Producer, Director, and Screenwriter Jeff Baena was found dead two days ago at his home. The cause of death has been made official: suicide by hanging. Baena’s successes were notable but not massive. Hence, most reports have paired this awful event with his spouse (now widow), who happens to be the gifted actor/comedian Aubrey Plaza.
I want to say a few things upfront about suicide. There’s a tendency for some who have never known such depths of despair to label a person who ends their life as a “coward.” To do so is reductive, ignorant, and cruel. I speak from experience. Just over three decades ago, I was one of those people who not only considered suicide but made a half-hearted attempt. Mine was a true “cry for help,” as it is commonly called. It served as a wake-up call for me, and I’m glad to say that while I’ve had deep lows since that moment in my late teens, I’ve never come close to another attempt.
I decided to make that moment useful to me. I got help, I recovered, and while I moved on, I carried that moment forward with purpose. I would not dismiss what I almost did or try to forget it. I would try to understand it. Here’s what I discovered: While there may be instances when the word “cowardice” may apply, they are few and far between. No one decides to commit suicide on a whim. They work their way up to it. Do you know what all those days of apparent weakening resolve are up to the moment they commit the act? Acts of strength. The desire to leave this world and your pain behind has a strong lure, and to hold off as long as you can speaks to a desire to give it a little more time, “just another day.” I can’t express how hard that is.
People who take their own lives have typically put in a great deal of effort trying not to do it. They hope for something to change. They may even try to make that change themselves, and when it becomes too unbearable when they are stuck in that moment, and can see no way out, only then do they commit to an action of finality.
I know not what demons haunted Jeff Baena, but I refuse to call him a coward. He was surely a victim of such despair, grief, misery, whatever that he could see no way forward. And so he decided to stop.
I understand.
Of course, it’s a shame for countless reasons. Baena was a gifted filmmaker. His first credit was as director David O. Russell’s screenwriter on the inscrutable (although occasionally uproarious) I Heart Huckabees in 2004. Only someone so far outside the box that they couldn’t see or touch the cardboard would create something like Huckabees.
It took ten years, but eventually, Baena directed a film he wrote for himself, the demented zombie comedy Life After Beth, starring Plaza. Reviews were mixed, but once again, you could see the flashes of a filmmaker with serious comic chops and a view askew when it came to storytelling. Baena was not a straight-line kind of guy. He was trying things.
His next film, 2016’s Joshy, about a man (played by Thomas Middleditch) whose fiancée kills herself (yeah, I know) and is taken to a cabin in California by friends who try to cheer him up without addressing the reason why, is complex, moving, and somehow pretty damn funny. The next year, Baena would bring forth his vision most completely with the deeply (sometimes wince-inducing) sacrilegious and frequently hysterical comedy The Little Hours about some exceptionally randy nuns played by Alison Brie, Plaza, and Kate Miccuci. It’s the kind of film you watch and laugh at while preparing to dodge lightning bolts, even if you are an atheist like me. The Little Hours is an eye-bugging scream of a movie and a gem well worth searching out.
In 2020, Baena turned to drama with Horse Girl, a film starring Brie, who plays an isolated character most comfortable in the presence of the equine. As her reality starts to be invaded by her imagination, her circumstances take a dark turn. Horse Girl is a complex film that can be described as a very “big swing” that, while it may not connect in every scene, its eventual and singular weight of purpose wins out.
For Baena’s final film, he would team back up with Brie as the lead (with Plaza in support) in Spin Me Round (2022). A comedy with romantic elements that was probably as conventional as Baena might ever get. Sadly, the film was met with mixed reviews and didn’t get much of a release.
At the time of his death, Baena had one project in development: a film called Revenge of the Jocks that he was performing a rewrite on. Baena’s filmography may have been slim, but it was unique. His work was distinctive. It was weird, funny, dark; it had a voice. It’s not difficult to see how he and Plaza would have been drawn to each other. Their far left-of-center sensibilities might well have made them kindred spirits.
About two years ago, I interviewed Plaza for Emily the Criminal. I adore Plaza’s work and have enjoyed her collaborations with her husband. When we chatted for Emily, we got along well. There was a “suffer no fools” edge to her that I had to be mindful of. One of my friendliest colleagues even warned me she was one of his most challenging interviews. I only had 20 minutes of her time, but people can reveal vulnerability when there’s no camera recording. She was exactly who I thought she would be and more.
She talked about moving behind the camera one day, then turned her attention back to acting and said, “But I’m still young. I gotta get my shit done.” There was a mixture of toughness, humor, and genuine consideration that nothing lasts forever. I liked her very much.
I doubt she remembers me, but that’s fine–no reason to expect that she would, but I was grateful for her time and candor. She’s extraordinarily quick and smart. She was early to the interview (and no one is ever early). I was in the next room about to get into position when I heard Plaza’s voice coming from my open Zoom room saying, “Hello?! Hello?!”
Shit.
So I hustled my ass into my seat (while making a mental note to be ten minutes early forever going forward), and knowing that I needed to come up with something quick, I told her I drove nearly two hours to see Emily in the theater (true story). She lit up. Then we were sailing. I’ll never forget that.
Suicide is rarely a public event. It often takes place when a hurting person is alone, and there is no one to reach for, and the grim thoughts that torture them can no longer be kept at bay. It occurs in the quiet wee hours of life until that life is brought to a close. One of the saddest facts is that there is almost always collateral damage. There’s typically at least one person, and in Baena’s case, there appear to be many who care deeply for the individual who has decided to take their leave.
Regardless of the reason, all I can think of is how truly hellish this moment must be for Plaza and Baena’s family and friends.
“Time is luck,” I once heard in a film. I believe that to be true.
Jeff Baena died on January 3, 2025. He was 47 years old.
