COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK, I AM CHRIS FARLEY

Like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison before and Tupac and Biggie after him, Kurt Cobain became a cottage industry after his death at the age of 27 in 1994. Nothing floods the market like a dead superstar.

Just on the documentary front alone, we’ve had Nick Bloomfield’s 1998 investigative and speculative KURT & COURTNEY, A.J. Schnack’s 2006 KURT COBAIN: ABOUT A SON built around Cobain interviews for Michael Azerrad’s 1993 book “Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana,” and then the 2015 double dose of SOAKED IN BLEACH and COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK, the former centered around private investigator Tom Grant and his digging into Cobain’s suicide and the latter officially approved by Cobain’s widow Courtney Love and their daughter Frances Bean Cobain. They made a real big deal about MONTAGE OF HECK being the first officially approved Cobain / Nirvana documentary, which automatically raises some red flags.

Throw in Gus Van Sant’s fictionalized LAST DAYS from 2005 and between all those cinematic incarnations and the Greatest Hits package (2002), the Journals (first released 2002), the three CD and one DVD box set (2004), the single-disc “Best of the Box” (2005), and various live albums released after his death beginning with MTV UNPLUGGED IN NEW YORK (Nov. 1, 1994) nearly six months after Cobain’s suicide, as well as all the celebrities from every walk of life fawning over seemingly every little thing Cobain, it’s easy to see why some of us experience Cobain fatigue or even why old fans sour on Cobain and Nirvana and ponder what they ever saw in their former heroes in the first place. Additionally, there are others who will tell you they hated Cobain and Nirvana during their brief heyday and that Cobain’s best move was blowing his brains out (a former co-worker actually said that during one musical discussion). We have more than enough room for each perspective and then some.

Through it all, though, I remain a Nirvana fan, mainly because I do my best to keep the legend at bay and just listen to the music. I turned 13 years old just three days before the release of Nirvana’s second album, NEVERMIND, so I definitely smelled teen spirit. That album, especially its first half, became so ingrained in my life during my teenage years that eventually I rarely ever played it, especially its first half, for quite some time. Only in the last year or so have I listened again to studio “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “In Bloom,” “Come As You Are,” and “Lithium” on my own accord.

Anyway, that’s a long way of saying I watched MONTAGE OF HECK more than five years after its original release and subsequent hype and backlash. Movies about real people, especially artists, face at least one huge challenge: Do you focus on that person’s darker side or do you focus on the good times or do you try and find a middle ground between dark and light? Matters are compounded when the subject in question committed suicide at the age of 27 and titled songs “I Hate Myself and Want to Die.” Cobain’s often dark sense of humor should never be shortchanged and it’s not during MONTAGE OF HECK. We do see the darker side of Cobain throughout, especially in the second half of MONTAGE OF HECK, but the film also helps recall why Nirvana unexpectedly exploded into the stratosphere in late 1991 and early 1992. That said, I still do not and will probably never understand why Cobain became a generational spokesman, because like others before and after him, he did not want that responsibility and because this whole generational spokesman concept strikes me as being profoundly silly. Always remember, though, “It’s not what your celebrity (corporation) can do for you, it’s what you can do for your celebrity (corporation).”

MONTAGE OF HECK calls to mind Jeff Feuerzeig’s 2005 documentary THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON in a multitude of ways, through their deeply troubled protagonists who have a talent for writing songs, playing music, and drawing, their every moment seemingly captured on camera, and their animated interludes. Cobain himself appeared in THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON, wearing a “Hi, How Are You?” T-shirt alongside Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist and Nirvana trumpeter Flea at the 1992 MTV Music Awards.

MONTAGE OF HECK attempts to avoid the canned talking head format as much as possible — director Brett Morgen said the interviews from Bob Fosse’s Lenny Bruce screen biography LENNY influenced his style for MONTAGE OF HECK.

I AM CHRIS FARLEY, meanwhile, reinforces the idea that excess informed Chris Farley’s life and death at the age of 33 from an overdose in December 1997.

Farley enjoyed an excess of friends and loved ones, because fellow celebrities Christina Applegate, Tom Arnold, Dan Aykroyd, Bo Derek, Jon Lovitz, Lorne Michaels, Jay Mohr, Mike Myers, Bob Odenkirk, Bob Saget, Adam Sandler, and David Spade all share their Farley memories and anecdotes, in addition to excess in both overall lifestyle and comedic style.

I quickly realized once again that it was that very excess at the heart of Farley’s lead roles in TOMMY BOY, BLACK SHEEP, BEVERLY HILLS NINJA, and the posthumously released ALMOST HEROES. I watched BLACK SHEEP and BEVERLY HILLS NINJA and passed on the other two, because I thought BLACK SHEEP and BEVERLY HILLS NINJA relentlessly played one note for a good 90 minutes at a time — we shall call this note “Fat Man Takes a Really, Really Big Fall.” Seeing clips in I AM CHRIS FARLEY just brought it all back home again how much I disliked Farley’s films.

Also, during I AM CHRIS FARLEY, Aykroyd compared the comedic duo of Farley and Spade to Aykroyd and Belushi, Abbott and Costello, and Martin and Lewis. Wow. I mean, I did a double take when I first heard it and I just did another now writing it out. Farley and Spade paired for TOMMY BOY and BLACK SHEEP, while Abbott and Costello began working together in radio in 1935 and continued through radio, film, and TV into the mid-50s, highlighted by their legendary “Who’s on First?” routine. Abbott and Costello’s filmography doubled Farley and Spade in 1941 alone. Martin and Lewis made 16 films together — like Abbott and Costello, they worked in three entertainment mediums — from 1949 to 1956. Farley and Spade compared to Aykroyd and Belushi checks out, because of “Saturday Night Live” and two feature films.

On the other hand, I loved almost every Farley clip from “Saturday Night Live,” especially motivational speaker Matt Foley’s debut on May 8, 1993, because I can handle Farley’s excess better at five-minute sketch intervals than feature-length excess. I laughed at the Matt Foley sketch like I remember laughing at it 27 years earlier when it first aired. Spade and Applegate’s reactions and straining to remain in character when Foley unleashes “From what I understand, you’re not using your paper for writing, but for rolling doobies … you’ll be doing a lot of doobie rolling when you’re living in a van down by the river” make this sketch even funnier. Farley’s defining moment and one of the best on SNL.

By the way, you’ll discover the identity of the real-life Matt Foley during I AM CHRIS FARLEY. That’s one of the low-key highlights.

I AM CHRIS FARLEY balances toward light more than dark, but comments like Odenkirk’s “It’s just rare that a person has that much joy and brings that much happiness to everyone around him, but with Chris, there’s a limit to how wonderful it is to me and that limit is when you kill yourself with drugs and alcohol, you know, because that’s where it stops being so fucking magical” certainly get their point across.

Here’s another way to look at Cobain and Farley, “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” In the case of a musician and a comedian who are preserved on record and celluloid, though, we have a chance to step into the light once more any time we so desire our personal favorite Nirvana album or “The Best of Chris Farley.” I believe that’s the best way to remember Cobain and Farley, as well as ourselves in the process.

COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK (2015) ****; I AM CHRIS FARLEY (2015) ***1/2