Rock drummers are used to letting someone else have the spotlight. Having played with the awesomely bonkers Courtney Love, Hole’s Patty Schemel knows this better than most. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Love — and her late husband, Kurt Cobain — even manage to steal the show in a documentary about Schemel’s life.
For this unfocused look at the drummer’s tenure in the ’90s riot grrrl band, director P. David Ebersole has amassed some great footage that never quite hangs together. Is Schemel’s story about overcoming drug addiction? The challenges of being a female drummer? Coming out? Surviving Hurricane Courtney? None of these half-explored storylines measure up to Schemel’s home-movie footage of Love, Cobain and their baby daughter in happier times.