Jeff Baena

About the Filmmaker, and Parasocial Circles

I started out frustrated by the tone I was picking up from Joshy (2016), a Thomas Middleditch-led California improviser’s dream ensemble (Adam Pally, Nick Kroll, Alex Ross Perry, Jenny Slate, Brian Gelman, Aubrey Plaza) centered around a get-together of friends, who rally after Middleditch’s “Joshy” finds his wife (Alison Brie) dead of suicide.

It felt like I was watching the kind of movie you and your buddies would try and make… the only difference is this one made it on to Netflix.

Now I know one of director Jeff Baena’s skills was making it seem as relatable as that, when in reality each film was a Little Train That Could. I realised I was frustrated because he was just doing what I wanted to do, so closely to how I wanted to do it, I couldn’t separate myself. I got over that, and happily joined the ranks of oxymoronically passive and passionate film nerds who sought to prop up such an authentic if handcuffed-by-budgets filmmaker.

After Joshy came The Little Hours (2017), a low budget period comedy set in the Middle Ages, based loosely on the 14th century novel The Decameron. It starred Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Dave Franco, and, of course, a slew of (probably) Los Feliz-based improvisers from Groundlings or other equivalent training grounds. I had the pleasure of seeing it at the Revue Theatre in Toronto. The biggest laugh came from Fred Armisen’s entrance. Baena had set his sights much higher with this. There was so much more to manage. And yet it still had a palpable DIY, “my buddies and I could do this” feeling.

I didn’t see his final two films, Horse Girl (2020, starring Alison Brie), and Spin Me Round (2022, starring — you guessed it — Alison Brie), but I heard about them without having to seek them out, which meant something was going right in his career.

In his final two years or so, he married long time collaborator actress Aubrey Plaza, whom he first met and began dating in 2010/2011.

I’m not so sure how to end this, or to what end I’ve written this piece.

Unless you’re un-human, you’re gonna feel bad when someone you know personally dies this way — or dies at all.

It’s something else entirely when someone in your parasocial circle dies.

I felt profound sadness when Anthony Bourdain died. Not just because I related to his mental health struggles, but because I thought he’d made it to home base! Yeah, he had a plethora of issues snapping at his heels from his teens through to his 50s, from mental health to drug abuse to infidelity, but he’d made it to 60!

Then he was just gone.

And it makes you realize — if you’re like many of us, into pop culture, watching hours of film and television, fantasizing often not about fiction but about real people’s lived lives — the power (good and bad) of that self-created parasocial circle.

Over time my love for Joshy only grows stronger.

Jeff Baena prioritized improv and friendship in his films. This helped make them unique. They remain there when you want to visit him.

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Don’t hesitate to ask for help:

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/mental-health-services/mental-health-get-help.html