2007·Documentary·1h 37m
7.1
★
An intimate and moving meditation on the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain, based on more than 25 hours of previously unheard audiotaped interviews conducted with Cobain by noted music journalist Michael Azerrad for his book "Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana." In the film, Kurt Cobain recounts his own life - from his childhood and adolescence to his days of musical discovery and later dealings with explosive fame - and offers often piercing insights into his life, music, and times. The conversations heard in the film have never before been made public, and they reveal a highly personal portrait of an artist much discussed but not particularly well understood.
Directed by AJ Schnack
nirvana
Trailer
IMDB
N/A
Where to Watch
Cast
Kurt Cobain
Self
Crew
AJ Schnack
Director
Benjamin Gibbard
Original Music Composer
AJ Schnack
Editor
Jared Moshé
Producer
Popular Reviews
10 reviews
jekk
9.0★ · 02/18/23
Kurt Cobain as a human being resonates with me on a deeply personal level. i cant relate to him or i don't think that he encapsulates me in virtually any way, we are two completely different people and i don't pretend to relate to anything that ever happened in his life. but him as a human is something i latch onto. he's laid out bare here, the entire documentary is just a stream of consciousness that flies out of him for an hour and a half. his speech is full of inconsistencies and contradictions and without a doubt some of the stories he tells can't be true. i find the things he says, true or not, to resonate with me so much from a deep sense of displacement.
Kurt describes his ambitions of moving to the city where the action happens and staying in a dingy apartment to play shows forever and ever until he dies and even while he does those things he still feels out of place. having no place in the world and that constant feeling of unease that he describes stabs me right in the chest. the thing about Kurt Cobain is that he, just like everyone else in their teens and 20's, is a product of his self-described "spoiled America", plagued by the turmoil and anxiety that comes just from existing. a lot of people grasp onto his songwriting from a sense of hatred and anger against the world and the evil things it produces. but i grasp onto his songwriting and especially his interviews from a place of discomfort and confusion as i found that i live with a deep sense of neurotic unhappiness and displacement that follows me around.
the way he rambles and vomits out virtually everything he says about people, places, and the way he lived his life speaks to me not as if i see him in me but more as if he's someone who can articulate things in the only way that i can make sense of. i could listen to him speak for a million years. it's a warm comfort to me, which sounds ironic because of both its material and how he would live the rest of his life until he inevitably ended it. it sounds like something i shouldn't take solace in because these are the words of a man who ultimately never made it out of the deep vast ocean of depression and loathing but i find a warmth in it because he can put into words everything that i can't. the feeling like your head is constantly spinning. the indescribable feeling of fear and confusion about everything. through his stories, he speaks to me about all of these things and like a kid i sit with my legs crossed hearing everything he has to say, even if none of it makes any sense. hell, im rambling right now because i don't think or write or speak or do anything with any polish or subtlety or prose because i can't.
Kurt puts a level of mythos on his life and talks in an artistic way just because he is an artist and it's what they do. he speaks about his life not because he's telling it to a friend or anything, but for an interview. it's the life of Kurt Cobain and the way he tells his stories conveys symbols and emotions that he deems are the true importances to the truth of his life. the experiences that encapsulate him as a person and what he thinks is important to his perception. the way he combines his poetic emotional storytelling with his unregulated emotions of word vomiting is what makes him resonate with me. it's what makes me love him so much as a human being. i don't think he's the most prophetic songwriter ever or even the best part of the grunge scene and that music as a whole. but what he does have that no one else does is that special way of speaking that makes me want to keep coming back to documentaries like these or relisten to albums like In Utero.
grunge and really rock music is, in the grand scheme, a very new aspect of my life. but its such an integral part of who i am and how i look at the world. no one else but the people who make this kind of music really have been able to break through my eternal sense of displacement and confusion and allow me to look at myself and see who i am on the inside. it's so unbelievably powerful and i have no idea how much longer i could have dealt with the weight of everything that plagued me on my shoulders without musicians like Kurt Cobain or Chris Cornell or especially Travis Morrison. it's a powerful thing, really.
Kurt describes his ambitions of moving to the city where the action happens and staying in a dingy apartment to play shows forever and ever until he dies and even while he does those things he still feels out of place. having no place in the world and that constant feeling of unease that he describes stabs me right in the chest. the thing about Kurt Cobain is that he, just like everyone else in their teens and 20's, is a product of his self-described "spoiled America", plagued by the turmoil and anxiety that comes just from existing. a lot of people grasp onto his songwriting from a sense of hatred and anger against the world and the evil things it produces. but i grasp onto his songwriting and especially his interviews from a place of discomfort and confusion as i found that i live with a deep sense of neurotic unhappiness and displacement that follows me around.
the way he rambles and vomits out virtually everything he says about people, places, and the way he lived his life speaks to me not as if i see him in me but more as if he's someone who can articulate things in the only way that i can make sense of. i could listen to him speak for a million years. it's a warm comfort to me, which sounds ironic because of both its material and how he would live the rest of his life until he inevitably ended it. it sounds like something i shouldn't take solace in because these are the words of a man who ultimately never made it out of the deep vast ocean of depression and loathing but i find a warmth in it because he can put into words everything that i can't. the feeling like your head is constantly spinning. the indescribable feeling of fear and confusion about everything. through his stories, he speaks to me about all of these things and like a kid i sit with my legs crossed hearing everything he has to say, even if none of it makes any sense. hell, im rambling right now because i don't think or write or speak or do anything with any polish or subtlety or prose because i can't.
Kurt puts a level of mythos on his life and talks in an artistic way just because he is an artist and it's what they do. he speaks about his life not because he's telling it to a friend or anything, but for an interview. it's the life of Kurt Cobain and the way he tells his stories conveys symbols and emotions that he deems are the true importances to the truth of his life. the experiences that encapsulate him as a person and what he thinks is important to his perception. the way he combines his poetic emotional storytelling with his unregulated emotions of word vomiting is what makes him resonate with me. it's what makes me love him so much as a human being. i don't think he's the most prophetic songwriter ever or even the best part of the grunge scene and that music as a whole. but what he does have that no one else does is that special way of speaking that makes me want to keep coming back to documentaries like these or relisten to albums like In Utero.
grunge and really rock music is, in the grand scheme, a very new aspect of my life. but its such an integral part of who i am and how i look at the world. no one else but the people who make this kind of music really have been able to break through my eternal sense of displacement and confusion and allow me to look at myself and see who i am on the inside. it's so unbelievably powerful and i have no idea how much longer i could have dealt with the weight of everything that plagued me on my shoulders without musicians like Kurt Cobain or Chris Cornell or especially Travis Morrison. it's a powerful thing, really.
Kurt Cobain as a human being resonates with me on a deeply personal level. i cant relate to him or i don't think that he encapsulates me in virtually any way, we are two completely different people and i don't pretend to relate to anything that ever happened in his life. but him as a human is something i latch onto. he's laid out bare here, the entire documentary is just a stream of consciousness that flies out of him for an hour and a half. his speech is full of inconsistencies and contradictions and without a doubt some of the stories he tells can't be true. i find the things he says, true or not, to resonate with me so much from a deep sense of displacement.
Kurt describes his ambitions of moving to the city where the action happens and staying in a dingy apartment to play shows forever and ever until he dies and even while he does those things he still feels out of place. having no place in the world and that constant feeling of unease that he describes stabs me right in the chest. the thing about Kurt Cobain is that he, just like everyone else in their teens and 20's, is a product of his self-described "spoiled America", plagued by the turmoil and anxiety that comes just from existing. a lot of people grasp onto his songwriting from a sense of hatred and anger against the world and the evil things it produces. but i grasp onto his songwriting and especially his interviews from a place of discomfort and confusion as i found that i live with a deep sense of neurotic unhappiness and displacement that follows me around.
the way he rambles and vomits out virtually everything he says about people, places, and the way he lived his life speaks to me not as if i see him in me but more as if he's someone who can articulate things in the only way that i can make sense of. i could listen to him speak for a million years. it's a warm comfort to me, which sounds ironic because of both its material and how he would live the rest of his life until he inevitably ended it. it sounds like something i shouldn't take solace in because these are the words of a man who ultimately never made it out of the deep vast ocean of depression and loathing but i find a warmth in it because he can put into words everything that i can't. the feeling like your head is constantly spinning. the indescribable feeling of fear and confusion about everything. through his stories, he speaks to me about all of these things and like a kid i sit with my legs crossed hearing everything he has to say, even if none of it makes any sense. hell, im rambling right now because i don't think or write or speak or do anything with any polish or subtlety or prose because i can't.
Kurt puts a level of mythos on his life and talks in an artistic way just because he is an artist and it's what they do. he speaks about his life not because he's telling it to a friend or anything, but for an interview. it's the life of Kurt Cobain and the way he tells his stories conveys symbols and emotions that he deems are the true importances to the truth of his life. the experiences that encapsulate him as a person and what he thinks is important to his perception. the way he combines his poetic emotional storytelling with his unregulated emotions of word vomiting is what makes him resonate with me. it's what makes me love him so much as a human being. i don't think he's the most prophetic songwriter ever or even the best part of the grunge scene and that music as a whole. but what he does have that no one else does is that special way of speaking that makes me want to keep coming back to documentaries like these or relisten to albums like In Utero.
grunge and really rock music is, in the grand scheme, a very new aspect of my life. but its such an integral part of who i am and how i look at the world. no one else but the people who make this kind of music really have been able to break through my eternal sense of displacement and confusion and allow me to look at myself and see who i am on the inside. it's so unbelievably powerful and i have no idea how much longer i could have dealt with the weight of everything that plagued me on my shoulders without musicians like Kurt Cobain or Chris Cornell or especially Travis Morrison. it's a powerful thing, really.
Kurt describes his ambitions of moving to the city where the action happens and staying in a dingy apartment to play shows forever and ever until he dies and even while he does those things he still feels out of place. having no place in the world and that constant feeling of unease that he describes stabs me right in the chest. the thing about Kurt Cobain is that he, just like everyone else in their teens and 20's, is a product of his self-described "spoiled America", plagued by the turmoil and anxiety that comes just from existing. a lot of people grasp onto his songwriting from a sense of hatred and anger against the world and the evil things it produces. but i grasp onto his songwriting and especially his interviews from a place of discomfort and confusion as i found that i live with a deep sense of neurotic unhappiness and displacement that follows me around.
the way he rambles and vomits out virtually everything he says about people, places, and the way he lived his life speaks to me not as if i see him in me but more as if he's someone who can articulate things in the only way that i can make sense of. i could listen to him speak for a million years. it's a warm comfort to me, which sounds ironic because of both its material and how he would live the rest of his life until he inevitably ended it. it sounds like something i shouldn't take solace in because these are the words of a man who ultimately never made it out of the deep vast ocean of depression and loathing but i find a warmth in it because he can put into words everything that i can't. the feeling like your head is constantly spinning. the indescribable feeling of fear and confusion about everything. through his stories, he speaks to me about all of these things and like a kid i sit with my legs crossed hearing everything he has to say, even if none of it makes any sense. hell, im rambling right now because i don't think or write or speak or do anything with any polish or subtlety or prose because i can't.
Kurt puts a level of mythos on his life and talks in an artistic way just because he is an artist and it's what they do. he speaks about his life not because he's telling it to a friend or anything, but for an interview. it's the life of Kurt Cobain and the way he tells his stories conveys symbols and emotions that he deems are the true importances to the truth of his life. the experiences that encapsulate him as a person and what he thinks is important to his perception. the way he combines his poetic emotional storytelling with his unregulated emotions of word vomiting is what makes him resonate with me. it's what makes me love him so much as a human being. i don't think he's the most prophetic songwriter ever or even the best part of the grunge scene and that music as a whole. but what he does have that no one else does is that special way of speaking that makes me want to keep coming back to documentaries like these or relisten to albums like In Utero.
grunge and really rock music is, in the grand scheme, a very new aspect of my life. but its such an integral part of who i am and how i look at the world. no one else but the people who make this kind of music really have been able to break through my eternal sense of displacement and confusion and allow me to look at myself and see who i am on the inside. it's so unbelievably powerful and i have no idea how much longer i could have dealt with the weight of everything that plagued me on my shoulders without musicians like Kurt Cobain or Chris Cornell or especially Travis Morrison. it's a powerful thing, really.
Thomas Cannon
7.0★ · 11/06/25
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5.0★ · 03/30/25
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8.6★ · 06/10/24
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9.4★ · 01/01/24