For more than two decades, filmmakers chased the lightning-in-a-bottle story of Jeff Buckley, one of the most gifted and promising musicians of his generation, who drowned in a Memphis river in May 1997 at the age of 30.
Back in 2000, Brad Pitt courted Buckley’s mother, Mary Guibert, inviting her to lunch at his Los Feliz home and adding her to the VIP guest list for his wedding to Jennifer Aniston. It didn’t require much arm-twisting before she granted the actor permission to make a biopic about her son, the tortured singer-songwriter who is best known for performing the greatest version ever of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
“If there’s 20 people calling you, and Brad Pitt is one of them, who are you gonna pick to go see?” Guibert says with a laugh.
But Guibert was skeptical about the idea of Pitt, or any actor for that matter, tackling the role of her only child.
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“We’re going to dye your hair, put brown contact lenses on those baby blues, and you’re going to open your mouth and Jeff’s voice is going to come out?” she asked Pitt.
Still, she and Pitt stayed in touch about a potential project. In the ensuing years, director Amy Berg, best-known for her documentary work “West of Memphis” and the Oscar-nominated “Deliver Us From Evil,” first made her own overture. She was interested in transitioning from nonfiction to narrative features for a Buckley project. But that, too, gave Guibert pause.
“I didn’t feel secure in being in a someone’s-learning-on-the-job situation,” she says.
Fortunately, Berg simultaneously had an epiphany after Guibert granted her access to her son’s archive: Only a documentary could do Buckley justice. Thus Berg pivoted to “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,” which Pitt executive produced. (Pitt also helped to digitize and preserve all of Buckley’s belongings.) The documentary makes its world premiere at Sundance on Jan. 24.
“Once I started listening to his voicemail messages and his DAP player and demos and reading his journals, I just couldn’t imagine it being anything but a documentary,” Berg says. “And I just didn’t know how you could kind of replicate Jeff in that scripted sense.”
After all, Buckley was something of an enigma. Born and raised in Orange County, Calif., he was the son of folk and jazz luminary Tim Buckley. But the elder Buckley abandoned his child before he was born, and they only met once. Tim Buckley died of a heroin overdose at the age of 28 in 1975.
Like his father, Jeff Buckley died long before he reached his full potential. He enjoyed a meteoric rise, playing New York clubs like CBGB before landing a splashy Columbia Records deal. He performed alongside some of the era’s greats like Soundgarden as well as legends of yesteryear such as Led Zeppelin. But Guibert says her son never embraced fame and was aghast at being named to People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful list. Meanwhile, the pressure to follow up his one and only album — 1994’s “Grace,” hailed by Bob Dylan and David Bowie as one of the greatest artistic achievements ever — was insurmountable at times. He grew to loathe the Columbia executives who pushed for a second album before he was ready, driving him to the point of a brief psychotic break.
Even his death was shrouded in mystery and misdirection.
Two months after his body was discovered, Rolling Stone published a deep dive about his final days. Tour manager Gene Bowen agreed to give the reporter access to the story with the caveat that the magazine include Buckley’s autopsy results.
“They never did,” Berg says. “[Bowen] felt that that contributed to the legacy that Jeff probably overdosed, which was far from the truth.” (Instead, Buckley was merely the victim of a strong undertow.)
“It’s Never Over” helps correct that misconception, while contextualizing Buckley’s artistic achievements. Everyone from Aimee Mann and Ben Harper appear in the documentary to share their experiences with the phenom whose music didn’t fit neatly into any one genre.
Apparently, it’s never quite over for Berg and Pitt, who are reteaming for a documentary on the late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell. That project offers a full-circle moment given that Buckley and Cornell were close friends, with footage of the pair featured in “It’s Never Over.” Though his career was brief, it is far from forgotten. A new generation has discovered him and his raw and authentic guitar playing — an analog celebrity for a digital world.
“One of the great things about Jeff Buckley is you discover him when you’re meant to discover him,” says Berg. “He has definitely made a big impact on TikTok, where I was surprised to see that he has more followers on the Jeff Buckley hashtag than even Bob Dylan. He’s definitely having another moment in pop culture history.”