14 DAY TRIAL // Frances Bean Cobain is one of the producers on HBO’s upcoming Kurt Cobain documentary, “Montage of Heck,” which will premiere in May. She tells Rolling Stone in a new interview that the film is the closest thing to Kurt as she knew him, and makes some startling admissions in the process.
For one thing, she was never a Nirvana fan because the grunge scene isn’t something she’s interested in. Secondly, she hates it that Kurt has been turned into “St. Kurt” only because he died, when in reality, he was just a guy who abandoned his family because he’d gotten to a point where he didn’t like who he was anymore.
Frances Bean Cobain gets candid
The 22-year-old daughter of the late Nirvana frontman and Courtney Love, with whom she is pictured above at the Sundance Film Festival, says that she never “really liked” Nirvana music. Her tastes incline more towards Brian Jonestown Massacre, Oasis and Mercury Rev, and she feels a certain sense of aversion to the way people react to her dead father.
She has long accepted that he is “inescapable,” and she’s made peace with it. Her favorite Nirvana song is “Dumb” because “it’s a stripped-down version of Kurt’s perception of himself - of himself on drugs, off drugs, feeling inadequate to be titled the voice of a generation.” It makes her cry every time she listens to it.
In a way, Frances understands how her father must have felt and what drove him to take his own life, even though she considers that the act of a man abandoning his family “in the most awful way possible.”
What bothers her the most though is the way in which our celebrity culture romanticizes young artists, how it puts them on a pedestal just because they happen to die young. Cobain, as you probably know, is a member of the “exclusive” 27 Club, a term used for artists who died at this age. It also includes Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Amy Winehouse.
“He’s larger than life. And our culture is obsessed with dead musicians. […] He inspired people to put him on a pedestal, to become St. Kurt. He became even bigger after he died than he was when he was alive. You don’t think it could have gotten any bigger. But it did,” Frances said.
She is convinced that this isn’t what Kurt would have wanted, because he was not the guy who wanted to become the role model of a generation or an icon.
“Montage of Heck,” a film as if by Kurt Cobain himself
Frances serves as producer on the HBO film about her dad’s rise to fame with Nirvana, which includes previously unseen footage of the rocker as a kid and a troubled young musician. The film also has the approval of Courtney Love, Frances’ mother, from whom she’d been estranged for years.
As you can see in the photo, the two called a truce at Sundance for long enough as to pose for pictures together. Frances famously left her mother’s house amid claims of abuse on Love’s part.
She now tells Rolling Stone that the film looks exactly like it would have had it been made by Kurt himself, capturing his essence as a troubled artist and man. She is proud of the work she’s done on it, and she’s clearly happy that the fans, the same ones who have put Kurt on that pedestal, will finally get the chance to see the real him.