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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - page 2 of 2 Love's overweening ambition is also clearly what ruined her previous relationships and what was destroying her marriage to Cobain. Former lover Rozz Rezabek, a Portland ex-punk, says, "She thought the only way she could achieve stardom was through a man." As a result, she pushed him so relentlessly that he quit the music business. Rezabek keeps a box filled with Courtney mementos in his basement. He pulls out a note that says, "Here's How Courtney Will Make It." "She has down, 'Become friends with Michael Stipe,'" Rezabeck laughs, "and what does she do, she goes and does it." He says it affectionately, but his voice soon turns venomous. "A kinder, gentler Charlie Manson is still Charlie Manson," he hisses. Then, addressing Love directly, he says, "Don't fuck with me, Courtney. I don't care if you're Jesus and your lawyers are the 12 apostles. You stole my career and you'll get yours. You'll either be Frances Farmer or June Cleaver." Watching this only made me feel more on Love's side. Rezabek and Cobain were inadequate vessels for her voracious energy: I kept picturing her as a radiant Athena, whipping sluggish horses who refused to take her where she wanted to go. But Broomfield doesn't believe that her goals are particularly admirable. "I don't know where incredible burning ambition gets you," he says. "Maybe it's what got her out of her troubled background, but I don't enormously admire it. You know, I live in Los Angeles, and I'm surrounded by people who are desperate to make it. And it's something that I find very unimpressive and somewhat sad. Which doesn't mean I don't feel very sympathetic to Courtney given her background, Hank Harrison and so on. But I'm much more moved by somebody who can't help being a great musician and who is very unimpressed by Hollywood and what it stands for, and who doesn't feel the need to go out and get lots of cosmetic surgery." There are scenes in "Kurt and Courtney," however, that belie Broomfield's innocent portrait of Cobain. In his own way, he seems nearly manipulative as Love: He refused to get a job when he lived with his first girlfriend, Tracy Miranda, expecting her to support him. And, in perhaps the film's most disturbing moment, he leaves a death threat on the answering machine of Victoria Clarke, a writer who was researching a book about Love. "If anything comes out in this book that hurts my wife, I'll fucking hurt you. I've never been more serious in my life," Cobain says. After the tape cuts off, he calls back and says, "I could pay a few thousand dollars to have you snuffed, but I thought I'd try the legal way first." Broomfield judges Love's threats towards journalists harshly, but he sees Cobain's outburst as just evidence of devotion: "What I found tragic at that point was that he was so in love with her, so loyal to her, that he was prepared to go to the wall for her." Broomfield says he deliberately avoided mentioning Kurt and Courtney's daughter, Frances Bean. "I was very careful to leave Frances Bean out of it. I didn't put any of my ghastly Frances Bean stories into the film. I wasn't interested in denigrating Courtney for child abuse or for being a bad mother. I particularly didn't want to look as though I had a vendetta against Courtney. That really was not my intention. I'm interested in Courtney to the extent to which she exemplifies a bigger phenomenon." That phenomenon, Broomfield says, is the entertainment industry's use of legal might to squash unflattering stories. It's exemplified in the film at an ACLU banquet where Love is a special presenter. After Love's speech, Broomfield takes the stage to argue that Love is an ironic spokesperson for the group, given her attempts to stifle journalists. The head of the ACLU shouts him down and he's strong-armed off the stage by Danny Goldberg, Cobain's former manager. In the end, Broomfield rejects most of the conspiracy theories around Cobain's death, though he does say that all the evidence "can't be dismissed out of hand." I asked him straight out -- was Cobain's death a suicide? "I'd say he was driven to it," Broomfield answered. "I was convinced by Frances Bean's nanny, who said, 'If he wasn't murdered, he was driven to murdering himself.' I would say somewhere around there the truth probably lies." Even after such a thorough trashing, I still wish Courtney Love well. It may be convenient to blame her for Cobain's death, but unless you believe that his suicide was staged, she didn't stick a needle in each of his arms and pull the trigger. Now Cobain's a rock martyr and Love is left to stumble hysterically on. No one asks what kind of father puts a gun in his mouth and leaves his baby daughter to grow up alone. Love is certainly not the first rock star to behave abhorrently, nor the first celebrity to attack the press -- when Alec Baldwin punches out a cameraman, the world applauds. Whether or not you believe that blinding ambition is an admirable quality, Courtney Love has emerged like a crazy phoenix from the rubble left by her sadistic father and her too-weak husband. She has behaved awfully as she's flailed and clawed her way to the top, but it's nice to see her up there, flashing her expensive smile at the hordes of yapping redneck pit bulls below.
Michelle Goldberg is an editorial assistant at Salon. |
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