June 28, 2006 14:44

Jeff Buckley: The Film

Singer’s life set for the big screen

Jeff Buckley’s life story is set to become a film.

It will be masterminded by writer/director Brian Jun. Jun is collaborating on the project with Buckley’s mother Mary Guibert, who is producing the biography.

It will be the second time a biopic has been attempted. Last year, the writer/producer Train Houston secured the rights to ’Dream Brother: The Lives & Music of Jeff & Tim Buckley’, the book by David Browne.

This event spurred Guibert, who controls the rights to Buckley’s songs, to start her foray into the movie world.

“Over the years, the number of offers were unceasing,” she said. “I had resisted for so many reasons, one being that Hollywood, traditionally, did a lousy job of realistically portraying the life of people like Jeff. But the possibility that it could happen without my participation set me back to re-examine why I wasn’t doing it.”

Seeing films like ’Ray’ and ’Walk The Line’ convinced Guibert that “the time was right to have a project where integrity could be built into the script and that we could wrangle it so that it didn’t get co-opted or changed in getting to the screen”.

Reuters reports that the film will play on Buckley’s relationship with his father, singer/songwriter Tim Buckley, who died in 1975.

Co-producer Michelle Sy said: “It is really about how music is so much a part of this person’s identity, and there are so many ironies in his life. For example, he was constantly being compared to his father, but he only met his father twice. He had the trajectory of someone who gains a certain amount of success in a short period of time, and there (are) some downsides to that. And it was music that guided him through that.”

It is not known who will be cast in the role of Buckley.