Walking through Cobain's world

TORONTO - A.J. Schnack shrugged off the rockumentary approach, the Behind The Music approach, and the fawning weren't-they-just-awesome? approach. He wanted a music flick you haven't seen, and he made one.

What he had was a box of audiotapes of journalist Michael Azerrad interviewing the late Kurt Cobain. He wanted to make a documentary about the rock legend, but he wouldn't include the standard trappings: talking heads, concert footage, and testimonials from famous fans. He didn't even want to include the music of Nirvana - indeed, the name of Cobain's band would come up precisely once.

No wonder Kurt Cobain: About a Son, one of the more original movies at the recently wrapped Toronto International Film Festival, still has not landed a distribution deal. Clearly, what Schnack had in mind was closer to Koyaanisqatsi - that gliding, graceful art documentary with the famously pulsing score from Philip Glass. Made up of a single 96-minute montage of footage shot around Cobain's northwestern haunts - filmed in sumptuous, widescreen 35 mm - Kurt Cobain: About a Son takes the unusual step of employing an original score by another respected rock musician, Ben Gibbard, leader of indie phenomenon Death Cab for Cutie, and Steve Fisk, a longtime producer of indie favorites including Soundgarden and Beat Happening, as well as Nirvana's "Blew" EP.

Blade staff writer Christopher Borrelli spoke with Gibbard and Fisk.

Q: In the film, you hear just Cobain's voice - he's the only narrator. Steve, I wonder if listening to him you were reminded of what he was like at the time you recorded with him.

Fisk: Well, most of the time I spent with Nirvana was business. It wasn't casual. They recorded "Blew" between "Bleach" and "Nevermind." Their gear was destroyed from touring. The bass drum had a huge liberty-bell crack in it held together by duct tape. The bass kind of was falling apart. But they were very concerned with getting it right. I remember (bassist) Krist Novoselic running around all day trying to re-place their speakers.

Gibbard: Trying to rent 'em?

Fisk: Yeah. Even the tape we rented. Everything was rented.

Gibbard: Magnet erasers?

Fisk: Yeah. All of it.

Q: Ben, you were a teenager living in the Northwest when Nirvana was hitting big, right?

Gibbard: My dad was in the Navy. We moved a lot. But I spent my formative years in this town called Bremerton, which is right across the water from Seattle. I was 17 when Kurt killed himself. I think being a kid at that point and finding out you liked music, there was pride in the fact people actually cared about the music that came out of your area. I remember that feeling well. You believe, 'Wow. I can grow up and do music, too.' I also instinctively knew that there was this level of trepidation around what was happening in my backyard.

Q: A fear of being co-opted.

Gibbard: Right. Years before I discovered the music I liked, I was convinced that in order to be in a band you had to play really ripping guitar solos. You turn on MTV and you see Poison and Winger and I was like 12 years old trying to play guitar and going 'Well, I'll never make anything out of this because I can't play like that guy.' Then all of a sudden I start finding these bands - and Nirvana was one of them - and it made me think this is doable. There are ways to express yourself that don't involve this technical proficiency.

Q: Yet the music in the film is very lilting, almost melancholy.

Gibbard: It's funny. You talk to filmmakers or producers about music and they say things like, 'I want this to sound kind of orange.' What does that have to do with music? A.J. was more specific. I remember him asking for the sound to be 'metallic,' or in certain segments, 'more feminine' or 'more masculine.' That resonates. We wanted the music to be contemporary and indicative of what we're feeling as we listen to these interview tapes. It would have been pretty offensive, I think, if I said, 'OK, Steve, here I am going to play some feedback for five minutes and that's going to represent the Seattle sound in 1991.' Besides, if you come to this, you don't need a splatter of footage you've already seen a million times or songs you've heard even more.

Q: Which is VH1's approach.

Gibbard: Exactly.

Q: If anything, it's closer to an ethereal movie like Koyaanisqatsi - or a nature film or a weird kind of tourist brochure.

Fisk: You know, Koyaanisqatsi was thrown around up front.

Gibbard: A film I have still yet to see, actually.

Fisk: That's the first time I've heard you say that.

Gibbard: Well, I'd never done this. I didn't want to show my hand. When that movie came up, I was thinking 'Oh, great, I can't even pronounce it.' I remember trying a ton of different spellings when I tried to get it from Netflix. Then I just thought, 'Hell with it. I'm just going to go ahead with the lie that I've seen this thing.'

Q: The whole thing takes place in three Washington cities: Seattle, Aberdeen, Olympia. Was there ever an attempt to alter the sound to reflect the mood of each place?

Fisk: Well, culturally these cities have almost nothing to do with each other. They're all about an hour apart. They're different worlds. But the gray feel is the same in each city. Still, the choice of instruments changed for atmospheric purposes. It's all synth and xylophones at times - tone colors, a kind of navy blue overlay throughout the film, without much attempt to reference the Seattle sound. That's my arty way of saying, 'Yes, we toyed with the mood.'

Gibbard: In the section on Olympia, which is kind of an arty place, I think there was an attempt to reference some of the roots of Kurt. There's a piece of music in the film that has this goon-goon-gack goon-goon-gack sound, and that's kind of emulating the Velvet Underground.

Fisk: Evoking the Velvet Underground, with a little minimalist Brian Eno thing going on. That was what people there dug. You want to evoke the spirit of the place Kurt is talking about, but it needs to be this ambient thing flowing underneath the audio of Kurt's voice. That can be hard because some of the music he's talking about is bold. Velvet Underground weren't ambient.

Q: I'd say what you've done is even more interesting than the soundtrack to a documentary about a musician. It's like the unofficial soundtrack of a region. But I wonder if I were from the Northwest, would I be flattered? Or kind of bummed?

Fisk: I've lived there but I'm from Los Angeles - and man, that place is depressing.

Gibbard: I love the Northwest. Whenever people talk about Seattle or Portland they talk about the rain and how gray it is. That's what I love. It's a really very introspective place. Which is why the sound of one man ruminating about his life is fitting. Head 20 minutes from Seattle and you're in the middle of nowhere. Get on a ferry. Go to the west side. You're suddenly in the middle of a forest, and there's this real sense you're living in a city but people only get so close. You become aware of the space around you. Seattle was founded as an outpost and the loneliness of being removed from the world is still there. You heard it in Nirvana. And I find that romantic. If you're painting a portrait of a musician, the importance of location cannot be understated.