The making of HBO documentary, out in 2015 and entitled Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, unearthed ‘200 hours of unreleased music and audio’

Kurt Cobain’s daughter Frances Bean will executive produce a new documentary about the late Nirvana singer. Due out next year with HBO Documentary Films and Universal Pictures, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck bills itself as the first “fully authorised” movie about Cobain.



“[Kurt was] a contradiction,” director Brett Morgen wrote in a statement. “He could be sincere and sentimental, and also ironic and sarcastic. He was sweet and sour. He was incredibly funny too, and the film has to reflect his spirit.”

Morgen, who also helmed the Rolling Stones’ documentary Crossfire Hurricane, has been developing this film since around 2006. Although he was “brought ... into” the project by Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, Love’s involvement now seems to be minimal. Still, Cobain’s family gave Morgen’s crew unprecedented access to the singer’s personal and family archives, including home movies, journals and unearthed demos. “I discovered over 200 hours of unreleased music and audio,” Morgen wrote, “a vast array of art projects (oil paintings, sculptures), countless hours of never-before-seen home movies, and over 4,000 pages of writings.” Speaking in 2012, Morgen claimed he wanted to make the movie as a “third-person autobiography”, using Cobain’s personal effects to tell his story.

Montage of Heck gets its title from an experimental mixtape Cobain made in 1988. The 36-minute collage, recorded to four-track, mashes his own original music with audio from the radio as well as other people’s records – Sammy Davis Jr leading into Iron Butterfly, Kiss into Daniel Johnston. It has never been officially released.