“A ghastly cadaver of a movie”: the forgotten third career sacrificed at the altar of ‘Gigli’
Hollywood can be such a fickle place that sometimes all it takes it one movie to derail an entire career, but so much of the focus fell on Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez that it goes unmentioned that there was a third person to have their reputation destroyed by the abominable Gigli, and they never recovered.
At the height of the tabloid frenzy that followed them everywhere, Affleck and Lopez decided that starring in a romantic comedy together was the best course of action. History remembers that it was probably the worst, with Gigli doing massive damage to the former’s image in more ways than one.
Affleck remains the youngest person to ever win an Academy Award for screenwriting after taking the stage to collect his Oscar for Good Will Hunting at the age of only 25, and in less than a decade he was being written off as a busted flush, a flash in the pan, a has-been, a failed movie star, and much worse.
Gigli hammered a nail into his coffin that almost sank him entirely, which is the least it deserved. The $75 million production recouped less than 10% of its budget from cinemas to become one of the biggest bombs in history, winning six Golden Rasberry Awards, including ‘Worst Picture’, ‘Worst Actor’, ‘Worst Actress’, and ‘Worst Screen Couple’.
One of the sextet was Martin Brest’s prize for ‘Worst Director’, and he came off worse than anyone. Whereas Lopez quickly moved on from the debacle and Affleck used the embarrassment of Gigli to reinvent himself as an acclaimed filmmaker and resurgent on-camera performer, the person behind the camera hasn’t helmed a feature since. In fact, Brest hates Gigli so much that he can’t even refer to it by name.
“Of all the movies that I’ve worked on, I know them inside and out,” he told Variety. “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.”
The director recounted that in post-production he was “left with two choices: quit or be complicit in the mangling of the movie.” he opted not to walk away, and as a result he’s been forced to “bear responsibility for a ghastly cadaver of a movie” that saw him embark on a “futile attempt to make the increasing mess resemble a movie.”
Brest had directed Al Pacino to an Oscar win in Scent of a Woman and been nominated for ‘Best Director’, while his other credits included Eddie Murphy’s breakout hit Beverly Hills Cop, classic buddy caper Midnight Run, and Brad Pitt’s Meet Joe Black. Once Gigli landed with a deafening thud and quickly gained an unwanted reputation as the professional nadir for everyone involved, it effectively ended his career on the spot.
