Jeff Buckley.
(Photo by J. Knipes/Getty ImagesThe mother of the late musician Jeff Buckleywho drowned in the Wolf River in May 1997, had good reason to refuse Brad Pitt He asked to play the singer-songwriter in a biopic years ago.
“We'll dye your hair, put brown contact lenses on those blue ones, and you'll open your mouth and Jeff's voice will come out?” Skeptical Marie Guibert He said diverse To the star in an interview published on Saturday, January 25.
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Despite the fact that Pitt invited Guibert to his wedding to his ex-wife Jennifer AnistonGuibert wouldn't budge. The duo continued to talk about the possibility of producing a film about Buckley's life, with the director's help Amy BergI finally came up with the best way to honor the late musician: a documentary.
“Once I started listening to his voicemails, his DAP player, the demos, and reading his journals, I couldn’t imagine it was just a documentary,” Berg explained to the outlet. “And I didn't know how you could imitate Jeff in that written sense.”
The result is the documentary It's never over, Jeff BuckleyWhich premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on Friday, January 24.
Son of Guibert and musician Tim Buckleywho left when his son was six months old and later died of a drug overdose at age 28, the younger Buckley signed a three-album deal with Columbia Records in 1992 for approximately $1 million. He released his only album, Grace, in 1994, but struggled to handle the overwhelming praise from fans and musicians he admired, such as his idol. Bob Dylan.
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His death three years later was, as Variety described it, “shrouded in mystery.” Rolling Stone published Investigation in what went wrong that night but failed to include Buckley's autopsy results, something Berg believes “contributed to the legacy that Jeff may have overdosed.” Instead, the singer drowned due to the strong current of the huge river.
“One of the great things about Jeff Buckley is that you discover him when you're supposed to discover him,” Berg also said of the singer, who is perhaps still best known for his cover of Leonard Cohen “Hallelujah.”
“He's definitely had a big impact on TikTok, where I was surprised to see that he has more followers on the Jeff Buckley hashtag than Bob Dylan,” she continued. “It's definitely having another moment in pop culture history.”
