The Bullshit that is Montage of Heck (review)

Montage of Heck: The Story Changes Again
By Matthew Richer

You have to hand it to Courtney Love. The official story of Kurt Cobain's death, that the man was congenitally suicidal and finally committed suicide in April, 1994, has been springing leaks for over 20 years. But this woman continues to work hard, really hard, to plug them up. And Montage of Heck is her latest, and in my opinion, her weakest attempt to maintain the lie.

First, I am surprised that no one has yet compared "Montage of Heck" to its true predecessor, that being "Hit So Hard" (2011).

Hit So Hard is purportedly a documentary about former Hole drummer Patty Schemel. However, at the time, many reviewers wondered why Schemel, (a professional dogwalker who played drums on only studio album "Live Through This") merited a feature-length documentary. But of course, much of the documentary was not about Schemel at all, but about Kurt Cobain's alleged suicide. Schemel was just the vehicle Courtney used to shore up the official story. Tellingly, except for Schemel's mother, every person interviewed in that film was someone under Courtney's complete control.

A similar formula is at work in Montage of Heck. Wendy O'Connor, Don Cobain, Kim Cobain and who knows, perhaps even Krist Novoselic-are all people who have long been under Courtney's thumb. But for me, the most troubling interviewee is Wendy O'Connor.

Wendy features prominently in the film, despite the fact that her relationship with Kurt was fractured and distant. Wendy had kicked Kurt out of the house when he was a teenager, leaving him virtually homeless and he had little to do with her from then on. But that hasn't stopped Wendy from portraying her relationship with Kurt as warm and close ever since his death. We see one example of this in Montage of Heck when Wendy tells a detailed story that is very hard to buy. According to Wendy, Kurt stayed the night at her house just after recording Nevermind in 1991. Upon waking in the morning, Kurt, wearing just a pair of tighty-whities, played a cassette of the album for her and Wendy warned him: "You'd better buckle up 'cause you are not ready for this."

Funny, despite the fact that Wendy and Kurt were both interviewed at length by Michael Azerrad for his book, Come As You Are, neither Wendy nor Kurt ever mentioned this really cool story to Azerrad or anyone else; most likely because it never happened. Moreover, no one--not Kurt, not Krist, not Dave Grohl, not even David Geffen-had any idea that Nevermind was going to be a blockbuster. But Wendy knew? Come on.

The reality is that Wendy never supported Kurt's music career, which she freely admitted to Azerrad two years before Kurt's death.

"A lot of people ask me: 'When's he going to buy you a new car?
When's he going to buy you a house?' says Cobain's mother.
"I couldn't even accept it if he offered it. We could have helped him along if we
would have realized that this was really going to be something. We thought he'd get
over it. I wish we would have helped him out a little more. He owes us nothing."
["Inside the Heart and Mind of Kurt Cobain", Rolling Stone, April 16, 1992]

Apparently Kurt agreed because he never gave Wendy a cent after he became successful and had only occasional (and always reluctant) contact with her. So it should surprise no one that Wendy made no attempt to locate Kurt after he went "missing" in April, 1994.

The weird thing is that Courtney quickly cultivated a close relationship with Wendy after marrying Kurt, for reasons that remain unclear. In fact, for years Courtney has been directing Wendy on what to say and to whom about Kurt and his death. For example, when Courtney filed a false Missing Person's Report in Wendy's name on April 4, 1994, just days prior to the discovery of Kurt's body, Wendy publicly went along with the lie. And during the ensuing days and months, Courtney continued to exert complete control over Wendy and even prohibited her from speaking to Tom Grant.

In 2001, Courtney issued a press release in Wendy's name viciously disparaging Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl and Wendy went along with it.

I don't know what's going on between Wendy and Courtney because they have certainly had their share of disagreements, most notably in 2006 when Courtney foreclosed on the home she bought for Wendy a few years after Kurt's death. But for some reason, they seem to be getting along again.

At any rate, I suspect that it was Courtney who concocted this "You'd better buckle up" story because it sounds good, but more importantly because it implies suicide. (The subtext of "you're not ready for this" being that Kurt committed suicide because he couldn't handle the sudden fame.)

Any good criminal investigator will tell you that innocent people do not change their story much over time, while guilty people tend to alter their alibi often to cover their tracks. In due course, the most interesting thing about Courtney's interview in Montage of Heck is how she changed her story regarding Kurt's alleged Rome suicide attempt on March 4, 1994, and not for the first time.

In 1994 Courtney told Rolling Stone that she fell asleep and awoke sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 AM and found Kurt lying on the edge of the bed with $1,000 in his pocket and a note. A couple of months later Courtney told SPIN Magazine that she woke up at 4:00 AM and discovered Kurt lying on the floor with blood coming out of his nostril, holding $1,000 in one hand and a note in the other. In any case, the ambulance did not arrive until 6:30 AM. Why the two to three hour delay in calling the ambulance? It's a gaping hole in Courtney's alibi... a hole Montage of Heck tries to fill by claiming that Courtney woke up at 5:30 AM that day.

Sneaky.

Moreover, Courtney told Rolling Stone that Kurt had ingested 50 Rohypnols in Rome. But in Montage of Heck she claims that Kurt took between 60 and 70 Rohypnols. Courtney also claims, for the first time, that Kurt attempted suicide in Rome because he thought she was cheating on him and felt betrayed. "I never, never cheated on him, but I certainly thought about it one time in London."

Although Courtney never uses his name, that person in London was Billy Corgan, and Courtney most definitely did cheat on Kurt with Corgan in London. She even went on vacation with Corgan a few weeks after Kurt's death, even though she was still playing the grieving widow in public.

The irony is that Montage of Heck ends with Kurt's famous rendition of Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" A song Kurt obviously directed at his most unfaithful wife. Did Director Brett Morgan really not realize that Kurt performed this song five months before the Rome overdose? Clearly, Kurt knew that Courtney had been unfaithful for some time, and that's a big reason why he wanted to divorce her.

In fact, we still maintain that the Rome overdose was really the first attempt on Kurt's life, not only because Courtney's entire story about what happened that night remains highly suspicious, but because it continues to change. However, it is important to note that Tom Grant has never once changed his story about his investigation into Kurt Cobain's death over the last 21 years.

We've all heard the age-old adage that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. For many years now Courtney Love and her minions have been digging a deeper and deeper hole for themselves and Montage of Heck is just another hapless attempt to climb their way out of it.

One gets the sense from watching Montage of Heck that it won't be long before this massive pile of lies comes crashing down on them.