Los Angeles music obsessive Amy Berg still remembers what it was like to be a Jeff Buckley fan back in her twenties. \u201cGrace\u201d \u201cchanged my life,\u201d she told me during a recent interview. \u201cI would see every single heavy grunge punk band that came through Los Angeles: I was at Nirvana\u2019s first show in L.A. at Jabberjaw. When I heard this album, it settled me. It was OK to be in your body, but Jeff made it all OK to feel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s Never Over, Jeff Buckley,\u201d<\/a> the latest documentary from Berg, is not as dark as her expos\u00e9s \u201cDeliver Us from Evil\u201d<\/a> (2006), \u201cWest of Memphis\u201d<\/a> (2012), and \u201cAn Open Secret\u201d<\/a> (2014), or her definitive Janis Joplin portrait, \u201cJanis: Little Girl Blue\u201d<\/a> (2015).<\/p>\n More from IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n Mostly, it\u2019s a celebration of Buckley\u2019s life and music, primarily the only album he ever released, \u201cGrace,\u201d in 1994, lauded by David Bowie as one of ten LPs he would take with him to a desert island. Three years later, after non-stop touring, in May of 1997, just as Buckley was bringing his band in to record his second album, he accidentally drowned in Memphis\u2019 Wolf River. He was fully clothed, with one beer in his system. He was 30 years old.<\/p>\n Ever since her movie \u201cDeliver Us from Evil\u201d came out in 2006, Berg has been trying to make a Buckley film. But it took until 2019 for his mother Mary Guilbert to be ready to participate with Berg.<\/p>\n What changed? \u201cTrust, and she was actually ready at that moment,\u201d said Berg. \u201cGetting older and wanting to make sure the story is told properly was important to her. Legacy, and she knew I wanted final cut, and she would have to basically turn the keys over to me. So that took a while.\u201d<\/p>\n Once Guilbert came on as executive producer, her archives disgorged never-before-seen cassette tapes, photos, journals, footage, home movies, audio recordings of conversations, and voice messages. After Buckley\u2019s death, Brad Pitt footed the bill to restore, digitize, and preserve the entire Buckley archive. There was talk of developing a movie, which never came to pass. (Hence a producing credit for his production company Plan B. The film\u2019s active producers are Berg\u2019s Disarming Films, Topic Studios, and Fremantle.)<\/p>\n To assemble animation montages and showcase much of the archive material, Berg relied on \u201cThe Diary of a Teenage Girl\u201d Icelandic director and artist Sara Gunnarsd\u00f3ttir (\u201cMy Year of Dicks\u201d). \u201cWe met up in the beginning and dreamed it up together, watching old \u201990s videos and finding all the right textures and colors and tones,\u201d said Berg. \u201cI wanted it to be balanced enough that you could get in his head and live there comfortably, but not keep coming out of the film. He was stimulated on lots of different levels at all times.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeff Buckley, 1993Courtesy: Everett Collection.<\/p>\n Berg spent years talking to people who knew Buckley well, including two of his romantic partners, musicians Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser. (A third, Liz Frazier, refused to be interviewed.) \u201cNeither of them really wanted to talk,\u201d said Berg. \u201cIt took a long time to establish trust with everybody. So Rebecca never has spoken publicly about this at all. Joan very minimally. It was about making sure that it was going to be told properly, and they knew their version of Jeff. And obviously everyone had a different version of Jeff. I tried to find the middle of that with everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n Alas, Hal Wilner died during the pandemic before Berg could put him on video. Wilner had produced a tribute concert to Buckley\u2019s father Tim, a \u201960s folk-rocker who died of a heroin overdose in 1975, that broke Jeff out as a major discovery. Wilner and Jeff became close. Jeff had a tricky relationship with a father, who had abandoned him more than once.<\/p>\n This may have been a factor in Jeff\u2019s mental stability in the three years of endless touring before his death. \u201cContextually, in the \u201990s, therapy wasn\u2019t an everyday thing,\u201d said Berg. \u201cBut he was showing signs that he needed support and infrastructure, some love, some safety nets. He needed that at that time in his life. He moved to Memphis from New York, and was all alone, and clearly was going through a lot. Today there would be more of a warning light going off in that situation. I don\u2019t think that has much to do with his death. It\u2019s about all the mystery and tragedy that surrounds a person like Jeff and somebody who has this mythological presence, even many years after he\u2019s died.\u201d<\/p>\n Buckley made his name performing at Sin-\u00e9, the tiny East Village venue where he was discovered. He also recorded a cover version in 1991 of Leonard Cohen\u2019s \u201cHallelujah\u201d which kept being sampled and played and eventually kept reappearing on Billboard charts years later, after his death.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s Never Over, Jeff Buckley\u2019Merri Cyr<\/p>\n Of course, Berg did her own archive hunting and interviews. Berg\u2019s favorite archive discovery was tipped by Ben Harper: low res hot air balloon footage from the Eurockeenes festival on the French\/Swiss border. And even though Buckley never produced his second album, Chris Cornell helped Guilbert to produce the album \u201cSketches from \u2018My Sweetheart the Drunk,’\u201d which Berg includes on the film\u2019s soundtrack.<\/p>\n \u201cIt didn\u2019t have Jeff\u2019s final mark on it, obviously,\u201d she said. \u201cThey were just demos, but you can hear the songs, they\u2019re amazing, and it\u2019s too bad that he didn\u2019t get that one to the finish line.\u201d<\/p>\n The bottom line: a theatrical release will heighten awareness of Buckley\u2019s music. \u201cI never have had a film where there was so much excitement for the theatrical release,\u201d said Berg. \u201cThere\u2019s pre-sales and sold-out screenings already. We\u2019ll see if that translates to butts into seats. There\u2019s a moment in indie film right now where there\u2019s a lot of cool films and theaters, and people are going, if not in huge numbers. With everything that\u2019s going on with the streamers these days, it feels like there\u2019s a nice pocket for indie film.\u201d<\/p>\n Next up:<\/strong> Berg is profiling the late musician Chris Cornell, who appears in \u201cIt\u2019s Never Over, Jeff Buckley.\u201d<\/p>\n A Magnolia Pictures release, \u201cIt\u2019s Never Over, Jeff Buckley\u201d is in theaters now.<\/p>\n Best of IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Los Angeles music obsessive Amy Berg still remembers what it was like to be a Jeff Buckley fan back in her twenties. \u201cGrace\u201d \u201cchanged my life,\u201d she told me during a recent interview. \u201cI would see every single heavy grunge punk band that came through Los Angeles: I was at Nirvana\u2019s first show in L.A. 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