Oftentimes when people make movies about the '80s, they go back and look at '80s films, [but] those look nothing like the '80s. It's some watered-down version of reality.

The only people who really love the '80s are millennials. We had Reagan and Bush for our entire youth, the culture was terrible, the fashions were terrible, the movies were terrible.

Kurt [Cobain ]was a feminist. A lot of the bashing against Courtney [Love] I think has to deal with gender bias and the media, and I think that he liked that she was taking the attention off of him.

Sometimes, you chase the moment and you can never catch it. Films take so long to make that you can never anticipate what the cultural landscape will be when the film enters the world.

You have Kurt [Cobain], and he's singing about your experiences. They're our collective experiences.

I've never had access to another person's art and work or, particularly, someone who is as prolific and was able to externalize his interior world as deeply as Kurt [Cobain] could.

You can't divorce yourself from your own life experiences.