24 Hours of Courtney Love: Live MTV transparency
“I wanted to be an evil genius,” Courtney Love said while her depression sank into her twenty-third hour of being awake on live television. “All I wanted my whole life was to go to Yale or Brown or Radcliffe or even Bennington. I got juvenile hall. I didn’t want to be a rock star, okay?” She continued about her depression.
“Okay, this is Daria coming up next,” she tells the camera before a break that jumps into a scene from Almost Famous. Nothing like this will ever happen again.
In 2002, MTV2 invited Courtney Love to take over their channel for a full 24-hour broadcast with her in charge. She’d pick the videos, the clips, and the guests, and it would all be live. Love said yes and took the opportunity to shine a spotlight on women in rock n’ roll. A great, albeit late, stance. MTV2, however, had different expectations and actually started to screen a lot of Love’s picks without her knowledge. The whole thing caused Love to rant on corporate policies, Eminem, race relations, rap versus rock, and eventually take phone calls from Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and invite guest stars The Strokes, Eve, Suicide Girls, and Ryan Adams. Again, nothing like this will ever happen again.
Our relationships with celebrities have changed. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook infiltrated celebrities’ lives; to be meticulously organized and to not offend are the new cultural standards. Gone are human mistakes like mispronouncing names. Gone are human emotions like feeling frustrated or annoyed, or depressed. Celebrities now (and, to a degree, back then in 2002) make sure to never let the public peek behind the curtain — if too much is revealed, the facade is ruined and their career is damaged. There’s a reason why Jay-Z keeps a low profile or why Anna Kendrick appears to be super relatable or why Lorde suddenly talked about owning a secret Instagram about reviewing onion rings. It’s all calculated. Courtney Love was never calculated. None of this carnage was calculated.
In this MTV2 special, Love proves how intelligent and well-rounded she is by ignoring any corporate-related voices. At one point, she refers to Eminem as “the first corporate-sponsored rebel,” issuing out a plea for him to understand his role in the music industry. Also, Love invites Eve to teach her how to rap. In another moment, Love has Ryan Adams, with members of The Strokes beside him, sing her a song at 4 in the morning (an account that has been documented as the “last moment for the last great rock band” for the essential book, Meet Me In The Bathroom, by Lizzy Goodman). Granted, all of this is chaotic and meandering nonsense, but its transparency is unique.
You can watch the only readily available footage of 24 Hours of Love over on YouTube.
