All these wonderful things

Aberdeen, Day Three

We are now half way through the Aberdeen portion of our initial shoot and somehow, miraculously, we are a little bit ahead of schedule.

Charles Peterson came to town yesterday and joined us in shooting still and motion picture portraits of Aberdonians that we came in contact with. We are doing this in each of our cities (Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle). First we recruit a subject, then Wyatt captures them on 35mm motion film, then Charles steps in and shoots them from front, back, side, capturing details - the bag they are carrying, the keys hanging from their belt, etc. These photo sequences will ultimately introduce Charles’ early photographs of Nirvana and Kurt - the only archival photographs that we will use in the film.

In pulling unsuspecting folks off the streets, we were able to get a good glimpse at the ongoing controversy in Aberdeen over whether or not to pay tribute to Kurt. I had heard talk of this before and I knew that the city’s decision to put “Come As You Are” on the “Welcome to Aberdeen” sign was not without struggle, but over the past few days we’ve learned that the divide between the love Kurt and hate Kurt camp is distinct. Seems that there are many who feel that recognizing his legacy will, in some way, condone his drug use or his suicide. (I’m not sure the folks of Memphis are as conflicted about celebrating a drug addict rock star...) We’ve heard from several who say that they just didn’t like or understand his music, they like “traditional” rock or country music.

The Milestone

Spent the last week working on the audio track for the film, going over it with my three producers - Shirley, Noah and Chris - moving things around, pulling out a line here, adding another there.

Some background, which I'm not sure if I have explained previously here, on how we are going about this production: During a four month span in late 1992-early 1993, Michael Azerrad recorded more than 24 hours of interviews with Kurt Cobain, covering just about every period of his life up to that point. Beginning this summer, Michael and I went through this material and began to pull out our selects - our favorite pieces of the interviews - which ultimately gave us about 4.5 hours of material that we really liked. Then over the past month and a half, we boiled this down to about 95 minutes.

Already Started

Returned home to Los Angeles after a five-day location scout/test shoot in Washington State. We flew up to Seattle on Tuesday (flying out of the Burbank airport, which would be ground zero for the big news story a day later) and got settled in with our 14 cases of camera equipment. Having previously been self-contained to my carry-on bag and single camera case, this was a new logistical puzzle to contemplate on nearly every move.

On Wednesday, we all loaded into a couple of vehicles and drove south to Olympia, where we wandered the downtown streets, shot a bit of test footage and generally tried to get our bearings. First days often seem like this, it takes time just to get yourself into the proper rhythm. Also, for me, figuring out the proper coffee schedule was key - too much in the AM and I'd crash by 3, too little and I'd crash by 11. But once the systems were coordinated, we were off, and we were officially rolling film. It wasn't until later the following day that I realized that this was a moment to celebrate.

Pairing Down/Gearing Up

While I haven't written about it very much, the past few weeks have been intensely devoted to working on my upcoming Kurt Cobain documentary. Following my advance scout of Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle in July, I spent much of the month combing through Michael Azerrad's audio interviews with Kurt, more than 24 hours in total, trying to pair the material down to feature film length. After meeting me in Seattle last weekend to scout locations and meet with the composers, Michael joined me here in Los Angeles and together we came up with a rough track that runs about an hour and forty minutes. I will work to shave 10 or more minutes from that, and will likely move things around and add some new stuff in.

This part of the process can be really frustrating. On Gigantic, trying to get down to our final hour and forty minute run time was excruciating. Not because the material was so fantastic and we couldn't figure out what to cut, but because it was so difficult to see the material clearly after working with it for such a long period of time. But working with Michael, and also my having more experience doing this, has made this time really enjoyable and streamlined for me.

Bumbershoot Challenged

There was a moment on Sunday evening when I stood in a bar in Seattle talking to a group of filmmakers that I had met at this year's Bumbershoot/1 Reel Film Festival and we all suddenly realized that we lived within a mile of one another in Los Angeles. This is not an unusual phenomenon - to travel hundreds or thousands of miles away from home and end up meeting your neighbors, folks you might never have met, or struck up a conversation with, back on your home turf - in fact, it was a somewhat regular occurrence when I was on the road for Gigantic.

The Conversation

For the past couple weeks, I have been immersed in hours of conversations from the spring of 1993. These conversations, between Michael Azerrad and Kurt Cobain, form the basis of the film that we will shoot in the fall.

For me, very few things are more enjoyable than a good interview. Despite the fact that I abandoned my journalism school degree when I moved to Los Angeles to make films, I never gave up my love for being the questioner, having a range of topics at hand, moving around from point to point, listening for the new answer, the new piece of information.