Soaked In Bleach

I'm almost thirty and feeling old about everything, but what makes me feel young again is watching documentaries about events that happened when I was (gosh) just too young to remember.

I was jazzed about seeing the two ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries,  June 17th, 1994 and The Price of Gold. They're about the OJ Simpson Bronco chase and the Nancy Kerrigan scandal, respectively. Both happened in 1994 when I was seven years old. I was generally aware of what was going on, watching the nightly news while eating dinner with my parents in front of the TV. It's great to watch these films now so I can use my adult brain and life experiences to comprehend what was happening then, understand how the public reacted, and also reflect on how I would have felt about it had I been a fully realized person. Soaked in Bleach is one of these types films for me.
  
Directed by Benjamin Statler, Soaked in Bleach covers another devastating event from the zeitgeist of my childhood: Kurt Cobain's apparent suicide. Unlike OJ and Nancy Kerrigan, I was completely unaware of Kurt Cobain then. It wasn't till I was ten and started watching MTV that I knew at all about Nirvana or the suicide. At the time, in 1997, it was the three year anniversary. As a kid that seemed far away enough to be ancient history. The grunge era had already come and gone. You were more likely to see Puff Daddy, Sublime, or Marilyn Manson videos on MTV. The Kurt Cobain chatter came from Kurt Loder during news updates between video blocks. Two years later such news breaks and video blocks would be pretty much obsolete.

Soaked in Bleach and another Kurt Cobain documentary, Montage of Heck, both came out in 2015. Montage of Heck focuses more on Kurt's origins and inner thoughts; a tribute visualized with an animated collage of his sketch book drawings. Soaked in Bleach is a compelling murder mystery. 

The narrative has always presented a depressed and thoroughly messed up Kurt Cobain. Behind his raw music with lyrics that made your parents feel uncomfortable was a man who did exactly what you would expect him to do: shoot himself in the head with a shotgun. At least that's the narrative.

There have always been swirling rumors about his suicide actually being a murder. Courtney Love's behavior and inappropriate attachment to her husband's music rights made her a suspect to those who already disliked her. Just scuttlebutt in response to a woman who was unashamed - on many levels. She was labeled as obnoxious at the least, and greedy and callous at the worst.

Courtney Love had always been rough around the edges in her persona. I never felt pity for her being a widow. She didn't seem to need it. I certainly feel less likely to pity her after watching Soaked in Bleach. You can speculate and talk about these clues in her behavior, but what's so unequivocally shocking is the damning recorded audio at the center of this documentary.

Private detective Tom Grant

Told through interviews and top notch reenactments paired with actual audio recordings, the documentary follows private detective Tom Grant during the week before Kurt Cobain was found dead in his home. Grant was hired by Courtney Love to find Kurt who had evidently gone missing on April 2, 1994. She expressed concern that Kurt might commit suicide - despite good friends reporting that he was and always had been a happy person. It became clear that Love more or less knew where he was, and was more concerned about stopping him from leaving her. Cobain had allegedly asked his good friend/lawyer, Rosemary Carroll, to have Love taken out of his will about a month before he died.

Depiction of Courtney Love during one of her meetings with Tom Grant.

Love insisted that Tom Grant not check their house, reasoning that their nanny Cali was there, and would know when Kurt came home anyway. Michael "Cali" DeWitt was a former boyfriend of Love's, and the live-in nanny for Frances Bean.

Love told white lies right from the start, making Grant question her motives. It's known that Cali saw Cobain for the last time on Saturday, April 2, 1994. Phone records show that on that day Cali and Love spoke on the phone eight times. The next day Love hired Grant, but failed to mention that she knew where Cobain was or that he had just been seen by their friend.

Throughout the week before Cobain's death, Love tried to spitball ideas to Grant of fabricated stories she would stage for the media to bring her sympathy. She explained that the stories were meant to be messages to Kurt; something that would pull him out of hiding and contact her. This behavior is so manipulative it's hard to believe she actually cared about him.

Daniel Roebuck as Tom Grant meeting with Dylan Carlson.

On April 7th Grant finally went to the home at 171 Lake Washington Blvd. accompanied by Cobain and Love's friend Dylan Carlson. In the process, Grant found a foreboding note, lying on the stairs in their home. The note said, "I can't believe you managed to be in this house without me noticing."

From Justice For Kurt Cobain

The note was written by Cali. It can be read in several different ways:

1. Cali noticed Kurt in the house or heard the gunshot (without checking on Kurt's well being for some reason), and assumed Kurt had been there for a time. Without bringing attention to himself,  Cali wrote the passive aggressive note on the stairs for him to find.

2. Cali heard the gun shot, which tipped him off to Kurt's death. Was the letter a sort of eulogy? If so, why was it left on a staircase not even close to Kurt's body? Why was it left there at all? How could Kurt "Do something now." if he was obviously dead?

3. The message from Cali to Kurt about not noticing him is eerie, as it reflects Grant's and others inability to find Kurt.

Though Grant and Dylan were in the house several days after Kurt had shot himself, Grant was unaware of the greenhouse above the garage where Kurt's body lay. Dylan knew about this wing of the house, but for unknown reasons did not suggest that Grant check it. At the time of him finding the note, Grant did not suspect that Kurt was dead nor that Kurt was in the house.

The crux of Soaked in Bleach is the audio recordings. Grant recorded every meeting and every phone call. When another piece of evidence is introduced, and you almost can't believe it, then you hear it straight from the horse's mouth. It's absolutely chilling to hear Love's well known voice utter lies and manipulative thoughts. Mix that with plane tickets, drugs, handwriting samples, the will, undisclosed phone calls, and a misplaced end table, you will finish this film wanting to go door to door petitioning for the case to be reopened.