Category: kurt cobain

‘Hit So Hard’ review: a grunge musician’s real-life survival story

She drummed for Hole and babysat for Kurt and Courtney -- and lived through hell and tells the tale.

Hit So Hard.jpgDrummer Patty Schemel, star and subject of "Hit So Hard"
In many ways, “Hit So Hard,” the story of Patty Schemel is familiar to the point of being clichéd:  a ‘90s Seattle rocker spirals into alcoholism and drug abuse until she winds up homeless, then slowly achieves sobriety and a new life.

But Schemel ran in heady circles:  she was chummy with Kurt Cobain and his missus, Courtney Love, and she played drums in Love’s band Hole at that group’s height. So her tale of downfall and survival has absorbing echoes and connections.  What’s more, Schemel was an ardent videographer who, somehow, held onto her tapes, which means that her personal archives provide a truly rare view into the musical world known as grunge at something like its media-hyped height.

Director P. David Ebersole combines frank interviews with Schemel, her family and friends, and her bandmates to assemble this portrait of a talented woman dealing with the weighty pressures of the rock world, the drug world, and her own sexuality.  But it’s a long film for such a familiar story.  And, despite Schemel’s appealing candor, the highlight of the film is, by far, those precious images of Cobain horsing around with his baby daughter, helping Love write songs, and behaving like an ordinary fellow:  peace, love and normalcy in the midst of madness and pain.
    
(103 min., unrated, probably R, Hollywood Theatre) Grade: B-minus

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