This one hurts. It’s not that they’re making a Jeff Buckley movie, nor that they’re making two – but it’s that one of them is the movie I always imagined.
In 2002, David Browne’s dual biography of Tim Buckley and Jeff Buckley “Dream Brother” was published and I’ve daydreamed about the dual biopic ever since. The book looks to be the inspiration of this:
I used to marvel at Jeff’s mom, Mary Guibert, repeatedly turning down life rights to producers, and rejecting scripts. I guessed that the reason was a mother’s protective instinct to erase the long shadow of drug abuse that haunted both Buckleys.
Which is why this dual biopic idea was such an elegant solution. End the movie before anything bad happened to Jeff, when he was still full of promise. End it at the Tim tribute concert in Brooklyn when the record executives in the audience freaked out and immediately jumped to sign the unknown kid.
It was then, or a Sin-e show, where a movie audience would come away hopeful that Scotty Moorehead may yet learn all the lessons of his father’s failures.
I’m happy they’re making Buckley movies. He was very important to me in College. Obsessed, I stalked his ghost in Memphis, even.
The other Jeff Buckley movie, “Mystery White Boy” has Reeve Carney playing Jeff. Dead ringer, check it out. But I can’t pretend this doesn’t irk me.
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