Except there's another character in the ensemble, a character by the name of Courtney Love, widow of Cobain and father of his child. She also holds the rights to his recordings. Unless Courtney approves of the film, Broomfield is told, you ain't getting a damn chord. And so Broomfield's film about Kurt Cobain turns into Broomfield's film about not making his Kurt Cobain film.
But why would Courtney object, I hear you ask?
Well, it's a long shot I admit, but I'm guessing the interviews with her Dad, who claims his daughter had probably something to do with the death of Cobain, might have been influential to some tiny degree. Perhaps it may even have been El Duce, who claims Love offered him fifty grand to kill the superstar. Again, it could even be the answer-phone messages where Courtney threatens to "fucking kill" various journalists for their less than flattering accounts.
A lesser man might have said, to hell with it all. I'm not gonna make me my grunge film after all, even if I DO refer to it as punk rock. I'll just forget all about this whole sorry affair. Not our Nick, though.
Because our Nick acknowledges a very important factor in his success. To wit; Nick Broomfield films are at least 70% focused on Nick Broomfield. Sure, he may have met up with Aileen Wuornos and her "family", but really, the attraction was the lengths Nick went to in order to get his footage. Similarly, Kurt And Courtney has less to do with, for example, Kurt and Courtney, than it has to do with Wacky Nick and his Bizarre Adventures.
He meets conspiracy theorists, he meets friends of the duo in question, he meets Love's father, he meets the man who helped Cobain buy the shotgun that killed him, but all the while, the predominant narrative device is - What in the hell's gonna happen to poor Nick next?
It is perhaps the antithesis of the slick infotainment variety of documentary. Broomfield constantly runs around in circles. He hires professional stalkers to conduct interviews that they end up too scared to perform. He spends a good deal of time with the conspiracy theorists, before revealing that he thinks they're full of the proverbial. He comes to no conclusions, and the end of it all, the only interviewee fit to offer any insight whatsoever was Cobain's aunt, and even she herself has to have her appearances trimmed owing to music playing during her conversation. And then there's the string of financing disasters that would surely have sent most folks scrambling for the next assignment.
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