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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