Brad Pitt’s Jeff Buckley Biopic Dreams: The Story of a Mother’s “No”

Brad Pitt once tried to secure a biopic on Jeff Buckley, but the musician’s mother, Mary Guibert, rejected him. Pitt’s first interest came in around 2000, after he invited Guibert to his wedding with Jennifer Aniston. She told Variety that, out of many requests, Pitt’s was the one that stood out: “If there’s 20 people calling you, and Brad Pitt is one of them, who are you gonna pick to go see?”

Despite initially giving her blessing, Guibert later had reservations. She described her conversation with Pitt, asking him, “’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?’” This concern ultimately led her to withdraw her permission. Even so, Guibert and Pitt maintained a connection.

The Fight Club star later served as an executive producer on Amy Berg’s documentary, It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, which premiered at Sundance. Berg explained her choice of documentary over a narrative film: “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. I just didn’t know how you could kind of replicate Jeff in that scripted sense.

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richoz, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Buckley’s music keeps on hitting fresh ears, including on TikTok, where one of his tracks, “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over,” seems to have its own cult audience. According to Berg, “One of the great things about Jeff Buckley is you discover him when you’re meant to discover him. He’s definitely having another moment in pop culture history.

Speaking with The Independent in 2016, Guibert reflected what her son would have been had he not died. “If Jeff had lived, he would now be on a level with Bono,” she surmised. “He would have toured the world and had a lifelong career, and at the end of it, he would have been that guy sitting in a wheelchair with the microphone specially lowered six inches, so that we could all hear him sing “Hallelujah” one more time.”

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