Brett Morgen on His Astonishing Cobain Film: ‘Kurt Isn’t Performing for Anyone’
I first met Brett Morgen – the writer, director and producer of the HBO documentary, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck – in 2008 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. We were seated next to each other at a dinner celebrating the opening of a new exhibit. Morgen, who co-directed the 2002 documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture about the Hollywood producer Robert Evans, mentioned to me that he was speaking with Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, about a film on the late Nirvana singer-guitarist. Morgen noted that he looked forward to talking to me as the movie progressed about my October 1993 Rolling Stone interview with Kurt.
Seven years after that Guggenheim dinner, on a warm, early-spring afternoon in Los Angeles, Morgen and I met again – to talk about Montage of Heck for a story in the new issue of Rolling Stone. We spoke about the genesis of the film, its long road to completion, Morgen’s immersion in Kurt’s personal archive and the director’s working relationship with Kurt’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, 22, one of the movie’s executive producers. What follows are additional extracts from that conversation including his answer to the last question of that day: Having finished this project, to robust acclaim, what’s next?
“I’ve been blessed,” Morgen said, “to work with the archives of Robert Evans, the Rolling Stones [Morgen directed the 2012 documentary, Crossfire Hurricane] and Kurt Cobain. And I don’t know where to go from here.
“There are very few places,” he admitted, “that go north from here.”
Morgen and I started, that day, with my question about a key, startling sequence in Montage of Heck: an animated account, with first-person narration, of Cobain’s first suicide attempt while he was in high school.
That’s Kurt’s voice?
That’s Kurt’s voice, yeah.
He recorded that as an audio memoir?
It was while he was living with Tracy [Marander, Kurt’s girlfriend, who is interviewed in the film]. A lot of these spoken-word pieces exist on the same tape. Usually when he’d write a poem or short story, he’d record it. And while recording, he’s cracking himself up. I’ll play you one where he just goes [affects stoner’s voice], “This is soooo stupid.” And he’s not performing them – he’s reading them. And that’s what makes that one story [about the suicide attempt] so unique. It’s narrative. And Kurt was not a narrative writer. That was not his forte.
As a lyricist, he preferred aphorisms, metaphors and juxtaposition.
If you look at “Serve the Servants” [on 1993’s In Utero], it’s four different stories intertwined. That was one of the things that struck me [about the suicide story] – it’s a narrative, and he was pouring it out. And when you hear the cadence in his voice, it’s haunting, because he’s describing one of the most painful memories of his life. And he’s doing it in somewhat of a detached manner. If anything, almost with a grin.
That tape was really the Rosebud of this whole journey. And it wasn’t the first time I heard it. It was probably the 100th time. Whe I listened to it the first time, I knew it was amazing stuff. But as the film was coming together, I went back to that tape. And the themes started to emerge.
Ultimately, by leaving such a detailed record of in his drawings, journals and private recordings, Kurt gave you the materials for a documentary about more than his life. The movie is about his interior.
It sounds like a crazy pitch for a movie [laughs]. How do you document the inside of someone? And do it in a visceral, kinetic way? That was part of my challenge. There is a seven-minute passage of the film where you never see a film clip or photograph of Kurt. It’s the passage at Tracy’s apartment when he’s creating – it’s an animated sequence. We spent close to two months cutting the audio for that. I find that one sequence to be one of the most intimate parts of the film, where I’m closest to Kurt even though I’m not seeing him. Because these recordings were things he created for himself, in the moment. There is no filtration whatsoever. You hear him talking to himself. The image that is conjured up is not this angst ridden kid. It’s a kid who’s really comfortable; he’s found his nirvana.