Courtesy of HBO Documentary Films

It’s tempting to wonder what Kurt Cobain would have thought about Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the much buzzed-about new documentary by Brett Morgen. On the one hand, he probably would have appreciated the unorthodox visuals, much of it dark, unsettling animation that builds on the musician’s own drawings. He would probably have been OK with Morgen’s use of Cobain himself as the main narrator, through interviews, home movies and notebook entries. But being an easily humiliated soul (one of the film’s revelations) who both craved attention and hated fame, Kurt might have had a hard time digesting such a raw, unflinching portrayal of himself, or really, any portrayal of himself. As the film shows again and again, Cobain was tormented by his own contradictory nature – he both wanted and despised normalcy, success, maybe life itself.

Like Morgen’s The Kid Stays in the Picture (adapted from producer Robert Evans’s autobiography), this is far from a conventional documentary. With its elaborate animation sequences and chaotic audio and video montages culled from films, ads and other sources including Cobain himself, it’s almost an art film – which makes sense given Morgen’s attempt to portray the inside of his subject’s head. It’s not a pretty place.

Montage of Heck (the title comes from one of Kurt’s own audio creations) is the first documentary about the Nirvana frontman that is “fully authorized” by his family. (Daughter Frances Bean Cobain is an executive producer; Kurt’s parents, sister and widow Courtney Love are all interviewed.) Yet it is is not gentle with its subject or his intimates, including Love. The latter, shown in a rather ragged state in several clips, is fairly candid about her own weaknesses and role in the drug-fueled lifestyle she and her husband shared. Also interviewed is Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, who provides some insightful commentary on the band’s rise, while drummer Dave Grohl is conspicuously absent from the film.

Courtesy of HBO Documentary Films

Though Nirvana fans are already familiar with a lot of this stuff – Cobain’s depression, his stomach problems and struggles with heroin and fame – we’ve never seen his story presented in such wrenching detail or depth.

It begins with home movies of a cheerful blonde toddler, clearly enjoying all the attention that came from being a “magnet to everyone,” according to Cobain’s mother Wendy. Constantly in motion, strongly drawn to both music and art, young Kurt became especially hyper and uncontrollable after his parents’ divorce, and was shuttled around to various family members. According to sister Kim, he both wanted and despised a normal family life, already exhibiting the duality that would become his life’s motif. Wildly creative, antisocial and ridiculed at school, he makes an early suicide attempt before finding solace in punk rock, which became a haven and escape, as it was for so many alienated kids. Obsessively preoccupied with writing songs and playing guitar, he forms a band with friends Novoselic and Grohl.

Their music is instantly powerful. Even at the rough early gigs shown in the film, the band seemed completely in command (Kurt was a big proponent of practice). As anyone who ever saw Nirvana in the early days can attest, they were incredibly good live. The mega-fame that came via major label debut Nevermind would have been challenging for most humans, let alone the distressed Cobain. By this time he was into heroin, which he had begun using to dull the chronic stomach pain he never found a treatment for.

Courtesy of HBO Documentary Films

Love’s involvement in his life and their undeniable attachment is shown via messy, affectionate, sometimes painful home videos. (If this film doesn’t dispel the notion that she was somehow responsible for her husband’s misery and death, nothing will.) The couple’s joy over the birth of Frances and Kurt’s satisfaction with fatherhood are offset by rampant press reports of the couple’s heroin abuse and Kurt’s own spiraling addiction. The film mercifully ends a month before his suicide.

A rough, sometimes indulgent film, Montage of Heck demystifies its subject without taking away from his immense talent and musical legacy. Its ultimate sad takeaway is that this unhappy “spokesman for his generation” never had much of a chance; given Cobain’s demons, it seems remarkable that he even made it to 27.

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck will screen at the Tribeca Film Festival before opening in theaters later this month; it airs on HBO May 4.

—Marina Zogbi

The theme of this post is how my approach as an instructor can make or break a learning moment with a student, and how every day is an opportunity to start over if I take it.

Having begun a new semester, many of the students I am now teaching are having their first experiences with me, and I with them. As a music teacher, I often establish a much more informal environment in my classroom and allow students more autonomy than they are accustomed to in traditional academic classes. I also develop a friendly, and mutually respectful rapport with students over the course of a semester. Sometimes the beginning of a new semester feels like I just switched horses in mid-stream. I often need to remind myself that the new students in front of me are not the same ones I’ve been watching learn and develop. I need to start from the beginning and be patient while a new class takes their first steps toward understanding how music works. Especially challenging is that I need to make known all over again what my expectations of students are and that, although music is ultimately a “fun” class, that there is a lot of earnest hard work involved in successfully learning to do it.

It’s easy to get caught in the trap that arises when someone in the class is reluctant to participate or acts out. Sometimes it takes every bit of cool I’ve ever learned to keep not to take sticky situations personally. When a teacher calls upon a student, it’s often the case that that student was either not paying attention, or doesn’t understand what is being asked of them. I usually choose whom to call upon based on who most needs help on that piece of the lesson. This technique usually functions to turn the kid’s focus back to the lesson; and is often, in fact, the moment he is brought to understanding. The exchange ends up providing a confidence boost of forward momentum for both parties. Unfortunately, the same moment can be a disaster for a teacher, and put a kid off the entire learning process. The difference for me has been to remember that whatever factors are contributing to that student’s behavior, I probably have very little to do with it other than performing the generic role of “teacher”.

I’m finding that if I can get past the tension of the initial stand off that arises when I don’t let someone off the hook; I can read the person I’m talking to, and consider what her experience might be. With a little insight it’s easy to see how choosing a different style of communicating might yield a different response. The hard part is remaining affable while trying to find an approach that hit’s home. It’s easy to get frustrated and impatient, especially when a kid becomes invested in getting the best of me. The upside is that even if I do let her off the hook and fail to teach her in that moment, I’ve still established some kind of rapport. I’m discovering that if I revisit the situation one on one, I can usually redefine the dynamic. If I acknowledge that the exchange went badly, and approach her with a renewed commitment and attitude; most of the time, a resistant student will open up and express some genuine interest in learning something very much like what I had been trying to teach her.

I had an experience with a young woman in my class this week that was a textbook example of how not to interact with a student, but also how to turn the relationship around and achieve a positive result. This young woman is very shy, and prefers not to be called upon to answer questions. In all of our previous exchanges, I had successfully helped her arrive at the correct answer and the way to find it out. This time, however, she was determined to not answer the question or ultimately even respond to me at all. I moved on, but reprimanded her, feeling frustrated by her resolve. I thought about it overnight and came to realize that I should have had no expectation of eliciting the response I wanted from her by creating a negative precedent. The next day, I took her aside at the beginning of class and explained my perspective and offered a mea culpa, asking that she give me a chance to work with her individually on a song of her choosing. Remarkably, she had already had a song in mind, and was eager to learn it on the piano. I showed her the chords and wrote down the notes for each hand, and she sat diligently for about forty minutes practicing the fingerings I showed her. During the following class, I had the drum set out, and got a percussion jam going. While I was not looking, the same student was playing an improvised melody in time with the drums, and with encouragement continued to play and make up new parts, all very musical and rhythmically appropriate. I look forward to teaching her more of the song on the piano tomorrow.

For now, good night

Premiers aren’t just for Hollywood theaters anymore. Now movies and entire TV series can materialize on Netflix or on some other streaming service sans the red carpet party and garner just as much success. This is due partially to the raise of the internet. While box office sales are still important, the web has an increasingly important role in a film’s pre and post release existence. You can follow films from funding to box set all via Twitter feeds and emails.

For new movies, the internet has somewhat infinite potential when it comes building hype. Think of how many times Netflix tried to get you to watch Blackfin or YouTube showed you yet another trailer for The Great Gatsby. In this day and age, you don’t have to go to a theatre to see a trailer anymore. You can watching a clip on infinite loop until the film premiers and then long after.

Here are some recent music documentaries/bio-dramas that have utilized it in different ways. Some used the web purely as a promotional tool, one used it to crowdsource the filming and another used it as its release platform. The main tread that ties them all together is that they have been popping up in forum discussions, some for years now, and the have the internet talking.

Straight Outta Compton

“Our art is a reflection of our reality”
Due out August 13th, this film follows the rise of rap group NWA. Raised in Compton, California, the group’s members Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren and DJ Yella translated their experiences into music that in turn revolutionized the genre. The movie, named after the NWA’s 1988 debut album, was directed by F. Gary Gary. Gary also directed the music video for “It Was a Good Day” by Ice Cube (1992) as well as the video for “Natural Born Killaz” by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube (1994) and “Keep Their Heads Ringin” by Dr. Dre (1995).

Amy

“I’m not a girl trying to a star or trying to be anything other than a musician”

With the tag line “the girl behind the name”, “Amy” explores the musician’s short, but successful life up until her untimely death in 2011. The documentary uses unreleased tracks and archival footage, giving the movie a sort of in-her-words feel. It was directed by Asif Kapadia, who won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary for his 2010 film SENNA, and is scheduled to hit theaters July 3rd in Ireland and the UK. There isn’t a release date for the US, but there is the internet.

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

“Oh Our Final Name Is NIRVANA”
After premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Montage of Heck” has captivated the internet with clips of the rocker’s early life in Aberdeen. Brett Morgen began creating the documentary, the first about Kurt Cobain to be made with the cooperation of his family, in 2007. It includes footage from live performances and home movies as well as animations by Stefan Nadelman and Hisko Hulsing. It also features artwork, photography, journals and songbooks, unheard songs, demos and recordings, which together create an exhaustive look into the life of one of the most iconic musicians. It is due out on May 4, 2015 on HBO.

All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records

“I spent more money in Tower Records than any other human being.”
Colin Hanks is perhaps best known for his roles as Father Gil on “Mad Men” and as Travis Marshall “Dexter”. For “All Things Must Pass”, he stepped behind the camera and into the director’s chair to create this in-depth look at Tower Records and its founder Russ Solomon. After launching a campaign to fund the project on Kickstarter, Hanks received almost double in pledges and was able to not only bring the film to fruition, but also premier it at this year’s SXSW festival. For those who weren’t in Texas, Hanks has said via the film’s facebook that they are “still working out a distribution deal at the moment…In the mean time, there will be additional film festival screenings, around the world.” So stay tuned.

What Happened, Miss Simone?

“I want to shake people up so bad that when they leave a nightclub where I preformed- I just want them to be to pieces”
In this Netflix original documentary, director Liz Garbus mixes recordings and archival footage together and overlays the resulting film with Simone’s songs to crafts a portrait of the beloved musician. Netflix describes Simone as a “classically trained pianist, dive-bar chanteuse, black power icon and legendary recording artist [who] lived a life of brutal honesty, musical genius and tortured melancholy.” After premiering at Sundance, the film will release onto Netflix on June 26.

-Zoe Marquedant

What Leslie Feinberg and Brooke Siem of NYC’s Prohibition Bakery find most fun about baking amazingly delicious alcohol-laden cupcakes is doing something that makes people happy. “There’s very few people who are incorporating boozy cupcakes into a sad occasion, Feinberg says with a laugh. “It’s always a good time. It’s always a positive experience.”

Leslie Feinberg sampling the good stuff. Photo credit PMc

Their magical cupcakes even helped to bring Leslie Feinberg and her boyfriend together. “He was actually one of our first customers,” she shares.

Before they started dating, in the early days of Prohibition Bakery, Feinberg delivered to her now-boyfriend’s job. “He knew that if we delivered cupcakes I would have to hang out with him, she chortles. “So I delivered to his job and I told everybody that it was his birthday, which it was not. They all sang to him and it was wonderful.”

In retrospect, Feinberg remembers it as a pretty adorable moment. “One of his co-workers said, “Dude, she definitely likes you, she says. “I would say within weeks we were dating.”

Now isn’t that sugar and spice, and everything nice!

Click on link below to find out more about this boozy baker’s most prized fashion items after the jump.

Jacqueline Colette Prosper, @yummicoco

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Art for Progress is proud to announce their upcoming production of Much Ado About Nothing. One of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, Much Ado also takes a complex look at love, relationships and searching for “self,” This production will use the classic language of Shakespeare in a modern setting – demonstrating the relevance of the writer’s work in present day. This incredible show will also feature some of NYC’s finest actors, comedians and public servants all on stage for a good cause. After production costs – all profits will go to Art for Progress’s Education Program – helping young people tap into their artistic abilities. We hope you can contribute towards this important work and look forward to seeing you at the show.

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