In some ways, you gotta respect Courtney Love for her outright bitchiness and defiance of convention (or common sense). I mean, she set out to become a famous “rockstar” and actually made it happen, despite the fact that she stepped on or bit off of plenty of more talented people along the way (Rozz Rezabak, Julian Cope, Jennifer Finch, Billy Corgan, obviously Kurt Cobain, the list goes on).

Love started Hole with the intentions of creating gusty grrrl rock. After a turbulent and troublesome childhood and a few transitory teenage/early-20s years involving herself in music scenes (by proxy) and also attempting to make it as an actress (she played a small role in Sid and Nancy), she moved to the West Coast and set her sights on situating herself in the underground music scene. Though Hole’s debut album, Pretty On The Inside, was well received in 1991, it was only after her romance with and eventual marriage to Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain that Love and Hole received significant media attention.

With Cobain's help/influence, Hole's second LP, Live Through This, released in the pivotal year of 1994 (just four days after Cobain’s body was discovered in Seattle), proved to be an album with serious teeth. Feminine symbolism (flowers, babies, milk) juxtaposes gritty grunge-punk riffs and combative vocals (especially on “Gutless!”), which exude a masculine sense of power, sexuality, and confidence along with a feminist fuck-you attitude. Truly a triumph for Love and an inspiration to all real grrrls; the record to date has achieved worldwide double platinum status (having sold 2 millions copies).

In the public eye, Miss World plays the role of the psycho-punk-bleached-blond-bitch who just doesn't give a fuck. Perhaps she intentionally plays up her brash personality in order to grab attention, yet her words, erratic behavior, and occasionally obscene demeanor often work against her; in fact, honesty about shooting heroin in her first trimester (before realizing she was pregnant, so she says) even caused social services to take baby Frances Bean from her and Kurt for several months. Additional problems with drugs coupled with assaulting a woman with a liquor bottle caused similar intervention in more recent years. Only after hospitalizations and being sentenced to rehab, as well as pleading guilty to “disorderly conduct,” did Love regain full custody of then eleven-year-old Frances Bean, in 2004.

Love has always had a complicated relationship with the media and the music world. She laps up attention by attempting to turn the spotlight on herself (such as the scene she caused during Madonna’s interview at the Video Music Awards), but she's also refused to answer specific questions about Cobain's death or her own drug use since donning “Celebrity Skin” and abandoning the dead world of grunge for the sleek glamour of Hollywood (apparently, Love once bought a fancy car for her and Cobain to use, but he refused to drive anything but his old Volvo and made her return it; the two had quite opposite views of how to handle money and fame). Of course, there are also the rumors/conspiracy theories that connect her to her former husband's death. As seen in the documentary Kurt & Courtney, Love becomes agitated during a media interview about her role in The People vs. Larry Flint; she abruptly stops the interview when they question her about feeling similar to the drug-riddled, HIV positive character she plays.

When it comes to her former husband, Love had obviously made some dubious decisions. For years, she battled Dave Grohl and Krist Noveslic by preventing rare Nirvana tracks from being released…ironic that she possesses such power considering that she wasn’t in the band! Even more ironic is that Love found it acceptable to publish Cobain's personal journals (but not his music), despite the fact that one of the notebooks says, “If you read this, you will judge,” and that he was a rather private person. Although Love publicly and privately mourned Cobain’s death in '94, she has, ever since, seemed to capitalize on his music, art, fame, and suicide by retaining control over the release of his materials, and by overstating his personal views on his bandmates and others. She also has power over books written or films directed about his life. She repeatedly tried to shut down filming of Kurt & Courtney and has prevented other projects.

Anyone who read the popular and extensive Heavier Than Heaven by Charles R. Cross knows that Love was looking over his shoulder throughout the entire process of his writing this biography, which caused the book to come under the scrutiny of Cobain fans. The last chapter is a fictitious account of Cobain’s last moments, as is Gus Van Zant’s film Last Days. It’s fairly obvious that Van Zant made this film without the official stamp of Courtney Love approval because skinny blond Michael Pitt plays “Blake” and he lives with a myriad of characters loosely based on real people, whereas Love herself appears once as a nagging voice on the telephone (and only those familiar with the saga can separate fact from fiction and place all of Van Zant’s references, fake names, cameos, and props). Of course, “Blake” kills himself in the end, but his ominous, drug-infused solitude during the course of the film seems to inspire feelings about Love’s negligence to his addictions or emotions, no matter the picture she has painted of trying to help.

In early 2008, Love announced the actor she wants to play Cobain in a “legit” version of the story. This is, of course, the cinematic adaptation of Heavier Than Heaven, kid tested, Courtney approved. The movie has a 60 million dollar budget and Love is acting as the executive producer and basically calling all the shots. She handpicked Half-Nelson’s Ryan Gosling to play Kurt and Scarlett Johansson to play herself (delusional, much?). I’m sorry to bust Courtney’s little bubble, but I think it’s utterly ridiculous that she is still marketing her dead husband and their “notorious” relationship (a la Sid and Nancy) over ten years after his death. She didn’t get the role of Nancy Spungen, so maybe by casting a beautiful, mainstream-successful actress to play herself in a film that probably portrays her character in a far more acceptable light (and her husband’s in whatever light she chooses), Love is finally regaining control over her public image. It’s too bad that control comes at such a steep price.

love and turpentine, alternative amy.