Dan Algrant’s quest for his leading man was drawing a big blank. “I’d been searching the world, travelled to London twice to meet people,” said the New York-born director/screenwriter, recalling the experience. More than 100 audition tapes had been sent to the production office. James Franco was being mentioned (“because I’d been told I should be casting stars”). Rob Pattinson, too. “Everybody had an opinion.”

But by spring 2011, Algrant pretty much believed he’d never find that special someone he wanted, no … needed to play the late, lamented, now-legendary alt-folk singer Jeff Buckley. “In fact, I was ready not to make the film.” Then he watched an audition tape featuring Penn Badgley. Somehow the then-24-year-old studly star of the hit teen TV soap Gossip Girl and recently splitsville beau of the bodacious Blake Lively had gotten hold of Algrant’s script and here he was, doing this madcap scene where Buckley, young woman in tow, walks into a vinyl record store and begins a twisted a cappella reading of songs from Led Zeppelin III (“Valhalla, I am … cuh-wuh-wuh-wuh-miiiiing-uh!”).

Algrant was transfixed. He had found his Jeff Buckley. But it was “both blessing and liability. I mean, it was Penn Badgley, for Chrissake,” even as Algrant admitted he’d never watched Gossip Girl. He knew his belief “that this young man could be our sacred person” might encounter resistance from colleagues doubting his seriousness. Algrant persevered nevertheless, then prevailed – and at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, where the resultant film, Greetings from Tim Buckley, had its world premiere, Algrant’s instincts were proved 100-per-cent correct.

For Badgley, interviewed in Toronto, the movie was nothing less than “a birth for me as an actor … me realizing after 13 years working professionally that I actually enjoyed acting. And I think that shows. I was having an experience; I felt I was bringing the best that I could to it.” Shot that summer in just 23 days in and around New York, the film nonetheless has a loose-limbed, unhurried, naturalistic feel which Badgley, he of the lantern jaw, chiselled cheekbones and just-so three-day growth of facial hair, especially appreciated after five seasons of grinding out Gossip Girl. “With TV, you have no time, dude. Everything is, like, face, face, face, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, whereas this was, like, ‘Stretch out for a second, man.’ It was so wonderful, so, so … beautiful.”

Greetings from Tim Buckley is, in fact, two pictures in one or, more precisely, two juxtaposed stories. The primary one, set in April 1991, deals with a pre-fame 24-year-old Jeff Buckley travelling from California to Brooklyn to perform at a tribute concert for his father, Tim. Dead at 28 from a heroin overdose in 1975, the elder Buckley by this time had posthumously achieved near-mythic status, thanks to an octave-spanning voice and a body of achingly beautiful songs that owed as much to jazz and the blues as folk.

While Buckley fils never really knew his feckless father – indeed, they met only once, briefly – it’s clear the elder Buckley’s artistic legacy was at once impediment, burden and goad to his son. The film’s secondary story serves up interstitial scenes from Buckley père’s heyday (with Ben Rosenfield playing Tim), pushing the narrative to the climactic tribute concert where Jeff, in finally accepting his father as a sort of musical soul mate, paradoxically discovers his own voice. It’s a crossroads moment and, as music buffs know, the road chosen would lead to Jeff Buckley’s own premature death, by drowning, in 1997.

Unsurprisingly, Badgley came to see Greetings from Tim Buckley as his own fork on fame’s highway, a casting coup that might permit him to recast his life and art. While he claims most of the cues for his performance came from the script, he also worked with a vocal coach and guitar teacher, listened to the Buckley oeuvre, researched his life, even went on a raw food diet to achieve the requisite Buckley skinniness. At the same time, he stressed he wasn’t aiming to reincarnate the artist.

“For this little slice of Jeff’s life, I knew I could do it. Not all of Jeff Buckley, mind you, because, Jesus Christ, no one could do that. And when I say ‘it,’ it’s because it’s not about doing him. Like, it’s a movie, it’s not real, I’m not him. As long as I can do it justice so that people aren’t focusing on whether I can or can’t play like Jeff and just let the story take them … People can get so obsessed with the minutiae of biopics. Well, who cares if it’s not him? Why not just tell a story so that you forget about that, so you can feel something, y’know?”

Much of the film’s charm comes from the poignant rapport Badgley has with its leading lady, British actress Imogen Poots, who plays Allie, a free-spirited assistant to the production crew mounting the tribute concert. “I was falling in love with my current girlfriend at that time [Zoe Kravitz, daughter of Lenny, and an actor and singer in her own right] and what was beautiful is that Imogen and I were allowed to have the trust and gentleness of a platonic love … At the same time I was also very much falling in love so I had that quality in my blood, y’know what I mean?”

Emboldened by the musical side of his performance in Greetings from Tim Buckley, Badgley intends to “play a lot more and write more,” with the aim of releasing a recording online and on vinyl. But he’s going to do it “on the quiet” for a while because “I want to step away from Jeff.”

Source thanks to @ChandlerDillon

For six seasons on the CW’s Gossip Girl, Penn Badgley’s Dan Humphrey, the do-good, earnest writer otherwise known as Lonely Boy, was the soap’s moral center (such as it had one)—that is, until the series finale, when it was revealed that Humphrey was all along our titular tattler. Up to that point, Badgley, 26, was also the show’s unlikeliest tabloid target, thanks to his two-and-a-half-year relationship with costar Blake Lively. But dating a coworker can be problematic, especially when the romance ends and she marries Ryan Reynolds while the show is still in production. Still, not much seems to slow down Badgley, who’s been working since he relocated from Seattle to L.A. as a teenager to pursue acting. He’s moved on to other projects (he impresses as the late musician Jeff Buckley in the indie Greetings From Tim Buckley, now in theaters and on demand) and to other women, notably the actress Zoe Kravitz. Not so lonely anymore.

ELLE: You picked up the guitar as a teenager. Was that to impress women?

PENN BADGLEY: I’ve never been that guy. I’d just feel so cheesy.

ELLE: Were girls into you in high school?

PB: I couldn’t really tell. I didn’t start to understand my own appeal to women until later.

ELLE: What is that appeal?

PB: I still don’t even know. [Laughs] There definitely is something.

ELLE: You and your ex Blake Lively had to work together after she got married last year. Was that difficult?

PB: No, we were ultimately professional.

ELLE: What did the end of that relationship teach you?

PB: I don’t know if I can distill it into a sentence, or even articulate it. We were very much caught up in the show, which itself was a six-year endurance test. Our relationship was a part of that and helped us through it. I mean, like anything valuable, it was good and it was bad and it was a learning experience.

ELLE: Did you send a wedding gift?

PB: No, I didn’t.

ELLE: Is there a movie that gets love right?

PB: [Laughs] No, movies lie.

ELLE: Okay. Is there a Jeff Buckley lyric that gets love right?

PB: Yeah, actually. The lyrics to “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over”: “Sometimes a man gets carried away/ When it feels like he should be having his fun/ Much too blind to see the damage he’s done.”

ELLE: Why do those lyrics resonate?

PB: I’m pretty sure that song is about ending a relationship because he cheated. I’m not saying that I’ve cheated, but, you know, being in an intense love with somebody while also feeling the pulls of being a young man, especially being an object of attention…. That song is basically saying, whatever happens, I still love you and want you, even if that’s impossible.

ELLE: Your character on Gossip Girl was nicknamed Lonely Boy. Do women expect you to be sensitive?

PB: Some of them do. But the kind of women I’m interested in—they’re smart enough not to expect me to be Dan. In fact, they probably didn’t watch the show.

ELLE: Women loved that show. Was there a time you took advantage of the fame?

PB: I’ve had some fun nights. But I learned early on that that stuff is never satisfying in the end. There’s a reason the French call the moment of orgasm la petite mort, “the little death.” No matter how good the moment was, the moment after is always revealing.

ELLE: You’re dating Zoe Kravitz—Lenny Kravitz’s daughter. Does he play the protective dad with you?

PB: Not at all. We get along, we talk music. He took me to Harlem to see this little jazz show in the back of a church. It was just shitty fluorescent lights and a small stage piano, but this band tore it up.

ELLE: Lenny was famously celibate for three years. Could you do that?

PB: I guess? I don’t know how I would fare. I’m sure I could do it. But I don’t know that I’d want to.

ELLE: You and Zoe travel often for work. How do you deal with being apart?

PB: There’s definitely no secret. I’d say honesty is always the best policy. There are always a lot of arguments—but even if honesty starts some, it avoids bigger ones.

ELLE: What does that mean?

PB: It means being honest with yourself, about what you want and what you need, and then being honest about what those things are with the person you’re with. As an actor, being in a relationship you have this opportunity to have something really exceptional, because you don’t have a regimented schedule or lifestyle. But then it can also be very warped. You have on-camera romances, which ordinarily I don’t have a problem with. There are complications being an object of attention. I’ve found it’s a double-edged sword. But I’m happy to wield it.

ELLE: Have you written a song for Zoe?

PB: I’ve written a song for every woman I’ve been with.

ELLE: Would you share a lyric?

PB: No, I couldn’t. If it ever comes out and you hear it, I’m happy for you to do so. The song is a sprawling meditation on love. I’ll give you that.

ELLE: Your parents divorced when you were young. How did that affect your views on marriage?

PB: I think every person’s parents teach them a lot and also mess them up royally. I think their separation probably split me down the middle, 50/50. For a while I didn’t believe in marriage. But I think I do believe in having a love. I’m not saying only one love ever, but in having a good, solid relationship. I think that’s possible.

ELLE: Would you get married?

PB: Yeah. Eventually. I want the ceremony. I want the bond.

ELLE: If I asked all the women you’ve ever dated to agree on something about you, what would they say?

PB: God, that’s a terrifying thought. If I could answer that, I feel like I would have the answers to all of life’s questions.

Source thanks to @roughrider92 & @chanderdillon

Hi! Where are you right now and what are you doing?

I am home in New York, eating oatmeal. It’s one of the first beautiful days of the year, so I think I may go to the park. Lay in the sun, on the grass, get some fresh air. That’s really all I have planned.

I thought movie stars were too busy to do that sort of thing?

When you’re working hard and the hours are long, yeah. You’re not sleeping much, you don’t have the time or energy for anything else. But when you’re not …

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The serious and soulful side of Penn Badgley, 26, emerges in “Greetings from Tim Buckley.” He plays singer-songwriter and guitarist Jeff Buckley, the son of Tim in the movie’s title, which opens in limited release today.

Badgley’s lead performance as a musician living in the shadow of the famous father he barely knew, shows a depth, range, and vibrancy to the actor, who also sings and strums all by himself. Badgley has fond memories of the experience he gained playing heartthrob Dan Humphrey on “Gossip Girl,” the show that boosted him to stardom and a regular spot on the tabloid stage. Now, he’s ready to blaze new paths and escape the comfort zone of series television. During the Tribeca Film Festival, Badgley discussed how becoming Jeff transformed Penn.

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Penn Badgley, best known for his role as a hip young New Yorker on television series “Gossip Girl,” is now claiming a place in the spotlight by headlining a feature film for the first time and showing off his previously hidden singing talents.

Badgley, 26, stars as late U.S. musician Jeff Buckley in the indie film “Greetings From Tim Buckley,” opening in limited release in U.S. movie theaters on Friday.

The film chronicles Buckley in the days leading up to his first public performance at age 25: a 1991 tribute concert at New York’s St. Ann’s Church for his late father, experimental rock great Tim Buckley.

In theory, a TV star with a big following of teenage fans may have seemed an unlikely choice to play the brooding musician who died of an accidental drowning at the age of 30.

Read more… »

Thanks to @roughrider92!

Penn Badgley slaloms up to me in Tompkins Square Park on a skateboard, wearing a gray sweatshirt and red sneakers, recognizable but unrecognized as the disaffected starlet-boy of the rococo teen soap Gossip Girl, which concluded its sixth and final season in December. He wanted to meet here because Jeff Buckley—the ­gorgeously warbling nineties alt-folk singer Badgley plays in a murky, heartfelt movie that premiered last week at the Tribeca Film Festival—used to perform for tips nearby at Sin-é, a long-gone café at 122 St. Marks Place, beyond the edge of the park. As we walk, Badgley, carrying his board, shows me the spot where a well-known-to-his-fans photo of Buckley was taken, contemplating his own reflection in a puddle, in 1993. Buckley didn’t live much ­longer: He was 30 when he drowned during an ill-advised, at least somewhat suicidal dip in Memphis’s Wolf River in 1997. The film, Greetings From Tim Buckley, is named for Jeff’s father, another mythic folksinger who also died young, of a heroin overdose, in 1975. Neither father nor son got to be much older than Badgley is now (26), so as far as bohemian tragedies go, the Buckleys are a doubly sad tale. And, for a CW star keen to be seen more as an artist and heir to the counterculture, doubly irresistible.

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There were more than a few audience members surprised by Penn Badgley’s falsetto at the U.S. premiere of Greetings from Tim Buckley, which screened this week at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. The narrative digs deep into the relationship between Tim Buckley and his son Jeff – played by Badgley – dramatizing the respective back stories of a musical pair who never really knew each other.

“I was a Jeff Buckley fan even before I read for the Richard Hell part,” Anthrax’s Frank Bello said in a discussion following the film. “But I was skeptical. I said, ‘Who is going to play Jeff? Penn Badgley? Who the fuck is that? But I’m telling you. . . balls of steel. Balls of steel.”

In addition to multiple on-screen renditions from Jeff’s catalogue (performed alongside Kate Nash), Badgley delivers a demonstrative, sixty-second a capella take on Led Zeppelin III.

“Remember that – balls of steel,” the former Gossip Girl star joked. “It would have been very hard to do without the live performance. Even if I had done the singing afterward, or before, it would have stolen anything we had going for us with the vibe.”

The film’s producer, Frederick Zollo (Mississippi Burning, Quiz Show), is responsible for introducing director Daniel Algrant to the Buckley family catalogue. But Algrant only “lept emotionally into” the music after watching their April 1991 performance at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Church, an event that’s recreated in the film.

“I just freaked out at these lyrics,” Algrant told the audience. “I went, ‘Wow, who the heck allowed people to forget these songs?’ These songs are current, they’re emotional. We’re hoping that the film will bring people back to him.”

Greetings from Tim Buckley will be released by Focus World and Tribeca Film on May 3rd.

Source, thanks to @roughrider92

“Greetings from Tim Buckley” is the semi-biographical story of late singer Jeff Buckley’s preparations for a 1991 tribute concert honoring his absentee father, late folk singer Tim Buckley.

The film plays the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City this week, but it’s available everywhere in the comfort of your own home with XFINITY On Demand. When asked why an independent movie like “Tim Buckley” deserves audience attention, star Penn Badgley told me, “It’s a special story about a special little icon. It’s something that I think you may not even know how to react to at first, but there’s something really valuable.”

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Who knew Lonely Boy could sing!? Now that Gossip Girl ended it’s six year run, Dan Humphrey, er, Penn Badgley, no longer has to keep his singing abilities on the backburner. In fact, the 26-year-old is showcasing his vocal talent as Jeff Buckley in the biopic, Greetings from Tim Buckley. The film was shown for the first time in the United States on Tuesday night as part of the the Tribeca Film Festival celebration, exclusively for American Express cardholders. And, we have to say, he did darn good in this role as Tim Buckley’s aspiring singer/songwriter son who makes his big debut at a tribute concert in 1991, honoring his late father in New York.

Greetings from Tim Buckley is the tale of two tortured musicians living simultaneously in two different realms without being the average run of the mill biopic. Confirmed by an audience member who stood up to congratulate director Daniel Algrant, Badgley and fellow cast mate Frank Bellow. “I knew Tim and I knew Jeff,” the Amex cardholder said. “And I was at the concert that night, and I don’t like biopics, but the liberties you took really gave me the distance to love this film,” he said while the cast members on the stage cheered.

If you need any more convincing of Badgley’s talent, here’s a testament. During one scene in the film, Badgley his love interest, played by Imogen Poots, are seen in a record store. His performance caused the audience—which was respectively quiet through the film—to erupt into cheers and applause, present company included. He was that believable.

Source, thanks to @chandlerdillon!