“Didn’t light the world on fire”: Matt Reeves’ 25-year journey to a debut movie nobody remembers
As the world eagerly awaits the long-gestating sequel to The Batman (except me, I thought that film was awful), attention turns to Matt Reeves, the man who directed, produced, and co-wrote the script for Robert Pattinson’s debut outing as the ‘Caped Crusader’.
From his early days on the TV show Felicity to his work on the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise, the comic book outing was the latest in a long line of hits for the Golden Globe nominee, who has come a very long way since a lacklustre debut film, The Pallbearer, a 1996 romantic comedy starring David Schwimmer and Gwyneth Paltrow.
The Friends actor plays an architect who is drawn into giving a eulogy at the funeral of somebody he never met, which brings him into contact with Paltrow’s Julie, a woman he has coveted since they were teenagers.
Despite backing from Miramax, the film flopped at the box office and with critics, and it also inadvertently led to Schwimmer turning down the lead role in Men in Black, which, in hindsight, was probably for the best.
Almost three full decades on from his disastrous debut, Reeves got the chance to reflect on his journey with Esquire. Even though it was a long time ago and he’s done so much since, he still finds the failure of The Pallbearer incredibly hard to take.
“My first film didn’t light the world on fire,” he confessed, “But it was very personal. When you spend your entire youth as a filmmaker, it’s like a bunch of kids who are getting together and they make their first album. If they’re 25, it really took 25 years to make. I spent the first 25 years of my life making that first movie, and then that didn’t work.”
When Reeves said he’d been working towards his first film his entire life, he wasn’t wrong. He started experimenting with filmmaking as an eight-year-old, met his good friend JJ Abrams at 13, and the two would work together numerous times over the next several decades. He had a job as a teenager working for Steven Spielberg and studied under the future head of Marvel Television, Jeph Loeb. His first script eventually became the sequel to Under Siege, which came out in 1995.
After the disappointing reception to The Pallbearer, Reeves took some time away from the movie world. He built his reputation on television, before the perfect project with which to make his comeback landed in his lap. He was enlisted by his old pal JJ to direct a found-footage style film about an enigmatic monster running amok in New York City, and this became Cloverfield, launching Reeves’ name into the stratosphere.
It all worked out well in the end, but there is an alternative universe out there where The Pallbearer killed Reeves’ career before it had even begun. He isn’t the first big-shot director with a terrible debut film under his belt, and he won’t be the last.
