/* I'd rather be a rockstar */ - About A Son - DAY 8 at TIFF 2006

With the release of About A Son one year after TIFF 2006, we present this brief musing from our first sighting back then in Varsity 7.

from Toronto International Film Festival 2006

It's been one week in this coccoon that is the festival. It's been 37 films down and here we are heading into the final three days of the festival to reach the magic 50 -nowhere to go onward ! sleep, where are you?

Day 8 was a series of astounding performances and intelligent, well articulated directorial movies in This is England; Alain Resnais masterful in Coeurs with one of my favourite actresses at 05 TIFF : Isabelle Carré; a trip through Olympia and Seattle that might have been through the eyes of a rockstar named Kurt, the dazzling looks of Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and the black and white future of Renaissance.

With the imminent release of About A Son and a subsequent CD soundtrack this is a lookback at the documentary.

Kurt Cobain - About a Son
6 p.m.
Varsity

Kurt Cobain - About A Son is a minimalist travelogue set in the Washington state neighbourhoods where Kurt Cobain grew up starting Aberdeen, Olympia, then finally in Seattle, eventually to Seattle. The presence of Kobain is on ly heard in a series of hours and hours taped interviews done with the author Michael Azerrad for Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana.

Kurt Cobain is seen as an outsider who changes the cultural landscape - Kurt Cobain is the tip of the iceberg. "People don't deserve to know about me," "I'd rather be a rock star." His attitude is sarcastic yet caring. Nihilistic jerk. I hate journalists. Everyone wants to see us die. He downplays his stardom.

Behind his voice, the people, the sights and places that could have been seen by Kurt come on screen:
Re-bar Dry Acres Crocodile Restaurant Mecca Cafe Vain Lewiston Queen City Moore Theatre Olympic Fireplace Twinkle Pig #3 Cherry St Milk Terrace Oak Harbour City Pawn Caffe Vida United States Post Office Broadway Super 97 cent Store Lambert Building ...

About A Son is a melancholy sojourn with music from influential bands of the time [ including Mudhoney's Touch Me I'm Sick with whom Nirvana shared a half single, The Melvins, REM, Iggy Pop, Vaselines, Butthole Surfers, for punctuation ] - not until the end do the lasting images of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana come on screen - the alter ego that lit the torch, The Man Who Sold the World.