“One of many nice issues about Jeff Buckley is you uncover him whenever you’re meant to find him” — it is a quote from It is By no means Over, Jeff Buckley documentary director Amy Berg, and for these of us who deeply love his music, it is a sentiment that rings extraordinarily true. And because of the movie’s debut at Sundance on January 24, 2025, we’re lastly discovering why Brad Pitt‘s dream biopic concerning the tortured and beloved musician by no means got here to be, due to a brand new interview with Selection with Berg and Jeff Buckley’s mother, Mary Guibert.
For many who in some way did not have a section the place they completely listened to the singer, permit us to clarify: Jeff Buckley was a deep-throated singer and moodily artistic guitar wunderkind, whose music defied categorization, and has been fascinating audiences together with his iconic — and singular album, Grace. A tortured determine with a storied and mysterious origin story (his father was a equally short-lived however extremely regarded jazz performer named Tim Buckley), his emotive singing type and accompanying lyrics have drawn followers in and outdoors of Hollywood. But it surely’s the latter set that is been chasing the dream of bringing his story to the massive display screen.
The Jeff Buckley/Brad Pitt Undertaking That Wasn’t
Brad Pitt — through the peak of his fame within the 2000s — was one (of many) of these folks in search of to make a Jeff Buckley biopic. He even went as far as to ask Buckley’s mom to his extraordinarily unique (and hyper-obsessed about) marriage ceremony to Jennifer Aniston to try to persuade her that he was the person to make a biopic about her son. Should you, too, have been a teen within the ’90s, this truth is mind-blowing and wild to you. Or, as Guibert put it (apparently with fun), “If there’s 20 folks calling you, and Brad Pitt is considered one of them, who’re you gonna choose to go see?”
Nonetheless, all of the glitz and glamour of early aughts Brad Pitt was not sufficient to persuade Guibert that the actor was the person for the job. She had reservations about how he may carry all of it collectively, even going as far as to allegedly say to Pitt, “We will dye your hair, put brown contact lenses on these child blues, and you are going to open your mouth and Jeff’s voice goes to return out?”
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Can anybody else really feel the side-eye in that remark? Seesh, Momma Buckley! However that is in all probability what it is advisable do whenever you’re defending your son’s legacy and that son simply so occurs to be one of the vital sensationalized “misplaced earlier than his prime” musical skills in fashionable historical past.
Nonetheless, she might have been proper in her reservations, given the sophisticated nature of his story. Ultimately, it was Berg whose pitch received out and ended up getting made. However her documentary’s origins weren’t precisely streamlined, both. You see, Berg initially additionally needed to make a story movie, dramatizing Buckley’s story, however modified her thoughts in a second of revelation. As she advised Selection:
“As soon as I began listening to his voicemail messages and his DAP participant and demos and studying his journals, I simply could not think about it being something however a documentary. And I simply did not understand how you may type of replicate Jeff in that scripted sense.”
And so this new undertaking was born. And lest you are concerned about his exclusion, worry not: Pitt continues to be concerned in Buckley’s story being advised, simply as an govt producer reasonably than star. (In addition to, let’s be actual, he is lengthy aged out of the half by now, provided that Buckley died at age 30.)
It is By no means Over, Jeff Buckley will premiere at Sundance on January 24, 2025.