Back before she was known as Courtney Love, Courtney Harrison dated Rozz Rezabek, the singer of a popular Portland punk band. An aspiring chanteuse even then, Harrison drafted up a list of the things she needed to do in order to get famous and gave it to Rezabek.

Among the more obvious listings, like "Gig a lot locally," were "Make a movie. Sign a deal. Meet Michael Stipe." After reading from the list, Rezabek rails about Harrison's less-than-stellar performances in bed and how she single-handedly destroyed his burgeoning career.

A sad scene from a dimly lit dive bar on a Tuesday afternoon? No. It's actually one of the many stabs at Courtney Love found in Nick Broomfield's controversial new film, Kurt and Courtney. The film -- removed from this year's Sundance Film Festival after Love threatened to sue for defamation of character and non-clearance of music rights -- premiered Friday at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco amid faxes and phone calls from Love's lawyers. If Love continues to wield her considerable media power against the film, however, Broomfield faces a serious challenge in bringing the film to a national audience.

The bitter Rezabek actually makes for one of the film's more reliable interview subjects -- although that's not saying much. Aside from Kurt Cobain's ex-girlfriend Tracy Miranda and his aunt Mary, who plays tapes of a two-year-old Cobain singing the Beatles' "Yesterday," the hodgepodge of fringe characters who offer opinions on Love's heroin use, her purported involvement in a Cobain murder conspiracy, and her role in Cobain's general demise hardly comprises a witness dream team.

But even after casting some of the more outlandish accusations aside (most of which are charged by Love's own father, who attended Friday's screening), a picture of Love as a manipulative, power-hungry harpy emerges -- not so much via the character descriptions offered, but through scenes depicting Love's attempts to stop the making of this film.

After catching wind that the film was being made, someone from Love's camp -- possibly Courtney herself -- reportedly contacted the president of MTV to complain. Since Broomfield's film was being financed by the cable network Showtime (owned by Viacom, which also owns MTV), the film posits that Love was able to use her hefty musical clout to force Showtime to withdraw funding (In the end, Broomfield was able to finish the film with assistance from the BBC and private investors).

Here lies the film's subtle thesis: In today's increasingly consolidated corporate world, it's far too easy to suppress artistic projects that are perceived to conflict with a corporate asset. And Showtime isn't the only establishment entity shown to be bending under Love's will; in one of the film's highlights, Broomfield is thrown out of an ACLU dinner after he questions why the organization chose Love as its featured speaker when she has physically threatened journalists for years.

As a documentary, Kurt and Courtney is seriously flawed. By interviewing only people whose credibility -- and in many cases sobriety -- is suspect, Broomfield hardly presents a defensible character portrait. But allowing Courtney Love to tell her own story through countless nefarious episodes and litigious attempts to protect her current status as Versace Tamagotchi, the film is a fascinating voyeuristic success.

Eric Hellweg