It seems about every six months a new relic from Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s past is dug up, continually adding to the mystique of Generation X’s most iconic and influential figure who went too soon. And while numerous sources have mined his history and documented his troubled final days, HBO has received unprecedented access to unearthed Nirvana tracks and solo Cobain material, and it will be the first done in cooperation with the Cobain family and estate.
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck will be produced by Cobain’s daughter Frances Bean Cobain, directed by Brett Morgen (HBO’s Rolling Stones doc Crossfire Hurricane), and set to arrive on HBO in 2015, THR reports.
“I started work on this project eight years ago,” Morgen said to THR. “Like most people, when I started, I figured there would be limited amounts of fresh material to unearth. However, once I stepped into Kurt’s archive, I discovered over 200 hours of unreleased music and audio, a vast array of art projects — oil paintings, sculptures — countless hours of never-before-seen home movies, and over 4,000 pages of writings that together help paint an intimate portrait of an artist who rarely revealed himself to the media.”
Variety however clarifies that the documentary plans to avoid the last 48 hours of his life and the melodrama associated with it. Morgen is set on the musician and the personality not seen in front of the camera.
“After going through the archives I could barely recognize the guy in the context of the images of him that have been disseminated by the mainstream media,” Morgen said to Variety. “The way Kurt expressed himself in interviews was a pale reflection of who he really was. His warmth, his humor, his creativity was stifled in those interactions.”
HBO is currently in the throes of Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways, a documentary series directed by Cobain’s bandmate Dave Grohl, who along with Krist Novoselic have granted additional access to Morgen to produce the film.