A generational shift is happening in Hollywood. The two big breakout films of the spring – Backrooms and Obsession – were made by a pair of plucky young YouTubers who found themselves granted the keys to the kingdom. Both of these films took more money than the most recent Star Wars, the most recent superhero movie (Supergirl) and the most recent Spielberg. It is arguably the biggest shake-up of the film industry since the rise of New Hollywood in the 1970s.
But perhaps the biggest change is tangential to all of this. This week it was announced that Jeff Barker – the father of Obsession direction Curry Barker – is making a film of his own. Medium Rare is a horror short that will shoot this summer and star Dane Cook and the Oscar-nominated actor Lesley Ann Warren. This will come hot on the heels of Good Tape, another horror short of Barker’s that is currently in post-production.
The thing is, if you look at Jeff Barker’s IMDb page, those are his only two projects. He worked as a script consultant on Obsession (and had an uncredited cameo as a trivia bar host), but otherwise that’s it. At least in terms of getting stuff made, Jeff Barker only got a break when Curry Barker became successful. In other words, there is a very good chance that we’re looking at a nepo dad here.
Typically, of course, Hollywood is best known for producing nepo babies. Lob a stone at a premiere and it’s bound to hit the son or daughter or a more established star, whose access to fame has been lubricated by their parent’s proximity to power and influence. We don’t need to name names here – because a comprehensive list of nepo babies would run to thousands of words – but they’re easy enough to spot, primarily because of how defensive they get when you say the phrase “nepo baby” around them.
But a nepo parent is a far rarer thing. This is someone who watches their child achieve wealth and fame from a standing start and, prompted by either possibility or jealousy, decides to cut a slice off for themselves.
The most notable case of this is Rob Grant. Grant is the father of Lana Del Rey; a man who worked in advertising and property development until his daughter got famous, at which point he decided to release an album of his own in 2023. Happily, Grant was self-aware enough to make a point of his family connections, going as far as selling T-shirts bearing the phrase “Nepo Daddy”.
Nevertheless, there are others. Mitch Winehouse always seemed like one of the biggest beneficiaries of his daughter Amy’s fame, leveraging her notoriety into an album of his own, entitled Rush of Love. And sometimes a nepo baby can create an endless feedback loop of nepotism, which is what happened in 2022 when Margaret Qualley (the nepo baby of Andie MacDowell) lobbied for McDowell to get a role in her TV series Maid as a way to kickstart her mother’s fading career.
It’s important to single out the true nepo parents. You might accuse, say, Tom Holland’s dad Dominic of being a nepo dad, because his standup sets routinely include segments on what it’s like to be Spider-Man’s dad. But I would argue that this doesn’t quite cut it. Holland senior was a comedian long before his son became famous, and the Spider-Man stuff feels like an effort to acknowledge the elephant in the room rather than an attempt to cash in.
Nevertheless, at least what characterises all of these nepo parents is that they possess a modicum of actual talent. Jeff Barker wouldn’t have written a horror short if he couldn’t write, just as Rob Grant and Mitch Winehouse wouldn’t have released albums if they couldn’t sing. In that respect, their children should be breathing a sigh of relief, because things could always be much worse.
Because sometimes a parent is so bedazzled by their offspring’s fame – and so overtly lacking in talent – that their only recourse is to get a reality TV show. And this is a universally bad look. Think about Lindsay Lohan, whose first rush of fame was marked by both of her parents scrambling to be noticed. Her mother, Dina Lohan, appeared on The Real Housewives of New York City and a squalid E! Show entitled Living Lohan.
Her father, Michael Lohan, meanwhile, managed to go even lower. After trying his hand at acting, with a cameo in a weird, impossible-to-find film called Horrorween (apparently featuring co-stars like Jenna Jameson, Flava Flav and Donald Trump), he then resorted to appearances on Celebrity Rehab and an episode of Trisha entitled Is Lindsay Lohan My Sister?
So, it could always be worse. If Jeff Barker wants to piggyback on his son’s reputation, and if Curry Barker has given his blessing, then there’s nothing wrong with nepo parenting. The best-case scenario is that people will watch Medium Rare and understand why Curry Barker is like that. That has to be preferable to watching Celebrity Rehab and understanding why Lindsay Lohan is like that.
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