Saturday, August 20, 2005

Oh, Courtney

Courtney Love wasn't always a joke. Live Through This was a good album; Celebrity Skin was a great one. In 1996, she won acting acclaim for The People vs. Larry Flynt, and I thought she was good in the intriguing film Basquiat the same year. She's still getting film interest.

And that's why it was a little bit painful to watch her at the Pamela Anderson roast. (Highlights included the ever-underrated Sarah Silverman and an hysterical deadpan reading of Pam's book by the unlikeliest of readers, Bea Arthur.) Her speech itself was good. Seriously, good -- well-written (possibly by someone else, who knows) and well-delivered (all her). Her behavior the rest of the roast was disturbing. She kept standing up and talking back to the people at the mike, sounding a bit like Kramer's obnoxious girlfriend on Seinfeld -- the one who so irritates Jerry that he goes to her office and heckles her.

She kept insisting she had been clean and sober for a year. She didn't look like it the night of the roast.

And, apparently, she is indeed off the wagon. (Or is that on the wagon? See, Seinfeld is everywhere.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There is something effably sad about Courtney's spiral downward. It's like watching a carwreck. Horrible to see; hard not to watch.

Kurt Cobain beat back the demons as long as possible, then disappeared in an instant. Courtney's destruction played out more slowly.

Wish I had something to say about the grace of self-destruction or the horrible cost of creativity. But it would be all bullshit.

Two young and talented people couldn't cope with life in all its messy reality. And we get to watch them.

How sad is that?