Sundance Withdraws Love-Cobain Film

The Sundance Film Festival, fearing a lawsuit from grunge rock diva and actress Courtney Love, has pulled a documentary about Love and her late husband, Kurt Cobain, from the festival lineup just two days before it was to premiere.

Sundance officials said they decided to remove the film, titled “Kurt and Courtney,” from the festival program after EMI Music Publishing charged that British filmmaker Nick Broomfield had not secured the necessary rights to use songs by Nirvana and Love’s group, Hole.

“Regrettably, we have been informed that there are a number of unresolved legal matters between the filmmaker and others--including uncleared music rights--which make it impossible for us to present the film,” said a statement released by the festival. A Sundance source said festival lawyers are concerned that the film has not been vetted by an American lawyer and that Broomfield’s own lawyers have not seen the film.

But Broomfield said Sundance is buckling to pressure exerted by Love’s formidable publicity machine. He claimed that the BBC footage he uses of the two disputed songs is, in fact, covered under a separate rights agreement with the British broadcaster. Nevertheless, he said, he offered to remove the music from the film. Sundance officials would not budge.

“I’m not surprised by what is happening,” said Broomfield, who has had five films at Sundance in the past, including his documentary “Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam.”

“It’s a complete continuation of what the film is about: how someone who has a great deal of money can throw their weight around. This is a very sad statement on freedom of speech in the States today.”

Sources said the EMI letter, sent this week, was only the latest attempt by Love’s attorneys to halt the film’s showing. Late last year, for example, they sent Sundance a letter alleging that the brief description of the film in the festival’s program was defamatory and seeking the film’s removal from the program. According to sources, the festival stood by the film, but Geoff Gilmore, the festival director, rewrote the notes slightly.

“It was outrageous,” said one insider who believes that the decision to pull the film was made at the highest levels.

Rosemary Carroll, Love’s lawyer, could not be reached Thursday.

Some speculated that Love, whose powerful advocates include ICM’s Jeff Berg and publicist Pat Kingsley, wielded even more muscle because of her romantic connection to actor Ed Norton (“The People vs. Larry Flynt”).

“Everyone is so hot to work with both of them that there are a lot of frightened people who don’t want to rock the boat,” said one person close to the situation.

According to a summary released by Broomfield’s publicist, the film, which he spent three years making, includes interviews with Love’s estranged father and with a singer from the underground music scene who claims to have been offered money to kill Cobain.

Broomfield said the film also reveals that the couple had been talking about divorce when Cobain died.

“I think by the end, their relationship was very destructive,” said the filmmaker. “I didn’t go into this piece in any way trying to make an anti-Courtney film. But because of behavior precisely like this in the past, people are pretty antagonistic towards her. And there’s certainly a strong element of that in the film.”

Broomfield is not the first chronicler of Love’s life to have encountered resistance. When writer Lynn Hirschberg wrote about Love for Vanity Fair magazine in 1992, the blistering messages Love left on her answering machine were legendary.

Broomfield’s own behavior, however, has also been questioned. Last year, he was tossed out of an ACLU dinner by Mercury Records president and former Love manager Danny Goldberg after taking the podium to make negative comments about Love (who was there to present an award to director Milos Forman).

And some say that by labeling the Sundance dust-up a 1st Amendment issue, Broomfield is simply attempting to whip up publicity that could help him find a distributor for his film.

“This is the best thing that could have happened to this movie,” said one observer. “All publicity is good publicity.”