It’s been near-impossible to avoid the surfeit of coverage, tributes, and articles on Kurt Cobain in the lead-up to, and since, the 20th anniversary of his passing last Saturday 5th April. The huge amount of attention paid to the Nirvana frontman’s death makes it feel like every angle has been exhausted, from comic books to long-lost interviews, like Triple J unearthing their excruciating chat with Nirvana during their one and only tour of Australian in 1992. Along with the media attention and serious emotions that have been dredged up two decades later, the conspiracy theories over the circumstances of Cobain’s suicide have also been dragged back into the spotlight. Enough at least for Seattle police to issue public photos from the crime scene to quash suspicions, as Seattle PI reports, dismissing foul play connected to Cobain’s death and ruling it a suicide. Tragic, but done and dusted, right? Not if you’re the makers of Soaked In Bleach, a new docudrama that re-examines the death of the iconic 27-year-old musician through the conspiratorial lens that he was in fact murdered. The directorial debut of producer Benjamin Statler, the new film mixes archival footage, talking head interviews, and a significant amount of dramatic re-enactments where Hollywood’s low-tier stars play the parts of Courtney Love (portrayed by Sarah Scott) and Kurt Cobain (Tyler Bryan), as the newly unveiled trailer demonstrates. “Twenty years later, I remain professionally disturbed by the way in which the Kurt Cobain case was mishandled.” There’s a whole lot of speculation tossed around in the heavy-handed, four-minute sneak peek, but Soaked In Bleach follows the main narrative trajectory of Tom Grant, the private investigator hired by Love to find her then-missing husband, who ends up pointing the finger back at his client. There’s “official case files” and “actual audio recordings” used to reinforce the Courtney Love murder plot, including a whole turnstile of official looking talking heads who also throw allegations in her direction as well as towards the Seattle Police investigation. People like attorney Rosemary Carroll, who accuses Love of forging Cobain’s infamous “better to burn out” suicide note, and Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, President of American Academy of Forensic Sciences, who declares that “20 years later, I remain professionally disturbed by the way in which the Kurt Cobain case was mishandled.” Soaked In Bleach doesn’t have an official release date yet, but you can bet that the official trailer’s timely release – landing at a point when discussion on Kurt Cobain’s death is at its most fevered pitch – is wholly designed to drum up some controversy and free publicity, and as Courtney Love is quoted in the trailer, “all publicity is good publicity to some degree.”
