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Since Kurt Cobain committed suicide on Apr. 5, 1994, Hollywood studios have released rock biopics based on the lives of Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, Ian Curtis, Notorious B.I.G. and Bobby Darin – and yet not Cobain. Save for “Last Days,” Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film about a singer not unlike Cobain (played by former “Boardwalk Empire” star Michael Pitt), the Nirvana frontman has been kept off the big screen. With ’90s nostalgia in bloom, however, thanks to multiple boy band reunions and addictive reminders of the decade from websites like BuzzFeed, is the time right for Kurt Cobain: The Movie?
Kurt Cobain would have turned 46 on Feb. 20, 2012. He was 27 when he shot himself in his Seattle home. That means a Kurt Cobain movie could provide Hollywood’s budding leading men with the type of opportunity usually only reserved for superhero films and sci-fi blockbusters – The chance at playing the role of a lifetime.
In the past, actors like Ryan Gosling, Robert Pattinson, Ewan McGregor and Jared Leto have been mentioned as possible onscreen incarnations of Cobain; Courtney Love, the singer’s former girlfriend, who had a child with Cobain, reportedly wanted Gosling for the role. The charismatic star is now 32, however, and with no Kurt Cobain movie on the horizon in the near future, he’ll be aged out of consideration by the time the project actually moves forward.

Kurt Cobain.

Kurt Cobain may have been influenced by punk legends like The Melvins or the Pixies but the late Nirvana singer grew up idolizing famed 1970′s and 80′s stuntman Evel Knievel.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that Nirvana’s breakthrough record, “Nevermind,” was recorded at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles, where much of Knievel’s own 1974 album “Evel Speaks to the Kids” was laid down.
“I remember walking in there the first day and thinking…’Really? This is such a fucking dump!’” ex-Nirmana drummer Dave Grohl says of the former recording space.
Grohl (whose new documentary “Sound City” recently debuted on VOD, said Cobain would go to great lengths to get closer to Knievel) one day stealing a recording of the iconic stuntman’s album while he and Grohl took a breather from recording “Nevermind.”
“(He) put it under his trenchcoat and walked out” – Grohl recalls of the Knievel-ling.
“He was like ‘Yeah! I got this Evel Knievel reel!’ and I was like ‘What the fuck are you going to do with that?” Grohl recalls. “You don’t have a 24″ track machine!’

Kurt Cobain would have been 46 today, had he not taken his own life nearly two decades ago. It’s impossible to fully describe the impact his too-brief life left on modern music, as the list of artists who cite him as a seminal inspiration stretches on without end. He touched too many people. Maybe it’s enough to just listen to some of the finest songs inspired by Cobain’s time on earth.

1 – “Tearjerker,” Red Hot Chili Peppers.
One Hot Minute’s “Tearjerker” plays out like an earnest love letter to Cobain, with lyrics like “I iked your whiskers / and I liked the dimple in your chin / your pale blue eyes.” Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman later explained that Cobain’s death had been “an emotional blow, and we all felt it. I don’t know why everyone on earth felt so close to that guy; he was beloved and endearing and inoffensive in some weird way. For all his screaming and all of his darkness, he was just lovable.”

2 – “About a Boy,” Patti Smith.
Patti Smith didn’t know Kurt Cobain, but she wished she had. “I was heartbroken when he committed suicide,” Smith told Seattle Weekly in 2010. “I loved Nirvana … [My husband and I] felt so badly. We just wished that we would have known him, and been able to talk to him, and had some positive effect on him.”

3 – “Mighty K.C.,” For Squirrels.
Sadly, Gainsville, Florida’s For Squirrels is better remembered for the band’s own tragedy than for the mournful single that became their lone radio hit, “Mighty K.C.” Two members of the band were killed in a car accident just a month before the release of their major label debut, Example.

4 – “Sleeps With Angels,” Neil Young.
Kurt famously quoted Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)” in his suicide note, writing, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” Young, who had attempted to reach out to Cobain before his death, seemed to comment on the ordeal in his song “Sleeps With Angels” which includes the repeated line, “He sleeps with angels (too late)/He sleeps with angels (too soon).”

5 – “Let Me In,” R.E.M.
Michael Stipe, too, had tried to help Kurt Cobain in his last days. He told Interview in 2011 that he’d sent a plane ticket and a driver to Cobain’s Seattle home in the hopes of arranging a collaboration, as “an excuse to reach out to this guy.” When that failed, he wrote “Let Me In” about his ill-fated attempt, with the haunting line, “I only wish that I could hear you whisper down / Mister fisherman, to a less peculiar ground.”