Remember director Martin Brest? He had quite the streak of successful films going in ‘80s and ‘90s Hollywood: “Going in Style,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Scent of a Woman,” “Meet Joe Black” and, his masterpiece, “Midnight Run.” Then he directed 2003’s “Gigli” and it all went to hell for him.
“Gigli,” starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, had a $75 million budget and grossed a paltry $7 million at the box-office. The reviews were nasty. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 6% based on 187 reviews. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 18 based on 37 critics. Its CinemaScore had an average grade of D minus.
A recent Variety interview with Brest caught my attention. It basically amounts to a career recap where he tackles the ups and downs of his six-film career. Yes, Brest only directed six movies, unless you count the 73-minute AFI-produced “Hot Tomorrows” as his seventh.
“Gigli,” claimed by many to be one of the worst movies ever made, destroyed his soul, and his career. You can tell by this interview that he does not want to talk about it that much. In fact, he doesn’t even want to reference the movie by name:
Of all the movies that I’ve worked on, I know them inside and out. I don’t even know what that movie looks like, frankly, because of the manner in which it took shape. Even the name… I refer to it as ‘the G movie.’ Probably the less said about it the better.
He goes on to explain how studio interference destroyed his original vision of the film and that he regrets not pulling his name off the project:
The movie originally started very differently from what seems like the beginning now. I wonder if ever a movie had been changed that much… I’m sure it has in the history of Hollywood, but it was changed so radically […] The themes of the movie were radically different. The plot was different. The purpose of the movie was different. But I can’t escape blame. [But] it’s so weird — I literally don’t remember the movie that was released, because I wasn’t underneath it in the way I was under the hood of all my other movies. So it’s really a bloody mess that deserved its excoriation.
Brest goes on to tackle the “extensive disagreements” between the studio and himself, to the point where post-production was shut down for eight months while he “battled it out”.
In the end I was left with two choices: quit or be complicit in the mangling of the movie. To my eternal regret I didn’t quit, so I bear responsibility for a ghastly cadaver of a movie. Once key scenes were cut it became like a joke with its punchline removed, endless contortions could never create the illusion that what remained was intended. Extensive reshooting and re-editing turned characters, scenes, story and tone upside down in the futile attempt to make the increasing mess resemble a movie.
Brest confirms he has a script he’s written that’s been set aside for many years, and that he wrote another script that he’s been burning for a few years to do, but “nobody else seems to be wanting to burn along with me”.
Brest is now 72 years old and he seems fairly certain that his moviemaking days are behind him. His last film will probably be “Gigli.”
Cory Finley, a talented filmmaker, has directed three films so far: "Thoroughbreds" (2017), "Bad Education” (2020), and "Landscape with Invisible Hand.”