Sunday, August 9, 2009

Jeff Buckley Biopic??


I've been down in New Orleans for the past few days, and last night I went to the Howlin' Wolf (a super legit venue down here in the Big Easy), where there was a screening of the new Jeff Buckley DVD, Grace Around The World, which consists of live performances of (nearly) every song on Grace in different locations around the world. It was pretty sweet. They also aired some footage of the forthcoming documentary, Amazing Grace, which looked extremely promising as well.

But the real highlight of the night was the Q&A with Jeff Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, which provided numerous insightful tidbits regarding Jeff and his music, including Mary's favorite of Jeff's songs (a solo cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Wind Cries Mary", which he would play whenever she walked into the room). But the juiciest piece of info came in Mary's response to a question about the possibility of a Buckley biopic.

In response to the question, Mary said that for years she had rejected numerous Hollywood offers and scripts because she did not think Hollywood capable of doing justice to Jeff's legacy. And then Walk The Line and Ray came out, and she started to rethink her justification for rejection. As Mary eventually warmed to the idea, she was still finding herself to be somewhat leery of the capabilities of those proposing scripts and screenplays to her, so she decided to start her own film company, joining up with the people that had a hand in creating Control (the phenomenal biopic on Joy Division singer Ian Curtis) and Finding Neverland (also excellent). And although Mary and her team are in the earliest stages of development (no script, no actors, no nothing), it seems likely that this project will eventually see the light of day.

Any thoughts on who could be picked to play Jeff? I feel like James Franco could pull it off. But then again, I think James Franco can do anything he puts his mind to...so dreamy.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I completely agree about James Franco. I've read lots of rumours about Robert Pattison playing Jeff, but that would just be icky.