“I wish it weren’t so”: Ben Affleck names his only regret from the making of ‘Gigli’
History has a funny way of repeating itself in Hollywood, with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez officially bringing their renewed relationship full circle after the pair filed for divorce a little over two years after getting married.
They’d been apart for decades, and while they never pinpointed it as a director factor, nobody would begrudge either Affleck or Lopez if they named Gigli as the straw that broke the camel’s back the first time around. After all, Martin Brest would back them to the hilt because the wretched comedy killed his career.
He was once the successful filmmaker behind Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run, Scent of a Woman, and Meet Joe Black, but he hasn’t done a thing since. Gigli left him so traumatised that he refuses to even refer to it by name, such was the black mark it left on what was otherwise a very respectable filmography.
The proud winner of six Golden Raspberry Awards including ‘Worst Picture’, ‘Worst Actor’, ‘Worst Actress’, and ‘Worst Screen Couple’ in addition to its status as a cataclysmic box office bomb that barely even recouped a tenth of its $75 million budget, star-studded capers have rarely come much shittier than ‘Bennifer’ weaponising their tabloid-friendly relationship for the big screen.
Of course, the stars couldn’t let their true feelings be known when they were forced to grin and bear it on the press trail pretending that it wasn’t a steaming turd of a film, but Affleck did at least manage to air one major grievance at the time of Gigli‘s release, admitting to the BBC that the central duo’s off-screen union overshadowed every aspect of the picture.
“I think it is a shame. I regret it,” he confessed. “I wish it weren’t so. There’s only so much I can do, unfortunately. Because of choices I made in my personal life subsequent to filming this movie, you know, this is one of the prices I pay. People are going to miss the chance to enjoy it because they’ll go to see the movie and still be carrying all this baggage from the tabloids.”
Realistically, Gigli could have put its head above the ‘Bennifer’ parapet and thrived on its own merits as a standalone work of cinema if it was good. Unfortunately, it was worse than anyone could have possibly imagined, but it did end up benefitting Affleck in the long run before he was ultimately led straight back into Lopez’s path.
It was such an awful movie that he decided a reinvention was well overdue, which gave rise to his second wind – and second Academy Award – as an acclaimed filmmaker. It worked out eventually, but everyone would be much better off if Gigli hadn’t existed at all.
