Why is Christopher Walken the only star who defended ‘Gigli’?: “It’s got terrific things in it”
When a movie comes out and is such a debacle that it loses a studio millions of dollars and derails careers, the natural tendency for those involved is to do one of two things. Either they fall on their sword and admit they knew the film was a disaster from the beginning, or they distance themselves from the project by arguing that the failure wasn’t their fault. Christopher Walken, though, isn’t like most actors, and when he finds himself in a flop, this is most definitely not what he does. Instead, he’ll defend it to the hilt, with the best example being his continuing defence of the egregiously terrible mob comedy Gigli.
In his career, Walken has lent his kooky talents to all sorts of movies. The eccentric star is always game for anything, from the most prestigious Oscar contenders to the most bafflingly low-rent comedies and horror films. To him, it’s all work, and he loves to keep busy. So, if he finishes an Academy Award-nominated picture and the first thing offered to him is something like Kangaroo Jack, Balls of Fury, Kill the Irishman, or Blast From the Past, you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll say, “Yes, please.”
“I more or less just do what comes next,” a nonplussed Walken once told Vanity Fair. “I don’t have kids. I don’t like to play golf or tennis. I don’t like to travel. I mostly just go to work. So, the choices that I make have more to do with the opportunities that are in front of me.”
Within this remit, Walken has also admitted that he likes to take chances. Whether that means taking a flyer on an unproven filmmaker, or trying his hand at a new accent, or accepting a bizarre cameo in a misguided romcom like Gigli, he’ll view that as an opportunity to do something new. Crucially, he also doesn’t particularly care if the resulting film is good or not. “All through my career, sometimes things work out well and sometimes they don’t,” he shrugged. “But that’s the way it goes.”
Still, one thing Walken will never do, even if one of his movies is the kind of misfire that hangs over its stars for decades like the Sword of Damocles, is jump on the bandwagon by trashing the film. That’s not how he rolls, because he knows everyone enters projects with the best intentions. So, what would be the point in joining in the pile-on?
“That movie got beat up an awful lot, but I don’t really know why,” Walken mused about Gigli, a film that saw him appear for one scene as a shady cop obsessed with Marie Callender’s delicious pie à la mode. “It’s got terrific things in it. Sometimes things just don’t click.”
This wasn’t the only time Walken defended the movie, which was disowned by its stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, in addition to its director, Martin Brest. He once theorised that the film was doomed before it was even released because of the negative media frenzy surrounding Affleck and Lopez’s real-life romance at that time – and he’s probably not wrong. “We were making Gigli, and I thought it was gonna be good,” Walken insisted. “But, you know, frankly, that had a lot to do with all the publicity before it. It’s very difficult to talk too much beforehand. You know, to have too much buzz about something.”
In the end, while Gigli was every bit as woeful as Affleck, Lopez, Brest, and legions of critics said, there’s something to be said about Walken’s staunch defence of its mysterious virtues. That’s a man of integrity right there.
