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In truth, producer Michael Azerrad was Kurt's friend—at least as much as Truman…

Director AJ Schnack's doc "Kurt Cobain: About a Son" is probably the closest thing to an autobiography by the former Nirvana lead singer as possible. The film draws upon a series of…

A scene from AJ Schnack's "Kurt Cobain About a Son." Image courtesy of Sidetrack Films.

Taped conversations between Nirvana front-man Kurt Cobain and music journalist Michael Azerrad form the attention-grabbing center of director AJ Schnack's otherworldly documentary "Kurt Cobain About a Son." The true highlights of the film, more than Cobain's never-before-heard commentary on life, death and the price of sudden fame, are Schnack's artful technique, pinpoint editing, clever animation and beautiful collage of Pacific Northwest landscapes and everyday Seattle people. "About a Son" lacks the storytelling energy to pull in audiences only half aware of Cobain's music and 1994 suicide. For music documentary devotees and Cobain's passionate fans, "About a Son" will serve as a dazzling coda to Cobain's creative legacy.

The highlight of "About a Son," perhaps the very reason Schnack made the film, is the interview recordings between Azerrad and Cobain…

From Ken Fox at TVGuide.com:

Aside from a few black-and-white photographs, Kurt Cobain never appears in this documentary, nor is a single note of his music ever heard. Instead, filmmaker AJ Schnack's hauntingly beautiful film is a bold and successful attempt to recover the human being who disappeared under the heavy mantle of "face and voice of a lost generation," and whose life has been increasingly overshadowed by his sensational early death in 1994...

Cobain is forthcoming, particularly about his drug use and hatred of the press, and while his voice sometimes sounds woozy (most of the interviews were conducted between midnight and dawn), it's always intimate, articulate, enormously empathetic and at odds with the lost-boy frailty of his appearance. Schnack sets Cobain's words against time-lapse cityscapes, domestic still lifes, rotoscoped animation, Charles Peterson's famous Grunge-scene photos and portraits of the ordinary denizens of Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle, the kind…

An exclusive look at some of images from Kurt Cobain About A Son, shot by noted photographer Charles Peterson, is up over at RollingStone.com.  Half the photographs are from Charles' grunge archives, while the other half are some of the newly shot images that Charles created for the film.  You can check it out here.  The site is also featuring the work of two other Seattlites - our composers Steve Fisk and Ben Gibbard, with Overture, their opening piece of score for the film.  Overture is also available on the movie soundtrack.