Directed by AJ Schnack. With the voice of Kurt Cobain. Distributed by Balcony Releasing. 1 hour, 36 mins. No MPAA rating (profanity, adult themes). Playing at Ritz at the Bourse.
Less a movie than an illustrated audiotape, Kurt Cobain: About a Son is nonetheless fascinating for what it reveals of its subject, the late lead singer of Nirvana, and what it says about the cult of celebrity, and the banality of celebrities, too.
Using excerpts from 25 hours of taped interviews between Cobain, a year before his 1994 suicide, and journalist Michael Azerrad, director AJ Schnack matches Cobain's accounts of an unhappy childhood and burgeoning music career with time-lapse photography of scudding Pacific Northwest cloudscapes, of timber trucks and mossy forests, of hipsters and geeks, music venues and grungy cafes.
