rockstar god Kurt Cobain. What a crazy little movie! I wouldn't say, mind you, that it was an especially good movie; it was just so quirky, self-referential and maddeningly shoestring it couldn't help but have a certain appeal. It looked like it took about $49.95 to make, and judging from the shrewd marketing at places like Blockbuster, I'd wager it's turning a hefty profit. The movie definitely was lacking in many respects, however. It contained absolutely none of Kurt's music, for example, and relied here and there on isolated guitars playing sustained Nirvana-like chords or on other vaguely-related Seattle bands. The reason the movie had no Nirvana music was because all that music is tightly controlled by Courtney Love, the inheritor of the Cobain estate. The movie, you see, made Courtney out to be the most evil of all wicked witches both here and in outer space. She was portrayed as an aggressive & violent opportunist, someone who systematically latched-on to charismatic male rock stars and tried to ride their success to the top, threatening and attacking all who stood in her way and abandoning those whose success came too slowly. In regard to her goals, of course, she definitely won the lottery with Kurt. At the height of his fame he committed suicide, the same week Courtney's band released its first album. Now, of course, Courtney is a respected actress who hob-nobs with only the cream of America's social elite.
There were lots of interesting surprises in the movie. There was Courtney's father, who turns out to be at least as crazy and controlling as his daughter is portrayed. Amongst the things he says in his extensive suburban curbside interview is his belief that his own daughter killed Kurt.
But the only evidence presented connecting Courtney to such an act is an interview with the late El Duce, founder, singer and drummer for the shock-metal band the Mentors (see this musings entry for my six-degrees-type connections to this group). El Duce, flyswatter in hand, is interviewed in his cluttered southern California back yard, where he claims Courtney offered him $50,000 to kill her husband and "I wished I did it too." I'm sure El Duce was simply grasping for notoriety that his music, shocking though it is, will never gain him. This scene in Kurt and Courtney was probably the closest El Duce ever got to achieving anything more than cult-hero success. I don't believe he was ever able to quit his day job.
The most surreal scene was near the end, where our intrepid BBC reporter-narrator stalks Courtney Love into a gathering of the ACLU. It's so ironic, comic, cringe-inducing, and subversive that it somehow justifies the rest.
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