Fears for the personal safety of rock widow Courtney Love led to the introduction of elaborate security procedures on the set of her new film about the lesbian awakening of two suburban housewives.
The Observer has discovered that Love, lead singer of the rock band Hole, worked on the picture amid high levels of secrecy and was not referred to by name in any production papers.
Julie Johnson, which premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, next week, stars Love and Lili Taylor as lovers who leave their husbands to set up home together. The film has already secured another prestigious opening run at the Berlin Film Festival later in the year, and so looks set to turn the dissatisfied couple into a Thelma and Louise for the new century.
But the making of this feminist film, which celebrates the bond between two downtrodden women, has been dogged by Love's concern to protect herself from other women.
'The daily call sheet was never allowed to carry her name,' said an on-set source. 'She was always described by some facile codename, such as Mary Black or Sharon White.'
Julie Johnson is based on the play of the same name by Wendy Hammond and is set in Hoboken, among New Jersey's blue-collar workers. Love plays the part of Johnson's best friend, Claire, who moves in when she eventually kicks out her abusive husband. The director and co-screenwriter, Bob Gosse, shot the film on location in the commuter belt around New York and he ensured that the crew covered up all evidence of Love's involvement at all times.
The star's primary worry is thought to concern the activities of a so-called 'stalker', Lesley Barber, who Love claims has been following her in 'a 20-month campaign of stalking and harassment'. In a lawsuit launched earlier this month Love argued that the woman, who is the ex-wife of her boyfriend, Jim Barber, prevented her from taking part in the Gothic horror movie Ghosts of Mars, to be made by John Carpenter.
Barber has denied all charges, including that she ran over Love's foot with her car and that she threatened to burn down the singer's house.
But those who worked on Julie Johnson with Love were aware of a secondary threat. 'She is often shouted at or abused by fans of Kurt Cobain,' said one. 'They call out things like "Yoko" and accuse her of having taken over his life.'
Cobain, the late lead singer of Nirvana, was Love's husband and the father of her child, Frances Bean. He shot himself in the head in 1994 in the Seattle home they shared. Recently Love has legally challenged the unconventional documentary-maker Nick Broomfield over his film Kurt and Courtney, which touched on the idea that some Cobain fans still blame her for his death.
Since the suicide, Love has been determined to launch a subsidiary career for herself as a film actress and made a strong early impression in The People vs Larry Flynt with Woody Harrelson. More recently she starred alongside Jim Carrey in Man On The Moon.
Those who have worked with Love on more than one film have commented on her growing concern for privacy and security on set. In an interview with The Observer in 1998 Love was already indicating that she was becoming more and more protective of her young daughter's life. She said she would continue to move house - 'even go to Montana, if I have to' - every time the more aggressive fans found her home and upset Frances by staring up at the windows.
'There were no problems with security on this movie in the end,' said a spokesman for The Shooting Gallery, who made Julie Johnson. ' We were filming in public places and there was no sense of threat. I think she did have problems, though, that prevented her making the horror movie she was going to make.'
The spokesman went on to deny the suggestion that Love had frequently been late on set for Julie Johnson. ' We had no regular problems that upset shooting,' he said.
But the technician who worked on the movie remains convinced that the actress was troubled. 'It is my job to stand around waiting a lot, but she kept us waiting for hours. She often turned a 12-hour day into a 16-hour day,' he said.
Love, a former addict who once admitted taking heroin while pregnant, is also currently in dispute with her band's label, Geffen Records.
The original play, Julie Johnson, was written by Wendy Hammond, a teacher of dramatic writing at the University of Michigan. At the opening of her story, Julie, who is married to an abusive cop, cries out 'I don't want to be stupid no more', and begins a journey towards both education and lesbianism.
The film, which is co-written by Hammond, is due to go on general release in the United States in the autumn and come to Britain before the end of the year.
