Jeff Baena, the indie writer/director behind I Heart Huckabees and Horse Girl, has passed away at the age of 47.
Jeff Baena, the writer of I Heart Huckabees and Life After Beth, as well as the husband of actress Aubrey Plaza, has died at the age of 47.
Jeff Baena co-wrote I Heart Huckabees with its director, David O. Russell, instantly marking him as a unique voice on the independent scene. But it would be a decade later that he got behind the camera himself, directing Life After Beth in 2014. That movie, which starred eventual wife Aubrey Plaza, nabbed him a Grand Jury Prize nomination at the Sundance Film Festival, as did his next feature, 2016’s Joshy (a movie we quite liked here at JoBlo).
After working as a production assistant for Robert Zemeckis, Jeff Baena started to blossom by working for David O. Russell as an assistant editor, receiving a call from the director while he was actually watching Flirting with Disaster. He would work closely with Russell under such duties for a while until some words of encouragement – stemming from an eye injury he suffered in a car accident – pushed him to consider writing. On his friendship and collaboration, Baena said, “He was super-generous, creatively. He allowed me to advocate for any ideas that were in conflict with his ideas. We were on the same wavelength, had the same style and interests…It allowed me to have the feeling that I deserved to be there, as opposed to just riding someone’s coattails.”
Jeff Baena would prove he didn’t need the coattails, going on to direct three more features after Joshy: The Little Hours, Horse Girl and Spin Me Round, all starring Alison Brie. Baena would work on the small screen as well with anthology series Cinema Toast, which gathered a number of filmmakers who used public domain footage as launching points for their own episodes. Baena directed the first episode (using footage from 1939’s Made for Each Other) while Plaza would make her directorial debut with the episode “Quiet Illness.”
We here at JoBlo.com want to express our condolences over the passing of Jeff Baena, a figure whose work most definitely left an impact and who was lost far too soon. Leave your own in the comments section below.
