Ben Affleck Became a Director Because of His Critically Panned Film ‘Gigli’
Ben Affleck achieved as much success in his filmmaking career as he did as an actor. But he admitted that he might not have pursued being a director at all if it wasn’t for his Gigli experience.
Ben Affleck explained how ‘Gigli’ jumpstarted his filmmaking career
After a tumultuous period in his life, Affleck helped revitalize his career with the 2007 movie Gone Baby Gone. It was Affleck’s first full-length feature, and ended up being the catalyst for his moviemaking career going forward.
But he asserted that tumultuous period played a huge role in motivating him to become a director in the first place. Affleck was facing much scrutiny in the media due to his public relationship with Jennifer Lopez among other things. Their 2003 film Gigli didn’t help matters, either. Affleck and Lopez’s Gigli didn’t meet expectations financially or critically. To this day, some even regard it as one of Affleck’s worst films. However, Affleck considered the film to be an early inspiration for his filmmaking career. Particularly, thanks to the influence of the film’s director Martin Best.
“Interestingly, I learned more about directing on that movie than anything else because Marty is a brilliant director, really gifted,” Affleck once told Entertainment Weekly.
Affleck admitted that if it wasn’t for the career setback he experienced after Gigli, he might have had a completely different career.
“But if the reaction to Gigli hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have ultimately decided, ‘I don’t really have any other avenue but to direct movies,’ which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life,” Affleck said. “So in those ways, it’s a gift.”
Ben Affleck called his real directorial debut ‘horrible’
Affleck actually directed his first film years before Gone Baby Gone. He titled the satire I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney. The actor admitted it wasn’t his finest work.
“It’s a 13-minute film and stars a friend of mine, Jay Lacopo, who’s now a writer. It’s horrible. It’s atrocious. I knew I wanted to be a director, and I did a couple of short films, and this is the only one that haunts me. I’m not proud of it. It looks like it was made by someone who has no prospects, no promise,” Affleck once said in a separate Entertainment Weekly interview.
Affleck further asserted in the interview that he’d learned from other directors like Good Will Hunting filmmaker Gus Van Sant.
“Gus allows actors to discover their own performance. And he forces them to take responsibility, and not think of the director as father figure,” Affleck said. “You’d ask him, ‘What did you think?’ And he’d answer, ‘I don’t know, what did you think?’”
He also named Kevin Smith as another director who he’d learned from.
Martin Best regretted doing ‘Gigli’
The film’s director, Best, once shared that he has little fond memories of the Affleck and Lopez feature. Unlike the Oscar-winner, who was able to see a silver lining from doing Gigli, Best seemed content in forgetting about the picture entirely.
“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,” Best recently told Variety. “Even the name… I refer to it as ‘the G movie.’ Probably the less said about it the better.”
Best revealed that the film was the victim of constant revisions, which changed Gigli into a project he didn’t recognize.
“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,’” Best 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.”
It was such a stain on Best’s filmography that he regretted sticking with Gigli when he could’ve walked away.
“To my eternal regret, I didn’t quit, so I bear responsibility for a ghastly cadaver of a movie,” he said.
