After seeing its release on a film festival circuit, making a speedy debut in theaters and a premiere on HBO, Brett Morgen's Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck will make its theatrical return in August.
Selected cinemas will show the film via Abramorama beginning Aug. 7, having already booked slots at Los Angeles' ArcLight and other Arclight locations around the country as well as New York's IFC Center.
The film documenting the life and death of the Nirvana frontman strings together unearthed audio recordings and never-before-seen home videos with interviews by those closest to Cobain. Tales, interviews and endless work put in by his widow Courtney Love, daughter Frances Bean Cobain, bandmate Krist Novoselic and others, garnered enough information for viewers to create their own, as-accurate-as-possible image of Cobain.
This August audiences in the U.S. will get to experience Montage of Heck in cinemas as it was designed. Opens 8.7.15 pic.twitter.com/G651xAg5UJ
— Brett Morgen (@brettmorgen) July 9, 2015
"It sounds like a crazy pitch for a movie. How do you document the inside of someone? And do it in a visceral, kinetic way? That was part of my challenge," Morgen told Rolling Stone. "What we get in Montage of Heck is all this material where Kurt isn't performing for anyone. Nothing is being filtered. There are these raw intimate moments that were not intended to be disseminated."
The bulk of reviews brought overwhelming amounts of praise from fans, friends and critics but one person was left less than impressed. Close friend of Cobain and fellow musician Buzz Obsorne of The Melvins criticized the film for being "90 percent bullshit."
"Facts don't make any difference. What matters is what people believe. The 'truth' about [Cobain's] situation has always been false," Osborne said. "So there you go... utter fabrication. That's never not been the case."
"My problem with the whole thing is that they decided to do a documentary and put it out there like it's true. Well, there are some people out here who don't believe that. And I am one of them. And I have reason not to believe it," he added.
