Los Angeles Music Obsessive Amy Berg Still remember what it was like to be a Jeff Buckley fan back at the age of twenty. “Grace” “changed my life,” she told me during a new interview. “I would see every single heavy grunge punk band that came through Los Angeles: I was at Nirvana’s first show in LA on Jabberjaw. When I heard this album it put me. It was ok to be in your body, but Jeff made it all ok to feel.”
“It’s never over, Jeff Buckley,” The latest documentary from Berg is not as dark as her exposures “Deliver us from evil” (2006), “West about Memphis” (2012) and “An open secret” (2014), or her definitive Janis Joplin portrait, “Janis: Little Girl Blue” (2015).
Most often it is a celebration of Buckley’s life and music, mainly the only album he ever released, “Grace”, 1994, praised by David Bowie as one of ten LPs he would take with him to a desertedö. Three years later, after supporting tour, in May 1997, just like Buckley brought his band to record his second album, he accidentally drowned in Memphis’ Wolf River. He was completely dressed with a beer in his system. He was 30 years old.
Ever since her movie “Deliver US From Evil” came out in 2006, Berg has tried to make a buckley film. But it took until 2019 for his mother Mary Guilbert to be ready to participate with Berg.
What changed? “Confidence, and she was actually ready at that moment,” Berg said. “Getting older and wanting to make sure the story is told properly was important to her. Legacy, and she knew I wanted to finally, and she would basically have to hand over the keys to me. So it took a while.”
When Guilbert came up as an executive producer, her archive that has never seen before saw cassette tapes, photos, magazines, pictures, home films, audio recordings of conversations and voice messages resigned. After Buckley’s death, Brad Pitt received the bill to restore, digitize and preserve the entire Buckley archive. It was talked about developing a movie that never occurred. (Therefore a producing credit for his production company Plan B. The film’s active producers are Berg’s disarming films, subject studios and Fremantle.)
To assemble animation assemblies and show off much of the archive material, redeemed mountains “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” Icelandic director and artist Sara Gunnarsdóttir (“My Year of Dicks”). “We met in the beginning and dreamed it together, watched old 90’s films and found all the right structures and colors and tones,” Berg said. “I wanted it to be balanced enough for you to get in his head and stay there comfortably, but not continue to get out of the movie. He was stimulated on many different levels all the time.”

Berg spent years talking to people who knew Buckley well, including two of his romantic partners, musician Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser. (A third, Liz Frazier, refused to be interviewed.) None of them really wanted to talk, “Berg said. “It took a long time to create confidence in everyone. So Rebecca has never spoken publicly about this at all. Joan very minimal. It was about making sure it was told properly, and they knew their version of Jeff. And obviously everyone had another version of Jeff. I tried to find the middle of it with everyone.”
Unfortunately, Hal Wilner died during the pandemic before Berg could put him on video. Wilner had produced a tribute concert for Buckley’s father Tim, a 60s folk-rocker who died of an overdose of heroin in 1975, which broke Jeff as a great discovery. Wilner and Jeff became close. Jeff had a tricky relationship with a father, who had abandoned him more than once.
This may have been a factor in Jeff’s mental stability during the three years of endless tournaments before his death. “Context, in the 90s, therapy was not an everyday thing,” Berg said. “But he showed signs that he needed support and infrastructure, some love, some safety nets. He needed it at that time in his life. He moved to Memphis from New York, and was completely alone, and clearly went through a lot. Today it would be more of a warning light in that situation. I do not think it has a lot to do with his death. have a lot to do with his death. It is clearly all mysteries and tragedy that surrounds a warning that has someone who has a so much to do with his death. After he has died.
Buckley got his name and performed at Sin-ie, the little East Village arena where he was discovered. He also recorded a cover version in 1991 by Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” which continued to be tested and played and eventually continued to reappear on Billboard -diagram years later, after his death.

Of course Berg made his own archive hunting and Interviews. Berg’s favorite archive discovery was tipped by Ben Harper: Low res hot Air Balloon pictures from the Eurockeenes festival at the French/Swiss border. And although Buckley never produced his second album, Chris Cornell Guilbert helped to produce the album “Sketches from ‘My Sweetheart the Drunk’, which Berg includes on the film’s soundtrack.
“Obviously it didn’t have Jeff’s last mark on it,” she said. “They were just demonstrations, but you can hear the songs, they are fantastic, and it’s a shame he didn’t get it to the finish line.”
Summary: A theater edition will raise awareness of Buckley’s music. “I’ve never had a movie where there was so much excitement for the theater release,” Berg said. There are already sales and sold out shows. We’ll see if it is translated into butts into places. There is a moment in Indiefilm right now where there are many cool movies and theaters, and people go, if not in large numbers. With everything that happens to Streamers today, it feels like it’s a nice pocket for indie movies. ”
Next up: Berg profiles the late musician Chris Cornell, as shown in “It’s never over, Jeff Buckley.”
A Magnolia Pictures release, “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” is in theaters now.