39

Photo courtesy of Home Box Office, Inc.

A FRIEND OF MINE once described Cannes as a giant gift shop, but because it’s in France, along a beautiful blue ocean, it’s better than that, the peak of fabulousness, the place where the red carpet was invented. Walking up the stairs to the Palais—as if it’s the highest achievement anyone could ever attain—is as good as they say.

In 2005 Thurston and I were in Cannes for the screening of Last Days, Gus Van Sant’s film based on the mysterious end of Kurt’s life. In the ten years since Kurt had died, neither Thurston nor I had ever done an interview about him. Now, suddenly, in the two days leading up to the screening, we were doing a lot of them, in between cocktail parties and dinners. Thurston joined the film as a consultant to make sure Gus got the music parts right and also to debrief the movie’s star, Michael Pitt.

It had come as a surprise when Gus called and asked me to play a part in the movie. The role was a small cameo—I played an empathetic record company executive, if such a person exists—but it’s also the only time the Michael Pitt character interacts with anyone in the film. Before we shot it, Gus discussed the scene with me and asked me what I would say. I based the character on Rosemary Carroll, who was Courtney’s lawyer and also the wife of Danny Goldberg, the head of the management company that represented us both. Rosemary is an eccentric, unconventional woman who at one point early in her life was married to the poet Jim Carroll.

We ran through the improvised dialogue several times, shooting it more than once. At the end of each take, Gus would toss out slight suggestions like, “Make it shorter.” Michael Pitt bore an amazing resemblance to Kurt, though when I stood facing him I was taken aback by his height, remembering Kurt’s smallness, the fragility contrasting with the explosiveness.

I did the film because I trusted that Gus would make something interesting, and he did. Overall it was a painless, positive experience that spoiled me for other film experiences, since after all, I’ve worked only with the best—Gus, Olivier Assayas, and Todd Haynes! Haha! Acting is something I always thought I might have a natural ability for doing. It connects to some odd three-dimensional sense I’ve always had, a spatial confidence of knowing where things are at all times, of being able to move around a stage without looking, always knowing where the audience is, or in this case, the camera. When I write lyrics sometimes I’ve pretended to be someone else, a character, tried to put myself in her head or situation, while drawing from some real-life emotion I’ve experienced, as I did in “The Sprawl” and “Pacific Coast Highway.” I’ve always gotten inspiration from the movies, whether for lyrics or fashion ideas, and I could watch films for hours. As an actor I don’t think I could ever be great, but maybe I bring something different, strange, new.

When we arrived at the stairs to the Palais, a song kicked in from a seven-inch that Thurston and I did together under the band name Mirror/Dash—a lo-fi, intimate, melancholy song—and it blew my mind that they would play it at such a public and glorified event as the Cannes film festival.

Going up the stairs involves an intricate choreography that gets repeated over and over with each film that makes it to the Palais. Guards flanked the sides of the stairs, holding—I’m not kidding—guns. The cast members linked arms, all in a row. Asia Argento, Gus, Michael, Michael’s girlfriend Jamie, and I took a few steps together. We paused. We took a few more steps, paused again. I assume this was to add even more ceremony and ritual to the pomp, the constellation of flashbulbs. Oddly enough, the experience was calming, especially as the sun was setting into dusk. Honestly, it was one of the highlights of my career.

At the same time, during an era where I’d grown used to averting my eyes to the most grossly commercial aspects of Kurt’s legacy—bootlegs, sidewalk drawings, T-shirts, posters, magazine covers—here I was in a film that took poetic license with Kurt’s last days. Some people, I knew, would hate the film, mostly those ardent fans who wanted a more literal, less abstract, or sordid interpretation. I had never wanted to exploit whatever friendship or kinship Kurt and I had, and even in his death I wanted to protect him, which is why I feel weird even writing what I have in this book. But as I wrote earlier, I think about Kurt quite often. As with many people who die violently, and too young, there is never any resolution or closure. Kurt still moves along inside me, and outside, too, with his music.