Brett D. Morgen (born October 11, 1968) is an American documentary film director, producer and social commentator.
I never met Kurt Cobain, but I felt like I got to know him in a manner probably more intimate than anyone I've known outside of my family.
I try and make non-fiction films that feel like fiction, so I'm always looking for the subtext and that's what really excites me.
Every second counts. We are only on this earth for a short amount of time, and we get to decide how we want to use that time. And if one thinks that the purpose of life is to leave the world in just a little bit better place than we found it, it's hard to think of anyone who has contributed more than Jane Goodall.
I've never had access to another person's art and work or, particularly, someone who is as prolific and was able to externalize his interior world as deeply as Kurt [Cobain] could.
Kurt [Cobain ]was a feminist. A lot of the bashing against Courtney [Love] I think has to deal with gender bias and the media, and I think that he liked that she was taking the attention off of him.
As a generation, Generation X or whatever we were called, we were not being nurtured. We didn't have Obama. We didn't have Bill Clinton. We didn't have any politicians that you could look up to, nor did we have parents.
When I grew up, we had no babysitters and nobody every observed us. People don't parent like that today. They're very hands-on; kids are constantly being supervised.
Everybody feels protective and possessive about Kurt [Cobain] , and I think that can be attributed to his unique gift, an ability to touch our lives, and make us feel like he's our friend.
Kurt [Cobain], from the moment he could hold a paintbrush in his hand, was painting. And from the moment he could hold a guitar, he was playing
One thing about Kurt [Cobain] is before he was a musician, and before he was a rock star, he was an artist, and an artist with a capital A. What that means is that he had to create. It wasn't something that he chose to do - it chose him.
You can't divorce yourself from your own life experiences.
My documentaries have always been very much constructed in the spirit of dominant cinema. From the time I started making non-fiction, I was mainly interested in designing and creating documentaries like fiction, so it was a natural evolution to try and embark on doing a dramatic narrative.
Oftentimes when people make movies about the '80s, they go back and look at '80s films, [but] those look nothing like the '80s. It's some watered-down version of reality.
The only people who really love the '80s are millennials. We had Reagan and Bush for our entire youth, the culture was terrible, the fashions were terrible, the movies were terrible.
Sometimes, you chase the moment and you can never catch it. Films take so long to make that you can never anticipate what the cultural landscape will be when the film enters the world.
I have three children, and they have never spent a minute unsupervised in their lives. My generation overcompensated like mad. I'm not even joking, every kid on my street [growing up] was molested. My kids would not have had an opportunity to molested, because they've never been alone, which is going to create a whole set of problems.
You have Kurt [Cobain], and he's singing about your experiences. They're our collective experiences.