Sensing that the Clint Eastwood-directed update of A Star Is Born in which Tom Cruise would romance Beyoncé did not have enough talking points, screenwriter Will Fetters tells Crave Online that, while the film is ostensibly about the relationship formed between Cruise’s washed-up rock star and Beyoncé’s ingénue—what it’s really about is Kurt Cobain, had he lived to become a has-been who clung to relevancy by romancing a young pop star. In fact, Fetters says the whole reason he wanted to do the remake in the first place is because “I’m a huge Kurt Cobain fan” and because Cobain’s suicide was, to him, “like my Kennedy assassination.” And what better way to process those lingering emotions and pay tribute to his hero than by imagining “if Kurt Cobain never got to go Unplugged and survived and it’s 20 years later and it’s now, and he wanted to try to do that album with that understanding as this grunge icon,” and also he looked like a sad-faced Tom Cruise in a wig, probably?
Fetters added that while his A Star Is Born will still have its obligatory love story, for him the film is really all about posing the question, “In a world of Justin Bieber, if you’re Kurt Cobain now in your 50s, what do you do? How do you exist in this world?” Another question being asked here: Is there a way that having Tom Cruise play an old, washed-up Kurt Cobain in an A Star Is Born remake can somehow make Cobain commit suicide twice?