Jean-Marc Vallée was on a creative roll when he prematurely left us.

The filmmaker from Montreal’s Rosemont neighbourhood, fresh off conquering American television with the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies (2017) and Sharp Objects (2018), was moving forward on an ambitious feature about the love story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono (working title John&Yoko). But the project ground to a halt when Vallée died on Dec. 25, 2021.

“Jean-Marc had a great vision,” says Marc Côté, CEO of Montreal post house Real by Fake who served as Vallée’s longtime VFX supervisor and coproduced the HBO series. “The way Jean-Marc was planning to present it was unique to his style. It would have been a masterpiece.”

The project is currently in search of a new director.

Côté believes Vallée will be remembered for his rhythmic filmmaking style that served stories of human relationships — and he will remain an inspiration.

“He was a guy who, through perseverance and hard work, was able to propel himself to where he wanted to be. He showed that if you are a true artist who is able to have the right people around you, everything is possible.”

That included helming Oscar-winning feature films.

Nathan Ross, Vallée’s former rep at ICM who became a producing partner starting with Dallas Buyers Club (2013), says, “He’s missed very much by his casts and crews, but just talking about him and saying his name keeps his memory alive. He was a brilliant filmmaker. He thought it was tongue in cheek, but I used to call him ‘The Maestro.'”

John&Yoko was a natural for Vallée, a pop music connoisseur and former DJ. C.R.A.Z.Y. — his 2005 breakthrough Quebec feature starring Marc-André Grondin as a young man coming to grips with his homosexuality — received plaudits for its soundtrack, featuring songs by The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and David Bowie.

Vallée and producer Pierre Even spent $600,000 of C.R.A.Z.Y.‘s $7 million budget on licensing that music. Pop songs continued to play a major role in the director’s projects, and he often made characters audiophiles like himself.

C.R.A.Z.Y. took a decade to come to fruition, after Vallée was already established in his home province. Having studied cinema at l’Université du Québec à Montréal, he cut his teeth directing music videos in the mid ’80s. He ventured into narrative filmmaking with shorts, picking up a Genie Award for Magical Flowers (1995) and a Jutra for its sequel Magical Words (1998).

He not only directed these films but also edited them, and would continue contributing in that capacity on his long-form work, under pseudonyms including Jai M. Vee and John Mac McMurphy. The latter was even officially nominated for an editing Oscar alongside Montrealer Martin Pensa for Dallas Buyers Club.

Vallée’s feature debut was Liste noire (1995), a thriller starring Michel Côté as a judge who is endangered after acquiring a prostitute’s clientele list. It was the year’s top-grossing Quebec film with a $1 million box office haul and garnered nine Genie nominations, including direction and editing nods for Vallée.

This led to his being hired on a couple of American films: the Western Los Locos (1997) written by and starring Mario Van Peebles, and the revenge thriller Loser Love (1999) starring Laurel Holloman.

After neither made much noise, he came home and turned his attention to a project on which he was the driving creative force. C.R.A.Z.Y. became one of Canadian cinema’s biggest hits, reaping some 50 international awards (including best picture and director, and nine other Genies) and $6 million at the domestic box office.

It also attracted producers Martin Scorsese and Graham King, who wanted Vallée to direct their period piece The Young Victoria (2009), starring Emily Blunt as the popular queen and Rupert Friend as her consort Prince Albert. The US$35 million U.S./U.K. co-venture received favourable reviews, won an Oscar for Sandy Powell’s costume design, and took in US$32 million at worldwide theatres, according to The Numbers.

It may have seemed an unlikely project for the French-Canadian filmmaker but, as he told Playback at the time: “I’m looking for different challenges from one film to the other. It was just good timing.” It was also a somewhat frustrating experience: the bigger budget meant more input from above; he was vetoed on his music choices and felt encumbered by the large crew.

He reunited with producer Even on Canada/France copro Café de Flore (2011), shooting his script that tells parallel stories of Antoine (Kevin Parent), a fortysomething Montreal DJ switching partners, and single mother Jacqueline (Vanessa Paradis) raising her son Laurent (Marin Gerrier), who has Down syndrome, in 1960s Paris.

This time, whenever possible, he shot with a crew as small as five people. The approach yielded creative dividends and the film won three Genies out of 13 nominations.

He took another shot at Hollywood with Dallas Buyers Club, based on the life of Ron Woodroof, a heterosexual Texas cowboy who contracted AIDS in the 1980s and smuggled unapproved drugs to treat himself and others afflicted with the disease.

Vallée made the film for just US$5.5 million, applying his stripped-down methods that also included handheld digital photography and little to no movie lights. He was aided by Montreal director of photography Yves Bélanger, with whom he had shot commercials and episodes of The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne (2000) and who became his closest on-set collaborator.

“I wanted to be able to shoot 360 degrees,” Vallée told this writer in a 2014 interview. “I wanted the actors to be able to go anywhere. I asked the rest of the crew to leave and thought, ‘This is great.’ I told Yves, ‘Let’s make this film in 25 days with little money like I did on Café de Flore, shooting the whole thing that way and giving the film over to the actors.”

His image-driven storytelling often cuts to characters’ memories and dreams. He knew exactly how it would all come together as he constantly ran the camera and captured as much footage as possible right until the end of the day. When crunched for time he would operate the camera himself as there wasn’t time to explain all the coverage he needed.

Dallas Buyers Club made more than US$55 million theatrically worldwide and earned Oscars for Matthew McConaughey for lead actor, Jared Leto for supporting and a Best Picture nomination. It made Vallée much sought after by other top Hollywood talent.

He worked with Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern (both Oscar nominated) on Wild (2014) and Jake Gyllenhaal on Demolition (2015). He then collaborated with a golden ensemble cast on season one of Big Little Lies, bringing Emmy statuettes to lead Nicole Kidman and supporting players Dern and Alexander Skårsgard, and noms for Witherspoon and Shailene Woodley.

Big Little Lies, David E. Kelley’s adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s novel, follows mothers in Monterey, California, whose outwardly perfect lives hide infidelities and abuse. It averaged 8.5 million viewers per episode, according to HBO, and also won Emmys for best limited series and Vallée’s direction.

Then came Southern Gothic murder mystery Sharp Objects. Based on the novel by Gillian Flynn, it stars Amy Adams as Camille, an alcoholic, self-harming reporter who returns to her hometown to cover a young girl’s murder, restarting her troubled relationship with her mother Adora (Patricia Clarkson) and triggering memories of her dead half sister. The series, Adams and Clarkson received Emmy noms.

Vallée constantly pushed his collaborators to reach a high bar.

“I was exhausted after shooting with him because he asked so much physically and emotionally,” says Bélanger, who was nominated for an Emmy for his cinematography on Big Little Lies. “He was so intense and a lot of concentration was needed. But I’ve never had so much pride looking at rushes as when I was shooting with him. And the editing made me look even better. He made me a better DOP.”

Following his grueling TV schedule, Vallée bought a lakeside cabin near Quebec City where he could work and spend time with his sons Alex, an actor and former Real by Fake employee, and Émile, a Concordia University film grad who appeared in C.R.A.Z.Y. and Café de Flore.

In addition to the Lennon film he was gearing up for another HBO series, Gorilla and the Bird, based on the memoir of American public defender Zack McDermott, who suffered from bipolar disorder.

But those plans were cut short. Just hours after leaving producing partner Ross a happy holiday phone message, Vallée was found dead at his cabin, having suffered from what the coroner deemed “a fatal cardiac arrhythmia secondary to severe coronary atherosclerosis.” He was 58.

A year later, many of his Hollywood collaborators gathered to celebrate his life on a rainy Sunday in Santa Monica. And the Canadian industry is also paying tribute. The DGC renamed its up-and-comers prize the Jean-Marc Vallée DGC Discovery Award; he was also posthumously fêted with the Canadian Award of Distinction at the 2022 Banff World Media Festival, where a bursary was launched for professional development of a Quebec director. And Concordia announced an award in his name providing financial assistance to students.

Meanwhile, Even is producing a documentary about him directed by Marie-Julie Dallaire and titled Cut Print Thank You Bye, which was an expression Vallée liked to use. They hope to begin shooting in the spring.

Playback‘s Canadian Film and Television Hall of Fame was founded in 2007 to recognize extraordinary achievements in the Canadian entertainment industry. Inductees are selected by a jury of their peers.