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Thursday, May 7, 2015

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS & SPORTS

Family-assisted doc 
portrays rockstar in 

his truest form

By BRIAN BURLAGE

Daily Arts Writer

It’s usually the same with famous 

actors and musicians: when they die, 
fans have a really, 
really hard time 
believing it. 

Conspiracy 

theories 
bubble 

up 
from 
the 

depths of God-
knows-where 
while 
folklore 

and mythologies 
sprout, and leg-
ends adjust to incorporate the mag-
nanimity of these shooting stars 
— Elvis, Jim Morrison and Tupac 
among them. Each is said to dwell 
now in some far-off corner of the 
Earth, destined to a life of personal 
repose, away from all the fanaticism 
and phoniness that probably drove 
them to death in the first place. 

On April 8, 1994, a VECA Electric 

employee discovered Kurt Cobain’s 
body in Cobain’s home in Washing-
ton. A shotgun rested on his chest; 
there were bullet wounds near his 
temple. He had left a handwritten 
note in a flowerpot, and the coroner 
determined the death a suicide. 

That weekend, a public vigil was 

held in Seattle, where Cobain’s wife, 
Courtney Love, and his daughter, 
Frances Bean Cobain, read the note 
and grieved openly with fans. Amy 
Dickinson, in an article titled “Kurt 
Cobain’s Last Tour,” described the 
Buddhist-inspired memorial that 
followed, and the manner in which 
Cobain’s ashes were handled: “(his) 
ashes have now been fully conse-
crated and formed into roughly a 
dozen tsatsas. A small shrine, called 
a nirvana stupa, is being made by a 
Tibetan Buddhist artisan to house 
them.”

At the time of his death, Cobain 

and Love had been arguing exten-
sively and consistently about every-
thing from money to music. Many 
theorists have interpreted some of 
what Rosemary Carroll (Cobain’s 
attorney) said following his death, 
and they claim Cobain faked the 
incident to elude a difficult divorce.

Other theorists adhere to the 

information provided by Tom Grant, 

a private investigator hired by Court-
ney Love to investigate the death. 
Grant concluded that it was, in fact, 
a homicide, and many fans have 
since mistaken the case’s vagueness 
for the possibility that Cobain is still 
alive somewhere in the world today. 

Director Brett Morgen’s “Kurt 

Cobain: Montage of Heck” does 
wonders to discredit and dispel all 
theories, tales and lies surrounding 
Kurt Cobain’s death (and life). The 
film’s most poignant and most beau-
tiful contribution to the Nirvana/
Cobain canon is the way it introduces 
him above all else as a man, a father 
and a husband. Though he became 
a demi-god of sorts in the world of 
alternative-grunge rock, represent-
ing the millions of disaffected, angry 
and disheartened youth, “Montage 
of Heck” reminds us that he was a 
young man with problems, too. He 
simply had a talent for making them 
inhabitable. 

Courtney Love came to Mor-

gen in 2007 with the idea of taking 
a more intimate, more honest look 
at Cobain’s chaotic life. Sorting 
through 200 hours of unreleased 
music and film and several thousand 
pages of writing and documentation, 
Morgen delivers “Montage of Heck” 
— the first Kurt Cobain documen-
tary that accounts for full participa-
tion from his family. This certainly 
gives the film a balanced perspec-
tive, albeit one of astounding, some-
times shocking emotion. Part of the 
tension in the storytelling emerges 
precisely from this contradiction: 
How can family members accurately 
paint the picture of a loved one when 
they each feel differently about his 
or her passing? Where does truth lie 
in relation to tragedy? 

In an interview with Paste Maga-

zine, Morgen explains how he was 
given access to all kinds of undis-
covered audiotapes and video reels, 
including a 1988 clip of Cobain los-
ing his virginity. He notes that with 
certain recordings, no one – not even 

Courtney — had heard them before. 

In this way, “Montage of Heck” 

is also a feat of rediscovery, not just 
for the millions of Nirvana fans, but 
also for Cobain’s closest family and 
friends. They each revisit the world 
they shared before 1994, and as we 
watch the story unfold, we become 
more and more aware of this sense 
of haunting. Morgen describes it 
perfectly: “that (haunting) became a 
thing with our film — the interviews 
sort of go from day to night. It starts 
out sort of with morning in America, 
and everything is optimistic and 
groovy. And then at some point the 
sun goes down, and we’re starting to 
get to 5 o’clock, and then we go into 
the evening and into the shadows.”

What also plays into this cathar-

tic, yet unsettling feeling in the 
film is the audio-visual portrayal of 
Cobain’s own psyche. He was deeply 
disturbed by the fame and spotlight 
that found him and dragged him 
from the American music under-
ground. He was wary of the socio-
logical norms that defined what an 
American male should be, what a 
husband and a father should be, and 
he felt a deep alienation as a result. 
Many of Cobain’s diary entries, 
shown in tender sequences inter-
spersed between interviews, reveal 
the paranoia and agitation he felt, 
even from an early age.

It took eight years of research-

ing, sifting, compiling, editing, 
talking, choosing, recreating and 
envisioning to bring “Kurt Cobain: 
Montage of Heck” into form. At 
132 minutes long, the documen-
tary offers deep insight into the 
life of Cobain and his family with-
out overstaying its welcome. Pho-
tos, artwork, animations, diaries, 
home videos and recordings give 
the film a distinct personality, as 
though the story of Cobain’s life 
has the same vitality as the man 
himself — not the rock star, but the 
27-year-old kid from Aberdeen, 
Washington.

Candid Cobain revealed

A

Kurt Cobain: 
Montage 
of Heck

HBO

TV REVIEW

HBO

I woke up like this.

Success of transfer 
students helpful

By BEN FIDELMAN 

Daily Sports Writer

The most veteran players for the 

Michigan baseball team had quite a 
bit on their plates last weekend, out-
side of a three-game series against 
No. 16 Iowa. Six of the team’s 33 
players also celebrated their gradu-
ation from the University.

Though senior day for the Wol-

verines is still a few weeks away, 
those six players had the opportu-
nity to attend ceremonies for both 
student-athletes and with all of the 
members of the Michigan class of 
2015.

Friday night was also the first 

game in the team’s series against the 
Hawkeyes — a contest that lasted 
over three-and-a-half hours, finish-
ing at 7:35 PM. The Student Athlete 
Commencement was scheduled to 
begin around 8:00 PM, so the play-
ers had to hustle across to the Crisler 
Center to make it in time.

This original recruiting class 

was one of the last put together by 
former coach Rich Maloney, who 
left the team following the 2012 
season. When current Michigan 
coach Erik Bakich arrived on cam-
pus, he went to work bolstering 
the group by looking for players at 
junior colleges who could make an 
impact in his program.

Bakich ended up taking two 

transfers in this class, in Patrick 
and center fielder Jackson Glines, 
who spent the beginning of their 
careers at Black Hawk and Fresno 
City Colleges, respectively. Patrick 
has started 32 games this season for 
the Wolverines, and Glines holds 
one of the Big Ten’s top batting 
averages, at .367.

“We don’t take very many trans-

fer players,” Bakich said. “We build 
our program with high school kids 
that are going to be here for four 
years. I was a junior college player, 
and I think it’s great. It certainly 
serves a purpose, where a lot of 
times athletically kids may not be 
on top of their game out of high 
school or aren’t fully developed. 
Academically and socially, there’s 
a maturation process that comes 
with being in college for a couple of 
years.”

Much of the Michigan coaching 

staff has experience being in the 
junior college game. Both Bakich 

and assistant coach Nick Schnabel 
transferred from junior colleges to 
East Carolina, where they played 
together. Pitching coach Sean 
Kenny even coached for a year at 
a junior college when starting his 
coaching career.

Bakich believes that the staff’s 

experiences give them an eye for 
picking out potential transfer play-
ers, but that advantage only goes so 
far.

“We all have roots with it,” 

Bakich said. “I don’t know if it gives 
us any sort of upper-hand, but we 
certainly understand where these 
guys are coming from, where they 
have been and the rigors of the 
transition of coming to an elite aca-
demic school like Michigan.”

The staff looks to the transfer 

players to fill gaps in the team. Pat-
rick and Glines are good examples 
of this, and junior left fielder Cody 
Bruder, who transferred to Michi-
gan from Orange Coast College, 
can also be added to that list. How-
ever, because players are brought 
in for such a specific task, there is 
a significant amount of pressure to 
perform.

“You’re thrown into the fire right 

away,” Patrick said. “You’ve got 
to come in and perform, because 
you’re brought in for a specific role. 
If you don’t fill that role, you’re kind 
of out of the lineup. It’s definitely 
interesting from a team dynamic, 
because you’re coming into a new 
family. I spent three years at junior 
college and knew the ropes there, 
and all of a sudden I’m in Ann 
Arbor, Michigan, not Moline, Illi-
nois, anymore.”

All three transfer players have 

performed well, and have made up 
one third of the starting lineup for 
many games this season.

Without the help from Patrick 

and Glines, the senior class would 
sit at just four members, none of 
which have made significant sta-
tistical contributions this season. 
As the team moves down the final 
stretch of the regular season, it will 
continue to lean on those two to 
anchor its veteran charge both on 
and off the field.

And maybe with their leadership 

and continued on-field success, the 
Wolverines can land some post-
season success for the first time in 
years.

BASEBALL

