Martin Brest breaks silence on ‘Gigli’ flop: ‘It’s really a bloody mess that deserved its excoriation’

Christopher Rosen
·4 min read
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Martin Brest – an Oscar nominee for “Scent of a Woman,” the man responsible for directing Al Pacino to his only Academy Award, and the filmmaker behind ‘80s classics “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Midnight Run” – has finally offered a public comment about the 2003 flop “Gigli.”

“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,” Brest said in a rare interview with Variety, the first he’s done with a media outlet in years. “Even the name… I refer to it as ‘the G movie.’ Probably the less said about it the better.”

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“Gigli” is one of the most notorious failures in recent Hollywood history. Brest wrote and directed the thriller, which starred Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck at the height of their first romance – a relationship the tabloid press feasted on for months. Al Pacino and Christopher Walken were also co-stars. In the end, the film grossed less than $8 million in theatrical release despite a reported budget of more than $75 million.

Speaking to Variety, Brest expressed frustration the film had “changed so radically” from what he originally envisioned. “When it came to finishing that movie, I remember the composer came up with a piece of music and played it, and he looked at me for my reaction. I said, ‘I knew why this scene used to be in the movie and what its purpose was. I don’t have any idea why it’s in the movie now,’” Brest recalled. “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.”

Asked how the movie spun out of his control, Brest cited “extensive disagreements between the studio and myself” that “got to the point where post-production was shut down for eight months while we battled it out.”

“In the end, I was left with two choices: quit or be complicit in the mangling of the movie,” he added. “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. For the first time in my career I had become a true collaborator — not in the benign, creative sense, but rather that of one who, in violation of their true allegiances, cooperates with occupying forces. And for that kind of compromise, self-castigations far exceed any possible public ones.”

“Gigli” all but ended Brest’s career. It stands as the last film he’s ever made and he had no projects in active development. In the past, particularly in an insightful piece published by Playboy in 2015, he has been compared to J.D. Salinger. But recent years have brought Brest out into the public space again. Back in 2021, he appeared with Paul Thomas Anderson to discuss “Midnight Run.” At the time, Anderson introduced Brest by comparing him to another filmmaker who valued his time out of the spotlight. “Like Stanley Kubrick, we always have to wait seven years before the next Marty Brest movie, [they] take forever and ever and ever and we wait and wait and wait,” Anderson said.

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