Kurt and Courtney
By the end of Nick Broomfield's controversy-plagued documentary Kurt & Courtney, I think I knew as much about Broomfield himself as I knew about Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love. The film might have begun as a biographical study, exploring the tempestuous tives of Nirvana lead singer Cobain and Courtney Love both before and after their 1992 marriage, but that's not the story it ends up telling. Instead, it becomes the tale of Broomfield's ongoing battle with Love over the making of the film -- her successful efforts to persuade MTV to withdraw funding, her objection to the use of
several songs, her attempts to intimidate anyone involved in the production.
No one can blame Broomfield for being infuriated at Love, particularly when her 11th-hour legal stunt forced Kurt & Courtney out of the Sundance Film Festival lineup. It might have been easier to sympathize with him, however, if his presence in the film weren't so consistently intrusive. Like Michael Moore, Broomfield has no qualms about filming himself in the process of making his documentary film; unlike Moore, Broomfield isn't entertaining enough to warrant all the screen time. In fact, he's just plain annoying at times, interjecting commentary over virtually every musical selection (or lack thereof) and casually referring to Cobain's hometown of Aberdeen, Washington as a "redneck logging town." Even his habit of shooting from inside the car as it pulls up to various locations feels pretentious, an attempt at you-are-there urgency which conveniently ignores that automotive jaunts hardly make for compelling cinema.
Lucky for Broomfield that his subject is such a wild and provocative one. Kurt & Courtney features as wonderfully twisted a cast of characters as any recent film has compiled: Love's estranged father Hank Harrison, whose casual aggression towards his daughter provides a frightening insight into her childhood; Love's ex-boyfriend and former Portland-area singer Rozz Rezabek, seething bitterness at the career he might have had if Courtney hadn't driven him to hate it; a one-time friend of Love and Cobain named Amy who may or may not have photos of them doing heroin together, but certainly is trying way too hard to look like Courtney. Broomfield also spends time examining rumors that Cobain's 1994 death, ruled a shotgun suicide, was actually a murder engineered by Love. This angle
Introduces us to El Duce, a demented, drunken punk band frontman who claims Love once offered him "50 grant to whack Kurt Cobain.
In Bret Harte’s whole life, he worked a lot do different jobs. He was a tutor, a shot-gun rider on a stage-coach, a printer, a reporter, a columnist, an editor for Northern California, and many more. It was in Northern California where Harte got his first exposure in journalism, writing, and editing. When the Gunthers Island Massacre happened, he became so furious and used his power as writer to lash out what he felt in and editorial rage. However, the reaction he got from the locals was opposed to what he felt, and he was asked to leave the town. Harte felt that the locals were unfair to ...
road-life and drug abuse. When he came out of the coma the Dead made a tribute
Kurt was an extremely happy child. He would wake up everyday so happy. He was
The difference between Americans today and way back when is very different. Johnny Cash and Luke Bryan are both very great men that achieved great things. They are very similar but are also very different. From the 1920s to now, country music has changed drastically from singing about love to having fun and partying, and this shows how different things were important as a whole.
"’Except the bad thing is, the real humdinger, see, is that I tried for CO status, being a Christian and all. And weird things happened. And…well…I didn’t get it." Page 358
Country music is one of the most popular genres of music throughout America. There are many influential figures that have changed the way country music sounds, and how people interpret it. Two important people who have made a huge impact on country music overtime are Johnny Cash and Luke Bryan. From their early life, their career, and how society views them, they have opened the minds of people and country musicians all over the country. Johnny Cash’s songs help people to experience his life growing up through the Great Depression and how people lived back then. Through Luke Bryan’s songs people could understand what life was like for Luke growing up in Georgia and all the hardships he faced. Johnny Cash and Luke Bryan are two of the many country singers that have influenced country fans to be more optimistic and hopeful.
There’s a lot to be learned from this movie. Although completely fictional, the uncanny accuracy that This Is Spinal Tap holds, tells us much about the things wrong with the life of a rock star and the actions of big-label music industries. It still remains a fact that what’s represented in This Is Spinal Tap is a reality for many artists, companies, and audiences that surround themselves with popular rock music. More importantly, it matters because it affects all involved in the demand for this form of entertainment.
Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the infamous band Nirvana was discovered outside of his Seattle home three days after his death by Garry Smith on April 8, 1994. While Cobain’s official death certificate reads suicide, many theories have cropped up over the years that claim to explain neglected attributes to the original case.
In conclusion, I would like to state that even though this paper has marked a clear difference between what is perceived through the eyes of a witness as opposed to a research, the grunge movement, although a media commodity, an ironic mainstream movement whose philosophy was to oppose the mainstream in the first place, has left its mark on the music industry. It should, under no circumstance, be assumed that all there was to the grunge movement was a manipulation. It was the heart and soul of its audience, and remains quite so today, on an international basis. Not for its history, but for the content of its music.
ended it all. Fans across the world were stunned by the news of Kurt Cobain’s sudden
Whenever I was around him I was guaranteed a giggle or two. For example, we know the Hump Day commercial, “Mike, Mike, Mike what day is it... HUMP DAAAYYY!” This was Kurt’s famous saying, as the head coaches for baseball were the same assistant coaches for football they both had names that started with Mike. Wednesday practices would start by hearing Kurt 100 yards away saying, “Mike, Mike, Mike guess what day is it… HUMP DAAAYYY!” and it was spot on from the commercial. That never failed to put a smile on my face. Kurt also liked to exaggerate things to the extreme. For example, the Hermantown High School is getting a new school added on. Kurt had parking lot duty in the morning, so he would drink his cup of coffee with the head construction worker. One game in Cloquet, Kurt kept trying to tell me that school was going to be let out early because everything was ahead of schedule and they wanted everyone out. I being very gullible, believed every word. Of course though it wasn’t true and the head coach Zags, laughing at the fact I believed him, was bickering with Kurt about the school. Zags kept saying, “Why do you do this? Spreading false rumors like that, making kids believe.” In the end, we all had a good laugh because we knew Kurt was just being himself. Making everyone
When the documentary was produced, media exposure was limited to private and expensive mediums such as television, movies and radio. These outlets were plagued with marketing agendas designed to sell products under the guise of authentic music and entertainment. Formerly non-existent cultural archetypes such as the boy band, pop diva, and gothic artist were created and promoted by corporations with the intent to profit from their fame. This systematic fabrication of teenage culture was achieved through the monopolization of popular media by people and companies with money. This created a narrow and one-dimensional mainstream cultural media, limiting the prefere...
This article investigates the relationship between biography and authenticity of grunge musician Kurt Cobain. Focusing on Cobain's lyrics involving the human body, the article argues that his idea of the 'sick body' was a metaphor in his various works.
Havrilesky, Heather. “Stalking Celebrities.” Remix: Reading and Composing Culture. Ed. Catherine G. Latterell. 2nd ed. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. martin’s, 2010. 446-450. Print.
Movie stars. They are celebrated. They are perfect. They are larger than life. The ideas that we have formed in our minds centered on the stars that we idolize make these people seem inhuman. We know everything about them and we know nothing about them; it is this conflicting concept that leaves audiences thirsty for a drink of insight into the lifestyles of the icons that dominate movie theater screens across the nation. This fascination and desire for connection with celebrities whom we have never met stems from a concept elaborated on by Richard Dyer. He speculates about stardom in terms of appearances; those that are representations of reality, and those that are manufactured constructs. Stardom is a result of these appearances—we actually know nothing about them beyond what we see and hear from the information presented to us. The media’s construction of stars encourages us to question these appearances in terms of “really”—what is that actor really like (Dyer, 2)? This enduring query is what keeps audiences coming back for more, in an attempt to decipher which construction of a star is “real”. Is it the character he played in his most recent film? Is it the version of him that graced the latest tabloid cover? Is it a hidden self that we do not know about? Each of these varied and fluctuating presentations of stars that we are forced to analyze create different meanings and effects that frame audience’s opinions about a star and ignite cultural conversations.