Jeff Baena

Jeffrey Lance Baena ( ; June 29, 1977 – January 3, 2025) was an American screenwriter and film director. His most successful films were 2004's I Heart Huckabees and 2020's Horse Girl, though his projects to receive the most contemporaneous critical acclaim were the 2016 and 2017 films Joshy and The Little Hours. Baena frequently worked with his wife, Aubrey Plaza, and writing partner Alison Brie.

He began his career as a screenwriter, co-writing the 2004 comedy film I Heart Huckabees and, around the same time, seeing his script for Life After Beth enter production before being shelved. Baena, as an independent filmmaker, expanded to directing a decade later and filmed Life After Beth as his directorial debut, starring Aubrey Plaza and released in 2014. Working with producer Liz Destro, Plaza, and an expanding group of frequent collaborators, Baena was then writer-director for Joshy (2016) and The Little Hours (2017), which both became critically acclaimed and found a cult audience.

Among the performers in these films was Alison Brie, with whom Baena struck up a writing partnership and created works produced by Duplass Brothers Productions. They made the 2020 psychological drama film Horse Girl together, Baena's most commercial film, followed by the television anthology series Cinema Toast (2021) and Baena's final film, 2022's Spin Me Round. His first films implement his post-mumblecore style as an improvisation-heavy filmmaker, and his films co-written with Brie are marked by exploration of expectations in film form.

Early life and education Jeffrey Lance Baena was born in Miami on June 29, 1977, to Barbara (later Stern) and Scott Baena. in the suburbs of Kendall and Coral Gables, where he enjoyed being surrounded by Latin and Caribbean cultures; he later said that he "felt a sense of community" there, a contrast to the negative perception of drug cartel violence. Baena's great-grandparents, who were Spanish speakers born in Turkey, had owned a farm in upstate New York; his parents were from New York City and had moved to Miami due to his father's work. Baena's parents were divorced, which he credited in part with informing his dark sense of comedy. His first stepmother was manic depressive and, under Florida's Baker Act, was frequently institutionalized but then released, with Baena later commenting on systemic challenges in mental health care. He had a brother and two step-siblings. Baena graduated from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts with a degree in film, before moving to Los Angeles to pursue directing. Without planning to do so, he achieved a minor in medieval studies at NYU after taking multiple classes when he "was hard-core into the alchemy shit". The films were shot back-to-back and Zemeckis then took a production break, causing Baena to seek other employment. Baena was originally hired to help edit an online documentary, Benny Hernandez, before Russell asked him to contribute some writing ideas for it; the project was ultimately left unfinished. After a year and a half of working together, a minor car accident injured one of Baena's eyes. Partially to keep his spirits up and pass the time during his recovery, Russell began discussing story ideas with Baena. The two ended up collaborating on four scripts together, including I Heart Huckabees, which Russell directed in 2004, and Jay Roach's Meet the Fockers (also 2004), for which they made uncredited revisions. The philosophical I Heart Huckabees was noted for the ambition in its storytelling; it was not a commercial success, and polarized critics. By 2005 it had become a cult hit,

Before he began directing, Baena continued working as a screenwriter, mostly for studio assignments and rewrites. Warner Bros. Pictures appointed him the screenwriter for the comedy The Awakening of Jean-Luc Barbara in 2006, which was still in development in 2010. He performed rewrites on Rami and Etan Cohen's Revenge of the Jocks, a reverse take on Revenge of the Nerds, in 2011. At the same time he was writing an indie adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway memoir A Moveable Feast. Having always wanted to be a director, Baena considered screenwriting "a means to an end" and was critical of his own writing ability. In 2012, he co-judged a short film script competition curated by Roman Coppola, and played a fictionalized version of himself in the film The End of Love; a dramatization of actor Mark Webber's life, Baena appeared in The End of Love alongside Aubrey Plaza, his partner and Webber's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World co-star.

2012–2017: Directorial debut and producing with Destro

Baena had planned for the comedy-drama Joshy to be his directorial debut, but actor and collaborator Adam Pally had to postpone for personal reasons. Baena then decided to work on the zombie comedy Life After Beth, from a script he started writing in 2003, which became his debut. while Mark Kermode felt Baena "kept things just the right side of believable, eschewing explanation in favour of cracked domesticity." Life After Beth received mixed reviews; the Rotten Tomatoes (RT) critics' consensus suggested the idea was too thin to sustain a whole film, though bolstered by Plaza's performance. In 2016, it was ranked the 38th best-ever zombie film and described as both "the best zom-rom-com since Shaun Of The Dead" and a "mumblecore relationship break-up zomcom". It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, the same festival at which Joshy, as Baena's second film, premiered in 2016. and suggested he might like to direct Doctor Strange as he was a fan of the character. The film's RT critics' consensus highlighted Baena's direction for "strik[ing] a unique, disarmingly heartfelt blend of dark humor and tragedy". The Los Angeles Times praised that despite its improvisational nature, "the film never feels unfocused or messy"; Christy Lemire felt Baena's work had improved since his debut; and Glenn Kenny noted Baena's skill in tonally dictating his film. Joshy was ranked the fifth best ever mumblecore film separately by screenwriter Jason Hellerman and critic Mike Bedard, with Bedard also describing it as "post-mumblecore".

Jake Johnson as well as some of Baena's filmmaker friends had acting roles in Joshy; the premise of which was based on the strange things found when Johnson, Baena and friends had dug out Johnson's garden. Joshy was Baena's first film to feature actress Alison Brie, albeit briefly, for whom it was her producing debut. She produced alongside Liz Destro of Destro Films, who had produced Baena's previous films; Baena only proceeded to develop The Little Hours after pitching it to Destro. Inspired by passages from The Decameron, which Baena had studied, the film was again largely improvised and based in the disconnect of medieval beliefs to modern ones; Baena saw the potential for humor Reviews were impressed with how well the concept worked, and praised Baena's comedic direction, with Mick LaSalle writing that "Baena combines a zany comic vision with a rare control of tone. [...] There's no winking or nudging, no straining for laughs. Baena devised the material, and he trusts it."

2018–2022: Creative partnership with Alison Brie Baena directed Brie two more times in the films Horse Girl (2020) and Spin Me Round (2022), which they co-wrote together. The latter also featured Plaza. Both actresses were involved in different capacities in Baena's only television work, Cinema Toast, a 2021 anthology series that he created and executive produced. Baena wrote and directed episodes in the series, which reinterpreted public domain footage to tell modern stories. Baena and Brie were among the producers for Cinema Toast and both of their co-written films, all of which were executive produced by the Duplass Brothers. The pair pitched it to the Duplass Brothers, who joined and offered it to Netflix. Baena and Brie wrote the screenplay together, and some of the film's dialogue was improvised. After premiering at Sundance in 2020, Horse Girl began streaming on Netflix and was the most commercially successful of Baena's works. Reviews noted the use and subversion of form to inform the story, which was generally praised but also criticized by Adrian Horton in The Guardian.

The pair again chose to subvert expectations in Spin Me Round, the shoot of which was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. They used the delay to expand the film outline into a more detailed script. The Hollywood Reporter felt it was "amusing but the most lightweight" of Baena's films.

Style In his own words, Baena described his films as "destabilizing, unmoored, and full of chaos"; literary author William Deresiewicz wrote they are "odd, generically hybrid, tonally complex". Ryan Gilbey wrote in an obituary for The Guardian that despite some similarities and all sharing "some unforeseen emotional kick, the subjects and styles [of Baena's films] were strikingly dissimilar"; Gilbey added that Baena planned this intention, as he did not want to do the same thing more than once. – this was primarily because Baena enjoyed working with them and wanted to bring out new things from actors he enjoyed. He also found it advantageous to work with familiar actors due to his own "slightly nontraditional way" of writing and directing, so that he could rely on performers who understood his process.

Herself Beth Jen Producer Fernanda Writer-director Karen Kat 6

Rachel Alessandra Writer, producer Sarah Jane Writer, producer Amber 5

Isadora Francesca Cheryl Annie the Housekeeper Liz 5

Himself Writer, producer Tim Reggie Steve 4

Noah Steve Ilario Gary 4

Geenie Marea Joan Deb 4

Herself Roz Actor (unnamed role) 3

Mr. Levin Private investigator Lurco 3

Diner sommelier Producer Ari Guard Paolo 3

Documentary narrator Lord Bruno Don Doolittle 3

Kyle Darren Colt (character in Purgatory) Jeremy 3

Bishop Bartolomeo Radio voice Rick Ricky 3

Evelyn Crystal 2

Erika Alicia 2

Maury Father Tommasso 2

Yoga couple Jodi 2

The Spaniard Tow worker 2

Ginevra Actor (unnamed role) 2

Darren Johnny 2

Ethan Writer-director, producer Actor (unnamed role) 2

Nikki Susie 2

Brian Jake 2

Personal life and death

Baena was renowned for the game nights he hosted, creating a social environment among filmmakers and friends that was reflected on his film sets. He met actress Aubrey Plaza during a game night in 2011, To celebrate their tenth anniversary together, they married in 2021, in a small ceremony in their own backyard. Baena began attending therapy in October after he made "concerning remarks" to Plaza, which prompted her to call a friend to perform a welfare check on him. The Los Angeles County medical examiner reported the cause of death as suicide by hanging. Baena was 47. According to the medical examiner's report, Baena had no previous suicide attempts. Plaza had been set to present at the ceremony but pulled out.

Filmography As creator Film Year Title Director Writer Producer 2004 I Heart Huckabees

Television Year Title Director Writer Creator ExecutiveProducer Notes 2021 Cinema Toast Wrote and directed episode "Familiesgiving"

Others Acting roles Year Title Role 2012 The End of Love Himself 2015 Digging for Fire BB Gun Friend

Other credits