The singer speaks

>> A.J. Schnack on Kurt Cobain About a Son, which tells the rocker’s story in his own words

by MARK SLUTSKY

It’s a documentary as much by its subject as about him. Kurt Cobain About a Son tells the story of the legendary, doomed rocker’s life, from his humble beginnings in smalltown Washington State to his eventual superstardom and self-destruction. What makes the film unique, though, is that it tells that story in Cobain’s own voice, and his voice alone.

To create the film, director A.J. Schnack assembled audio clips from an archive of over 25 hours of interviews writer Michael Azerrad conducted with the man as research for his book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. He then layered them over visuals he shot around the places where Cobain spent his life—his hometown of Aberdeen, the indie rock mecca of Olympia, and of course, Seattle. The result is an impressionistic, reflective portrait of a man who comes across as smart, funny, sometimes confused, sometimes contradictory, but very human.

Schnack encountered Azerrad while interviewing him for his previous film, Gigantic, about the band They Might Be Giants. “I found out he had these interviews with Kurt and that he hadn’t really listened to them since Kurt died, or let anyone else listen to them,” he says. “But that someday he thought they might be valuable in some way to get people to really understand the type of person Kurt was. So after thinking about it a while, I proposed this idea to him.”

From the beginning, Schnack intended the film to skew from the traditional rock doc format. “I sort of feel that Kurt really requires you to approach him in a different way,” he says. “He wasn’t like other people. I would go see a more traditional film about Nirvana, and I’m sure one will be made, but that was not my instinct for this project.”

Schnack’s approach is to focus heavily on the environment that Cobain came up in, with the strong implication that it was something about his Pacific Northwest upbringing that shaped his personality and artistic temperament. “I tend to think that films about people should reflect some element of who they are,” he says. “I think that, for me specifically, so much of his identity is tied to this place that he’s from. When you go to these towns, each of these places, 13-14 years after his death, are still intricately tied to him, and to the idea of his presence there. So much of how I wanted to approach the film was about a sense of place, and a sense of the environment that he lived in, in Washington State. There was something very specific about that to me.”

Real talk

Even as a star, Cobain was a guarded and cryptic figure, who gave few interviews. That’s what’s immediately startling about About a Son—everyone’s familiar with his singing voice, but to hear the man speak, and at length, is disconcerting. “Well you haven’t heard him talk that much!” Schnack says. “That’s the unusual thing about someone who’s such an iconic musical figure. Everybody knows what John Lennon sounded like when he talked, everyone knows what Elvis Presley sounded like. Kurt just didn’t give that many interviews. I’ve actually had fans try to argue that it’s not actually Kurt! That it doesn’t sound anything like Kurt! Which I find pretty humourous.”

What he reveals of himself in the interviews is illuminating. “I think he was funnier than I expected him to be,” Schnack says. “Not telling jokes, but his wry sense of humour was something that I found really appealing and not necessarily what I expected. I had read the comments in Michael’s book, so that I knew that he was pretty open about his drug use, but I think that it’s a lot different to hear someone talking than to read a quote. I was really struck by the whole person that’s in the interviews, including someone who is really deluding themselves about their drug use.

“I think that when Michael wrote his book, he didn’t have the tragic benefit of hindsight. There’s something about hearing Kurt talk about his drug use, and saying things like ‘It’s easier for me because I’m a rich rock star and I can get off it anytime,’ when you as the audience have the unusual perspective of knowing what the protagonist does not know, which is how the story ends.”

Kurt Cobain About a Son
opens this Friday, Feb. 1
at the Cinéma du Parc