WHAT WENT WRONG - Gigli

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

How did an Academy Award nominated director helm what’s widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made? 2003’s “Gigli” gave us Bennifer 1.0 and torpedoed writer/director Martin Brest’s career. Find out how NOT to reverse engineer a romcom - especially when your main characters are a straight man and a lesbian. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez do their best, but thanks to one of the craziest post-productions we’ve ever covered, “Gigli” does its worst.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Chris Winterbauer, joined by your better host, Lizzie Bassett, and she is taking us back to our roots today with a real classic of a troubled production, I have to imagine, based on what I watched, kicking it over to you, Lizzie.

Thanks? Well, I don't think we can safely say I'm the better host after this one. Yeah, this is a classic big-time flopper. This is Gile, everyone. And I just want to say, it's your fault. It's your fault. We put four options to you all on Patreon. They were Speed 2, burlesque, which I secretly was hoping for.

Wait, what were the other two, Chris? Speed 2, burlesque. Glitter and gile. And you chose this. Yeah, good for you guys. I can't say I'm happy about it. But. I have a lot of interesting, no restatement.

I feel like we're going to have some interesting disagreements about this film that I'm excited to discuss. Or maybe not. Who knows? I don't know what there is to disagree on. But we're going to get into it. You said this must be a very troubled production. Not correct, I would say. It's a very troubled post-production, which we're going to get.

into. So I want to get the information out of the way really quickly. And then obviously we are going to we're going to talk about Gile. So it was released August 1st, 2003, written by Martin Brest, directed by Martin Brest, starring Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, Justin Bartha, Christopher Wackin, and Al Pacino. Now it was released by Revolution Studios. And the IMDB logline is, Larry Gile is assigned by a crime boss to kidnap the brother of a prominent district attorney. A beautiful woman, known only as Ricky, is sent to stay with him to make sure he doesn't mess up the job. So, Chris, that's making an awful lot of sense out of a movie that makes almost zero sense. So here at the top, I want to talk a little bit more about the plot of this movie as it appears on screen,

in case our listeners haven't watched it because I'm willing to bet they haven't. watched it. Chris, can you please give me your best recap of Gile? I can. Ben Affleck plays Larry Gile, pronounced like, really, and he is, as best we can tell, a low-level mob enforcer in Los Angeles, who's, we meet in, you know, intimidating a guy in a laundromat. Long story short, he has assigned the job of kidnapping and babysitting the mentally handicapped brother of a district attorney in New York, I want to say. Supposedly, this will cause charges to be dropped in New York City and not just blow up the lives of everyone involved. He then brings Justin Bartha's... I don't remember the character.

I believe it's Brian. Brian. He calls him Joe at one point. Yeah, he brings Brian back to his apartment. About 20 minutes in, Jennifer Lopez, as Ricky shows up, supposedly a... another mob enforcer who is deeply intimidating to Larry Gile, not only because she's a woman, but because she's gay. And then begins a weird, very claustrophobic pseudo-becoming-a-family-family movie as these three playhouse for long stretches of time. Christopher Walken shows up, kind of does its thing for a scene. Oh, yeah.

Christopher Walken plays a police officer who has some sort of person, connection to Larry Gile. Al Pacino shows up at the end and they just said, Al, Starface. Go for it. Al Pacino plays the mob boss who they are sort of inadvertently trying to actually get off by kidnapping the prosecutor's mentally handicapped brother. Continue, Chris. I mean, very little else. Ricky's supposedly crazy girlfriend shows up and slits her wrists in the apartment. She shows up for a beat. When the stakes get too high, they supposedly have to cut off Brian's thumb. They instead decide to get the hell out of dodge, more or less, kind of. And then at the end of the film, after a somewhat both climactic and anticlimactic confrontation with Al Pacino, they drive away and

Brian dances in a Baywatch music video. Yes. And it's all, it all feels both drawn out. And oddly stunted at the same time. Right. It's bad Rain Man. It's Rain Man's Midnight Run. It is. Raid Man's Midnight Run. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot going on here. I mean, the first thing that I just want to get out of the way is the relationship, as it appears on screen in the movie, between Ricky and Larry, is bizarre and I think, you know, does not age well. She, certainly proclaims herself pretty firmly to be a lesbian. This is yet another entry into Ben Affleck's. Ben Affleck turns gay women straight, Uvra. So it's very strange. It's not really explained why that happens. And yeah, they do. They drive off into the sunset together. So a couple of things that I want

to mention before we dive in that should sort of get you in the early-aughts mindset of Gile, to my previous point. When this came out, gay marriage was not even legal yet. So I think they thought they were doing something very edgy and progressive with this. They were not. The first legal gay marriage ever, the United States, occurred in 2004, which is after Gilely was released. Having gay main characters in TV and film, particularly women, was still pretty new. One notable milestone was Ellen DeGeneres coming out in 1997, making her the first gay or lesbian lead on a network TV show. The other thing is that this movie came out of the era that The Daily Beast has since dubbed the, quote, tabloid age of terror.

Extreme invasion of celebrities' privacy was at an all-time high, and the treatment of women and tabloids in particular was horrendous. So thank Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and as we will learn over the course of this episode, also Jennifer Lopez. Chris, any other hot takes on Gile you want to get out of the way before we dive into this? Yeah, as you mentioned, a lot of it hasn't aged. Well, there are movies from this era.

Chasing Amy, I think. aged a little better, yeah. Yeah, and has aged better. But first of all, this isn't the worst movie we've watched on this podcast, in my opinion. No, it is not. Not at all. I think a lot of people, like Ishtar, simply like to say, yeah, it's the worst movie ever, and they probably haven't even seen it.

Well, to be fair, Ishtar was genuinely kind of good. This is in no way good. Well, according to your husband. Yeah, we may have to get divorced. No, let me rephrase, though. It's an easy film to take shots at, but there are, I do like moments and I do like certain sequences. I like the running joke of Ben Affleck's character reading the labels off of things to Justin Bartha because he has no books in his apartment. I like Jennifer Lopez's Tai Moi Chai speech.

It's very much like a kind of Tarantino riff, but I think it's a fun scene. I kind of like her insane midpoint. the vagina is more powerful than the penis speech that she gives while doing like weird seductive yoga in front of Ben Affleck. It's, I think she kind of pulls it off. It's a totally out there moment. I think she does too. Also, she deserves an Oscar for the most famous line from this movie, which I believe follows shortly thereafter. It does. Which is when she leans back, opens her legs. Sorry, if you have kids listening, maybe just kick them out of this episode now, because It's not, we just can't avoid this.

Opens her legs, invites him to go down on her and says, it's turkey time, at which point Ben Affleck goes, what? And then she says, gobble, gobble. And she does it with a straight face in a way where you're like, was that hot? Kind of. Yeah, it was, Carmela predicted the line before it happened. She goes, Jennifer Lopez goes, it's turkey time. And Carmela goes, no, gobble, gobble, no.

And then she says, gobble, gobble, gobble. I also, I think, casting Ben Affleck, they were trying to actually go for something that subverted the alpha male. There's this theme running through the movie of he acts as if he's the bull and there's cows. And the reality, he's a cow, right? That's his arc. It's like, I'm actually a beta. Which is great. I actually like that.

It subverts kind of like the Sigma male energy that, like, you know, that he had been projecting through certain roles before this movie. And I give him kudos for embracing that. Anywho, then there's a lot of stuff that obviously doesn't. It doesn't work, but there are a few things that I enjoyed from the movie. Honestly, the hardest part of this entire movie for me to watch is Justin Bartha. He goes full, simple Jack from Tropic Thunder in this. It is rough. And it's his debut.

It's his breakout. And it is like, it's stunningly bad, even for that time. A couple of other quick things, I just want to call out. the search function when looking for this movie, it didn't even pull it up when I had spelled the entire title. So that should give you all an idea of the popularity of this film. I also just want to say her pants in this movie. Where does her vagina go? They're the lowest pants I've ever seen. That's just early 2000s, baby. I've never seen anything like it. It's the worst. It's the lowest pants. That's just what we wore. That's not we, but yeah, come on. Christine Aguilar wore pants like that.

Britney Spheres wore pants like that. That was like the pop star look. These are the lowest ones. They're like engineered by nuclear physicists or something to not expose anything because it really was mind-blowing. Yeah, that's about it. Ben Affleck's wearing his finest Tony Soprano costume throughout the whole thing. I feel like he looks kind of right. Yeah. I don't think he's miscast. Some people I read in reviews really strongly did. And I don't think she's miscast either. I just think it's the movie around them's not working. Which we're going to discover why. So if you are unfamiliar with this story, you might think that this movie, once described by Ben Affleck as a, quote, horse's head in a cow's body, must have been written and directed by a terrible director. But you would be wrong. Very wrong.

In fact, Mr. Horses Head Cowbody himself said that he learned more about directing from this film's director than anyone else. And Ben Affleck is an objectively very good director, so keep that in mind. So let's talk about the writer and director of Gile, Martin Brest. He's born in 1951, grew up in the Bronx to Eastern European immigrant parents, while at NYU he directed a student film called Hot Dogs for Goghs for Gogh, starring a then-somewhat unknown Danny DeVito and Raya Perlman, about a down-and-out photographer who comes up with a plan to blow up the Statue of Liberty in order to get it all. on camera. Themes from Brest's career are present even as early as this. He admits that he has a fascination with what he calls the redemption of the asshole, which I think we see very much again

in Gile. And by the way, this student film was added to the National Film Registry in the Freakin' Library of Congress in 2009. So that's who we're dealing with. He then attends AFI, graduating with a Masters of Fine Arts in 1977, makes another student film there called Hot Tomorrow's, And from here, Brest has really a pretty meteoric rise. Thanks to the buzz from his student films, he earns a contract with Warner Brothers, which leads to his major studio directorial debut going in style in 1979. This was a hit both critically and commercially, and put Brest on a trajectory to becoming Hollywood's new It director.

Also, the remake was directed by our host last week or guest, Zach Braff. That's correct. That was my next bullet point. Oh, what a dick. But then came War Games. A friend from AFI introduced him to his brother, a screenwriter, who was looking for a director on War Games. Now, this movie could probably have its own episode, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here. But suffice it to say, Marty got a reputation. He fought with the screenwriters to the point where, according to the Washington Post, he got them fired.

He fought constantly with producers, especially over casting, pushing hard. for more comedic actors in order to offset the thriller tone of the film. However, it's worth mentioning he was right. We have him to thank for casting Matthew Broderick, who absolutely is a comedic actor and would not have starred in that movie if it weren't for Martin Brest. And is great in that movie, and that movie's great. It's very fun. Long story short, the movie gets put in turnaround and picked up by United Artists who are immediately suspicious of Brest. He seems very confident in the film that he's shooting, but United Artists are not, and just three weeks into filming. breast is fired. Wow. This is where his reputation for being difficult to work with kicks off.

And I don't know that the label difficult is fair here. He does not have a bad reputation with actors. In fact, they love him, and he seems to be fiercely protective of his work and requires an extensive level of creative control. So I don't know that that's difficult in terms of what we've seen over the course of this podcast. I think it's just perspective. It's difficult for the studio. Exactly. Not necessarily bad. He's not punching Ed Harris in the face, so you got that. He didn't even want to attend parties after being fired because, quote, being fired off a movie is tantamount to having AIDS at a Hollywood party. Wow. Yikes. It's not Martin, just for the record. No, it's worse. It's, she says. But you can't keep Marty down for long. There was a little movie languishing and development.

and the producers wanted breast for it, and that film was Beverly Hills cop. On why they chose breast for the film, despite the war games rumors, producer Don Simpson said, we always liked Maudy, and if he'd killed a 13-year-old dog, we'd still have hired him. Why is it 13? Well, you know, it's probably time to go anyway. Is that the argument that they're like, if he killed an old dog, fine. Yeah. So this movie also deserves its own episode.

So all you need to know for now is that Sylvester Stallone dropped out at the last minute. They replaced him with Eddie Murphy and essentially rewrote the entire movie on set while shooting it, which is crazy. We will do an episode on Beverly Hills Cop. But most importantly, when it comes out in 1984, it is a slam dunk smash hit. Biggest comedy, I think, ever at that point. Yeah. Passing Ghostbusters that had just set the record for biggest comedy ever.

Ghostwester's held the record for all of, I think, six months, and then Beverly Hills Cop just blew right past it. Also, he gets credit again here for really believing in Eddie Murphy and saying, like, you know, he is the right person for this job. And I think there was a lot of pushback from the studio on that. So he clearly understands actors and understands casting pretty well. His next two films continue the winning streak with Midnight Run in 1988, a critical and commercial success. Chris is giving a thumbs up. Mm-hmm. And sent of a woman in 1992, a big-time critical and commercial success that earned Brest

an Oscar nomination for Best Director and Best Picture and won Al Pacino his only Oscar to date. Brest's next and spoiler alert, second to last film, is Meet Joe Black in 1998. I love Meet Joe Black. It's three hours long. I'm in it for every minute. I love me, Joe Black. I understand all the problems. I understand the criticism. Give me more. I'm in it just for that sequence of Brad Pitt being hit by multiple cars. It's great. Brad Pitt speaking patois with the old woman in the hospital. Brad Pitt sparring with

Anthony Hopkins. Like, I don't know. I really love that movie. I find it very romantic. All right. There you go. So it wasn't necessarily a bomb, but it did receive very mixed reviews. and after marketing almost certainly did not make back its $90 million budget. I believe that it was also, because I've researched it a little bit because I like it so much. I think it was the shoot took forever. Yeah. It kept getting delayed. The trades were picking up that it was getting delayed, that the budget was ballooning,

that the set decoration costs were through the roof. I mean, if you watch it, it's an extravagant production. Well, that all makes sense, too, because like something I think, Brad Pitt said about Martin Brest on the set of this was that he is like meticulous, like, almost to a fault. Like, he wasn't necessarily saying he was bad. He was saying he's like a maestro, that it's like someone directing an orchestra where he's controlling every single individual person on set.

Yeah. But as I said, he'd insisted on an almost three-hour-long runtime for the film. To Chris's point, he fought a lot of battles against the studio, and he'd won those battles. Unfortunately, for Brest, it did not. pay off in the end. So now let's find out how this Academy Award nominated director made what is widely regarded as one of the worst films of all time. Which, by the way, does it, I mean, it's up there. I'm going to say top 25 worst films. No, I don't know. Top 100. Of the last 25 years, sure, absolutely. It's pretty bad. But we're talking about tens of thousands of movies. Okay, but if we're

about like major releases. Still tens of thousands of movies. I'm going top 50 minimum, worst movies of all time. Okay. I would put it outside the top 50 personally. I agree. David, get out of here. I just want you to know, David is such a contrarian that as we're watching this

movie, I like had my hands on my face being like, what am I looking at? And David just be like, this is good. As I was getting texts from both of you explaining your respective positions. and I found myself directly in the middle. At times I agreed with David and at times I've agreed with you, Lizzie. Well, I do agree. It's not the worst movie we've even watched for this podcast. Let's talk about pre-production.

Bress begins writing his next feature after Meet Joe Black. Something less experimental, a return to his redemption of the asshole arc following a down-on-his-luck mobster, Larry Gilly, whose life is turned around by one last job. It sounds like in many ways he was trying to return to his asshole arc, his midnight run type energy. Like, it was a pretty dark movie, but it also was supposed to be funny. You may notice, however, that nowhere in here did I say it was a romantic comedy.

That's because it was not, and arguably still isn't. What did he written? My understanding is that this was a return to screenwriting for him. Yes, aside from his 1972 short Hot Dogs for Gogin and 1977's Hot Tomorrow's, the only film he'd written to this point was 1979's going in style. so this was a return to writing for him after over 20 years. Yeah, I know he didn't write Meet Joe Black or a sense of a woman or Beverly Hills Cop. Well, Beverly Hills Cop is a bit debatable, I think, because of how that happened on set.

But yes. Got it. Brest turns to his longtime producing partner Casey Silver, who had recently been let go from Universal, thanks in part to meet Joe Black and was now going independent. Together, they set the movie up at Revolution Studios founded by a man named Joe Roth. So now it's time to Meet Joe Black. Roth. Roth is an extremely accomplished film producer at this point. He's the former chairman of 20th Century Fox, overseeing mega hits like Last of the Mohicans and Home Alone. He'd been studio

chairman at Disney for films like Armageddon, the Waterboy, The Sixth Sense, and the Insider. And if you want to learn a little bit more about Joe Roth, you can head on over to our episode on The Sixth Sense, where he is one of the major players. Then he goes on to sit on the board for Pixar up until it's sold back to Disney. So that's a pretty interesting. insane resume at that point. Roth decides it's time to start his own studio and in 2000 he kicks off Revolution Studios. So for a little timeline check-in, at this point, we're only about mid-2001 right now, pre-9-11. Gilely is an early and expensive bet for this brand new studio.

So, Chris, what do you think the initial budget of Gile is? $20 million? $54 million. Why? I think it ends up being the casting. I couldn't see anywhere that it was greenlit for a lower amount. I think they were planning this to be a pretty big bet. So that's not Meat Joe Black money, but it is a lot.

I think that's where Meet Joe Black started. That makes sense. There's something else. Joe Roth gives Marty Breast final cut. Remember that. So casting. It sounds like Ben Affleck was pretty much the first choice to play Larry Gile. And to be honest, Chris, to your earlier points, that makes total sense to me.

He's a big dude who can be scary when he needs to, but has an element of sad-sac loser to him, as we all know, that would work well for a part like this. Wow, you really stuck the dagger in quick there on that one. I actually really like Ben Affleck. I think he's a great actor. He's a big guy. He's a sad piece of shit. You know what I mean. There's memes of sad-sack loser Ben Affleck.

No, he is, I think he's a great director. He's a good actor. And he is endlessly relatable largely because of. how expressive he is in his day-to-day life with those moments where he gets captured. I mean... Yeah, come on. The pictures of him holding a dunk in iced coffee

and smoking that cigarette, just like, yeah, it's every Monday morning for all of us. We love you, Ben. Yeah. Because the whole point of this movie is kind of that Larry has not amounted to what he thought he would and, you know, is trying to find some meaning

and some greatness in his life, and as we'll get to in a little bit, is trying to get out of the industry that he's in. And Affleck had kind of had a series of these, like, giant action movies that had or hadn't quite worked out. Like, you know, Armageddon, obviously financially successful. But if you listen to his commentary on that movie, which is hilarious, it doesn't sound like he had a great time. It was a lot of false starts in this part of his career, I think. Right.

And he was a certified movie star at this point, though he was not achieving the same prestige as his Goodwill Hunting writing buddy, Matt Damon, obviously. So the love for Benet. Affleck and Marty Brest went both ways. Affleck was known to say that Midnight Run was one of his favorite movies. It's a great movie. We rewatched it last night for the podcast. I love Charles Groden. He's so good.

It's like peak Charles Grosden and also a great example of De Niro and how funny he can be and how subtle he can be. It's really fun. On set, apparently Brest told Affleck that he wanted him to be his new go-to actor. So they were clearly both gearing up for a long and storied career together, which obviously would never come to fruition. The part of Ricky was harder to nail down, and in fact, Lopez was not the first choice or first hire for it. Chris, can you guess who the original person who was supposed to play Ricky was? Were they not white? They were not white.

Hallibary. Yes. Did you cheat? Did you know that before? Did you guess? I didn't, but I'm guessing she didn't do it because of X-Men. That is correct, but with a little twist, Chris, what major world? event, do we have to thank for Gile and therefore Benefer? 9-11? Yes, that's right. The 9-11 terrorist attacks. This major world event had also impacted the film industry, pushing a bunch of launches and shoots and causing some casting switcheroos and musical chairs.

Barry had to drop out of Gile in order to make up for rescheduled X-Men 2 shoots. Oh. And I don't even know if those were rescheduled because of 9-11. It could have been that something else had the, like, full shoot-pushed, pushed is just everything was like switching around for these couple of months immediately following 9-11. Because remember, we're literally in like September, October of 2001 right now. Right. I wonder if with X2 it was the opening scene in the White House where if they had something different planned. You know what I'm saying? And like they had to tweak it because of the terrorist

attack. Because that, now that I think about it, that movie basically opens with a terrorist attack in the White House. You're right. So we'll have to cover that film at some. point. I bet you there's a lot of stuff that had to be reshot because of things that were reminiscent or shots that included the Twin Towers. Anyway, that's an interesting thing we should look into at some point. So Lopez initially would have been unavailable during the Gilles shoot because they actually had approached her and kind of talked to her about it earlier on. But now suddenly it was freed up due to another project moving back to June also because of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Got it.

So she ends up taking the part, and she gets a $12 million payday. Holy! Well, with Ben Affleck coming in at about 12.5. So that's half the budget going to your stars. I mean, yeah, wow. That is a lot of cheddar. It's a lot of money for those two. Yeah.

Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Lainey Kazan take on supporting roles. Also, Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, there's no way they were cheap by this point. The only way I could think is like maybe Pacino did it as a favor because he won his Oscar with Breast earlier. But I also know Pacino probably wanted that money too. Also, they both were in it more, which we'll discover in a minute. Yeah. So let's talk about Justin Bartha, who got his debut breakout role as Brian, thanks to an open casting call. Wow.

But someone else who auditioned for this part, my favorite and forever TV crush, Adam Brody. And interestingly, though Adam had the chance to dunk on Gile like everyone else when he spoke about this, he didn't. Here's what Adam had to say about it. Quote, I remember liking the script. I remember in the end, Gile died in a way that still stays with me. It's like he's sitting on a beach. He's bleeding out, and the sand just comes up and buries him. It's a nice image, and they didn't use that in the film at all.

Adam is correct. In the original script, Larry Gile dies at the end, but he's not. Here's the thing. That's not just what was in the original script. That is the movie they shot. And please remember, Chris's really pretty good recap of Gile. He does not die in the movie that appears on screen. Oh, shit. We'll put a pin in that, and we'll come back to it in a little bit. So shooting kicks off on December 10, 2001. Two weeks before Christmas, they would, you know, it's so interesting, you would have, you would start up and then shut down immediately, you know, I mean, and then come right back. I think I didn't understand how disruptive. 9-11 was because we were 12.

Right, of course, yeah. But like, it really shut everything down. And my guess is they were like, we need to get this moving. So to your point, that is a weird time to start filming something. Principal photography took place across over 20 Los Angeles and Long Beach locations and at the Culver Studios, which is where I work. It's a very beautiful studio. Production by all accounts actually went really smoothly. The actors genuinely enjoyed working with both Marty Brest and each other. Jennifer Lopez was thrilled at the chance to work opposite Al Pacino, basically saying even a rehearsal with him was a masterclass, and clearly enjoyed her time with Christopher Walken, too,

saying, quote, I think part of his magic is that even he doesn't know what he's going to do next. You can feel it. Yeah. Oh, my God. Is Marie Callender's speech in this? Yeah. Let me go down and get a piece of post. pie.

You're like, dunk it on my head. Let the ice cream fall down. You're like, what the hell are you talking about? That is the scene with the most tension in the whole movie because he is a firecracker. Yeah. I loved it. I couldn't tell if he was going to murder someone or just walk out. And it's great.

Could have done with two hours of that. Ben and Jennifer also spoke very highly of Marty's nurturing and deeply kind directorial style. And that's consistent across almost every actor that he's worked with as far as I could tell. both in this movie and previous films. Also, almost every person brought up how much they loved the script. According to Affleck, it was, quote, strange, unusual, and heartbreaking.

But even he was surprised by how funny it was as they were filming it. Now, Gilely may have become a strange, unusual, heartbreaking, funny, and still problematic film if it weren't for one little problem. Chris, what's that problem? The tabloids.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez fall in love. Oh, no! And not for the last time. I feel so bad for them. So let's talk about the advent of Benefer. Pretty much everyone agrees that once these two got on screen together, there was immediate chemistry.

The romance was fast and furious, and I went back and looked at a bunch of on-set pictures that they released. There is zero question that they are involved with each other. I'm sure their timeline. would say something else, but it's very clear. Ben Affleck must be... I mean, he's obviously very handsome. Oh, yeah.

I think he's very attractive. But he must be so charming, and I'm sure he is, because he is playing such a buffoon in the movie. Yes. And yet still, she falls in love with him on set. I mean... Yeah.

You got to give him credit. You got to give him credit. The guy seems like a smooth operator. You know, Chris, he must have been a very smooth operator because Jennifer had just gotten married to her second husband, Chris Judd, in September of 2001. I think we can all blame that on 9-11. Sure.

This whole episode, let's blame it on 9-11. I just want to be clear, this is three months later. Yeah. Oopsies. It was a brief honeymoon. Who cares? They're in love. To be fair, it doesn't really seem like an affair was necessarily happening because it

happened so fast. Maybe something was going on, but like all I'll say is it reads more like the chemistry was instant. They got together. And I think they were together physically pretty quickly. So I don't think she was like engaging in a months long affair, you know, without having separated from her husband in some way prior to that. I'm giving her credit, Jennifer. Brad and Angelina were like, hold our beers. They were words, I think.

But, you know, I don't know. So in March of 2002, principal photography on Gilly wraps. and Ben Affleck does something interesting. Jennifer Lopez was just named Show West's female star of the year, so Ben Affleck takes out a full-page ad in the Hollywood trades. It reads partially, quote, you have shown kindness, dedication, diligence, humility, graciousness of spirit, beauty and courage, great empathy,

astonishing talent, real poise, and true grace. It has been nothing but an honor and a pleasure. to work with you. I only wish I were lucky enough to be in all your movies. Signed with love, respect, and gratitude. Ben Affleck. Can you imagine her husband reading this? It's just a Boston guy shooting his shot on the Jumbotron. Yeah, that's... It's a move. It's definitely raised a few eyebrows, but Ben claims it was just to refute the rumor that she'd been difficult to work with. Still, people are curious, and they are certainly at this point on the scent. By June of 2002, Jennifer has officially filed for divorce from Chris Judd and gone public with Ben Affleck.

Well, yeah, because she turned him and she's like, why don't you ever do this for me? He's like, I'm not a millionaire. I'm married you. You won't let me use the credit card. Oh, no. So the media frenzy is immediately insane, and it is only about to get much, much worse. Now, as I said at the beginning of this episode, this is a story of what went wrong in post-production, which is what we're about to head into. So before we get into all of that, let's talk in a little bit more detail about the movie they actually shot.

And listeners, please remember to keep Chris's brief and terrible Gile recap in your heads as you hear this. Actually, a pretty good. But a terrible movie. I was going to say it went from like pretty good to all of a sudden it's bad. No, I meant Gili's bad. Your recap was great. Okay, got it.

Your recap was great. Thank you. So film critic Michael Degino attended an early, I think very early, test screening of Martin Brest's cut of the film. Here are a few key points about the film that will very quickly change. The first one, Larry Gilewantz, out of his life of crime from pretty much the beginning of the movie. Chris, you mentioned Justin Bartha's character at the end wanting to get to Baywatch. Well, Gisle kind of has the same thing. He refers over and over again from the beginning.

to a clean place, essentially a utopia where he's free. Also, Christopher Walken had a much bigger role where he was revealed to have been a dirty cop working with Al Pacino's character all along. Al Pacino also had a much more substantial role. Shealy kills Christopher Walken in a shootout. Christopher Walken shoots Gili, who continues to bleed out for like a really long time. There was a decent amount of movie left to go after the Baywatch scene at the end. Ricky never comes back. She takes Gilles' car and she leaves. So I think that shot that you see of her saying, okay, goodbye, was in the original shoot. Jolie dies, per Adam Brody's quote. And before we get to the big one, I just want to be super clear again, none of this is in the theatrical version.

So here it is. Ricky, Jennifer Lopez's character, is not a hardened contract criminal at all. If you remember Chris mentioned a girlfriend who randomly slits her wrists and then never returns again, that is the actual career criminal. And Ricky is just posing as her ex-girlfriend in an attempt to understand her better or experience a piece of her tumultuous life. And about halfway through the movie, when it becomes clear that she's in over her head, she reveals all of this and tries to get Gile to bail with her. So this means, to be super clear, that poor Jennifer,

Lopez filmed the entire movie playing an entirely different character than what they would chop together in the edit. So, Chris, what does this clarify for you in terms of her character and performance? Everything. If you are interested, dear listener, and I did this a long time ago, you can find the script online. It exists. It's been photocopied and uploaded. It's on the internet archive. And what you realize is in a big way, they're both at the end of the day play acting at their roles. Yes. Her much more so than him, but he is play acting at being the alpha,

and she is play acting at being a hardened criminal. And they both have to come to reveal their true selves to one another, him as the cow, as the bottom, so to speak. And then her, obviously, as I'm just a civilian. Right. And the change makes her performance seem cartoonish, because it is cartoonish because she's faking it. She's faking it.

And I think she's doing a really good job of it. She is doing a good job. It really does her an enormous disservice to have made this edit change. It also, look, the sex scene probably would have been problematic no matter what. But you can understand potentially if it's a game that she's playing at that she goes through with it because she thinks maybe this is what I'm supposed to do as like a spy, so to speak, sleep with this guy. And then like the whole turkey time got that all of a sudden starts making more sense. Also, her girlfriend doesn't just seem like an insane person that shows up in the middle of the

movie. The girlfriend's like, you're going to get it. We're dead. You've screwed this job up. I'm going to kill myself because I'm going to get whacked at this point. You know, it's not like some emotional, oh my God, women are, you know, over-emotional sort of thing. It's like the girlfriend actually understands the stakes of the movie. And then because of this, like the movie has no stakes. And it really just, I'm not saying it necessarily would have worked we could never know, but there's at least a method to the madness in the original. I mean, I think the big, big thing that this did, to your point, was it does provide some clarity and some motivation to the sexual relationship with Gile.

It's an experimentation, or it's her trying to, again, kind of, like, what would her girlfriend do? What, like, is this what she would do in that moment? If she's trying to open herself up to new experiences, does that explain why she's more willing to do it? And to your point about, you know, Ben Affleck's character coming to terms of the fact that he is not the alpha, it also makes his interest in her make more sense over the course of the movie. It's just like, it's kind of this linchpin for the whole thing, and they just completely take it out. And then you add insult to injury where she, it's not just that she has a sexual,

relationship with him, it makes it seem as if there's been some sort of conversion therapy because she leaves with him in the car at the end of the movie, which doesn't happen. She chooses freedom, and he chooses self-sacrifice. You've actually neutered both of their arcs entirely. 100%. Now, according to the critic who saw Breast's original cut, he said, quote, undoubtedly, it was pretentious, perhaps overly and delusionally so, given how jokey the film is for much of its running time, but it did achieve a certain level of poignance, as in the final stretch, this amiable makeshift family of misfits is torn apart, which is a much more honest and convincing conclusion than the poorly tacked-on sunniness at the release version's anticlimactic coda, end quote. However,

this early test screening that he attended proves to be the nail in Martin Breast's coffin, because audiences are not blown away by the film. I mean, you can hear it in his review there. It's not bad, but they're not responding super positively to it. And now Joe Roth is starting to panic. So remember that this movie's budget was over $50 million, half of which had gone to its two lead stars. And your test screenings are lackluster at best. I saw some reports saying that Gile was originally scheduled

to be released in the fall of 2002, which would make sense. So I'm guessing they held the early test screening sometime around late spring and early summer. Now, Joe is seeing the audience response from test screenings and he's freaking out. It's not working the way that it should for what it cost. But he's gotten ace up his sleeve.

What better way to make up for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez's astronomical fees than to make Gilei all about Benefer. Because remember, if this test screening is happening when I think it is, they have literally just gone public in June of 2002. So Roth has an idea to recut and reshape the film into David, drumroll, please. A rom-com. Oh, God. Now remember, Chris, this is the golden age of the rom-com.

They were making absolute bank, including, by the way, the wedding planner, which came out in January of 2001, starring Gilles' very own Jennifer Lopez. So she is a proven rom-com star. And I think Maid Manhattan was going to come out right around this time, too. It comes out in December of 2002, and that one makes a shit ton of money. Yeah, I remember. So Roth takes his idea to Martin Brest, who remember has final cut, and Brest basically says, fuck no, and they proceed to engage in an eight-month stalemate.

Oh, no. And that just means the movie's just sitting. It's just sitting there. And that means like your crew is gone, your locations could change, your actors, your actors are moving on to other projects, they're changing their hair, they're getting a tan, like every little thing, every day you delay is money and time. time and interest. Oh, that's so brutal. Martin Breast held his ground for eight months. That is pretty impressive. Good for him. Also, to your point, good for the hair and makeup artist because I did not notice noticeable pickups in this, which I have to imagine that was difficult because you know Jennifer

Lopez's hair was changing. Meanwhile, throughout this time, Benefer is continuing to dominate headlines. They're doing another movie together. This I do not understand. By fall of 2002, they are filming Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl together. That's right. I forgot about Jersey Girl. When you said they're doing another movie, I was like, what movie were they doing? Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, I think Kevin Smith would probably like that you continue to forget about Jersey Girl. Oh. By the way, according to Kevin Smith, we may have him to thank for the iconic moniker that follows the couple to this day because he claims to have come up with Benefer

on the set of Jersey Girl and casually mentioned it in a New York Times interview. This is semi-disputed, by the way. Someone accused him of revisionist history, but I'm going to give it to Kiv. I'm surprised he wants to own it. Got to love him. By September of 2002, the tides are starting to turn on Benefer.

It's at this point that they infamously star in J-Lo's Jenny from the Block video. And Chris, have you revisited this video? No, I remember it was like them and how hard it is to be them. Isn't it, like, you know? Okay, we're just going to watch it. I wasn't going to do this, but honestly, I think it's an important part of history. So here we go. Let's watch it.

Listeners, we'll be right back. Listeners, you should watch it too. For legal reasons, pause the podcast and go watch the Jenny from the Block video and come right back. So we just went back and watched Jenny from the Block. And Chris, what is your main takeaway about the theme of this video? Paparazzi? Yeah, paparazzi twisting things about their relationship. So it also obviously does feature Ben Affle like biting her ass in the front of a yacht.

And again, it's pretty good. But public perception at the time was basically, how dare you complain like this, you're rich and hot. So this video is kind of like the zenith. And at this point, there is a pretty major turning point. Of this video, Affleck later said, if I have a regret, it was doing the music video. Yeah.

But that happened years ago and I've moved on. Now, by November of 2002, the big news has hit. Jennifer reveals an exclusive interview with Diane. Ann Sawyer that they are engaged. And Chris, I don't know if you remember this ring, but it is the most hideous. No, I don't. It's the most hideous baby pink 2000s, gigantic. It looks like he got it at Clairs, but I know it costs so much money. It's like a 6.6-carat-something ring, and it is absolutely fugly. But wait, what? It's bad. Tell us how you really feel. I don't know. All right.

I'm sorry. I'm mad at the ring. There's also a rumor somewhere in here that he bought her a $100,000 jewel-encrusted toilet seat. Sounds uncomfortable. It does. Yeah, what part of it is jewel-encrusted? Maybe it's the talk. He's like, it'll feel like I'm biting your ass at all times.

But wait, you might be wondering, isn't she still legally married to Chris Judd? Yes, they will get divorced later. Eventually, Roth figures he can't force Martin Breast to change the cut, but he can make them do five weeks of reshoots, ballooning the budget up to a horrifying $75 million. Now, you may see in some places that Revolution still reported this as $54 million, but there were documents dug up later, specifically by the rap that pretty much showed that that was a little bit of

napkin math happening on the studio's part, and it really did get up above $70 million. So even though he wasn't forcing the cut yet, he was... He was forcing reshoots. Oh, interesting. Yeah. He was like, somebody's going to direct him, you know, Marty, if you don't do it. Exactly.

So. Exactly. Got it. Weird. And what we know about Martin Breast is that he feels that he owes a lot to the films that he's making. So he doesn't give up. Of course. He essentially just wears Martin Breast down.

And by the way, Ben Affleck said when they were going back to do the five weeks of reshoes, he was like, we knew this was not a good idea, that this was not working. But, you know, contractually, they had to go back and they did it. Yeah, I mean, if you've been paid $12.5 million, you kind of have to show up. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, and I think also they're probably, I don't know this. I'm just guessing, but, like, they're dealing with all of this media attention. It's starting to kind of sour and take a turn.

You know you have this movie coming out together. You probably want to do everything you can to, like, get it to a slightly workable place. Well, also, you know, if the options are the studio, let's say, theoretically, everyone dug in their heels. And they said, we're not doing anything. The studio could just dump it, not promote it at all. You know what I mean? And that could be horrible for their careers.

And so it makes sense to tow the line at a certain point, just to make sure that, you know, you continue to have... That something comes out. Yeah. Exactly. Rest told Variety, quote, In the end, I was left with two choices, quit or be complicit in the mangling of the movie. So, Chris, that's pretty much exactly what you. said. To my eternal regret, I didn't quit, so I bear responsibility for a ghastly cadaver of a movie.

You don't, Marty. You really don't. This is not your fault. Having given up the fight, Breast basically relinquishes control of the cut at this point and admittedly just kind of has an out-of-body experience for the rest of post-production. He said, quote, 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. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I can't. If you don't know what you're making and you don't have that North Star, it's like losing your heartbeat. There's nothing to work off of. So, Gile limps over the finish line and is set to release on August 1st.

2003. Now, listeners, Chris and I are again going to go watch the original trailer, and we will be right back. So what movie do you think you're going to if you watch that trailer? Like a throwback screwball romantic comedy. Have you ever seen Nicholas Kay's just the Wicker Man recut as a comedy trailer? It reminds me of that. They recut the Wicterman as, and they're like, blah, blah, blah, was returning to the family island. And he's like the bees, the bees. In case, they just feels like... Yes, you're right.

You can cut a trailer to look like anything, really. So it reminded me of that. Yeah, you would have some whiplash, I think, going into this. Especially considering there's zero mention of the fact that Ricky is a lesbian. They completely bury that. So imagine audiences surprise when they step into theaters and see Gile. Just imagine certain family members, what did she say? She's a lesbian?

The Puerto Rican? What? Oh yeah, double whammy. They're not going to be happy about that. Yeah. So to give you an idea of the public reception, let's take a look at a bit from Late Night with Conan O'Brien on August 6th of 2003. Folks, Gilely is so bad that the movie-going public has demanded an apology from Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. That's true.

Now, I thought they could issue their apologies right here on my late-night show, but for some reason, they weren't interested. So here to apologize on their behalf are our script intern, Elon, who kind of look at looks like Ben Affleck and our resident Jay-Lo, cleaning lady, Judy Lowenstein. Yeah. Sorry. Well, also a low moment for Conan. Who'd have thought?

Also, it's just not very funny, more than anything else. Not funny at all. Yeah. He and everyone else had been ragging on the couple for weeks, and this kind of outwardly racist joke at Jennifer's expense was the norm at this point. That is shockingly bad. Today it is. I don't think it would have been shocking in 03.

I can't believe that. Whatever. I would hope that people back then would have even been like, that's ridiculous, but apparently no one cared. Of this time in her life, Jennifer said, quote, it was brutal. It's one of those things that you bury very deeply so you can move on and get about your business. It's funny because Ben and I were together and we were so in love. It was one of the happiest times of my life, but also there was this other thing happening where we were being criticized and it really destroyed our relationship from the inside out because we were just too young to understand at that time. what were really the most important things in life. Jolie opened wide in over 2,000 theaters, but by the second weekend, it had been dropped by 81.9% of them. By its third weekend, 97%. And yes, that broke records for the fastest a movie has ever been dropped.

So this is from a Reddit thread, so I don't know if it's 100% true, but I stumbled across it actually years, ago trying to learn about box office tracking and how it's done. Apparently, long story short, Sony, because it was the parent company behind Revolution or involved financially, was effectively having theaters offering, quote, double features where within the same theater, they would screen two different movies. On the same day. And so if they sold one, they would sell one ticket to the other movie, the presumably more popular movie, and then Gile would also run. But because it ran in the

same theater that day, they were trying to count the money from the other film towards Gile as well, effectively double-dipping it just to try to make the numbers not look quite so bad. Yeah, but they were actually so bad that this person said that this is what helped them discover bugs in the software that they had developed for when movies were just completely not selling any tickets. That's how bad this was. Yeah. It only grossed $7.2 million on a $75 million budget, not including marketing. So Jersey Girl attempts to save itself by burying J-Lo in the trailer completely, only to suffer a similar, although not as brutal fate. By 2006, Roth's Revolution Studios basically unravels after a string of stinkers, including mostly Gile. All told, the deal with Roth ends up costing Sony, which had

partially funded the studio and distributed some of its films, hundreds of millions of dollars. He also went through a divorce and generally had a really bad time, but don't worry, he did just fine for himself in the long run. Just one month after Gilely's release and three days before their wedding, Ben and Jen called it off, famously citing excessive media attention. They would officially break things off a few months later in early 2004. Of the breakup, Jennifer would later say, I didn't just feel like I lost the love of my life. I felt like I lost the best friend that I ever had. Reflecting back on Gile a few years ago, in press for the tender bar, Ben said, quote,

if the reaction to Giley 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. So in those ways, it's a gift. And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life. Now, as we know, Benifer got their happy ending in the long run, reuniting and finally getting married almost 20 years after their first go-round. And yes, I am saying happy ending,

because right now history is repeating itself. Every day, there is a new gossip headline that these two are fighting, living separately, hating each other, unable to make it work. And to that I say, please leave them alone. Please do not do to them what we did back in 2003, because I genuinely believe that these two people really love each other. And the thing that keeps getting in the way is us. So butt out. Like I'm seeing things on Instagram where it's like, you know, oh, he's slamming a car door behind her and like looking angrily into the camera and the insinuation is like what a bitch she is. And you know, he can't even stand to be with her. And it's like, we don't know that. We don't know any of what's going on. We know you're making their lives miserable. That part's

clear. It is crazy how much this cycle is repeating itself right now. I agree. And I think if your instinct when you watch anybody's lives be picked apart is to say that it's simply the price of your success or fame, I would just encourage you to remember that that's not actually the stipulation of anything that anyone ever signs or agrees to when they become famous. And criticism and scrutiny are two things that are difficult to deal with on a small scale. I think everybody has experienced that in any job or with social media. Imagine magnifying it 100,000, 10,000 fold. You know, I can't imagine.

We feel it a hair on our podcast sometimes with, you know, reactions will get to certain things or folks not liking certain positions we take, et cetera. You know, when I keep slamming the corridor in Lizzie's face and people just don't understand. It's an inside joke. But, you know, it puts a lot of stress on people, the idea that the community is watching you, you know, every move and whatnot. Yes, and I also think in particular that fame affects Ben Affleck in a very negative way.

It's something that he's talked about. publicly, you know, he has had struggles that he has made known. I think she is maybe a little bit more comfortable with it. Maybe not. I mean, they came from very similar backgrounds. Like, they really, they have a lot in common when you look back at sort of how they grew up and how they rose to superstardom. But don't take it from me, listen to Ben Affleck himself on the prospect of fame. Quote, I can't think of a worse outcome. Because I've never found any virtue in fame at all. I've probably gotten out of a couple traffic tickets.

I've gotten reservations at restaurants. But the whole point was to be able to do this job. That was it. Otherwise, what is it worth? It's corrosive. To your point, they don't owe us anything. That's what the movies are for. Yes.

It's honestly, like, when I was getting into this, it really was upsetting me that we were watching the same thing happen again. Because I, like, going back, reading what they said to each other, like, the way that they interacted, the way that they spoke about that time, how they spoke about each other when they got back together. Like, I think these two people really, really love each other, and we are fucking it up again.

And I can't believe that. So let's end where we started with Martin Brest. To date, Martin has not made another film since Gile. The famously elusive Brest explained this last year to variety, saying, quote, up until then, I enjoyed the ability to never have to do anything I didn't want to do. I remember on Beverly Hills cop I had to do a freeze frame at the end in exchange for keeping in a scene that the studio wanted me to take out. And I thought that was an insane compromise.

But I can't think of another example in my entire career of having to do anything I didn't want to do. So once this happened, I thought, I'll never be invited back. Second, I would never be able to operate with the kind of control that a director I feel needs and deserves. So that felt like a clear signal. It was time for me to back away. I think a lot of people assumed myself. included that this was director jail and not... It was self-imposed director jail to a certain degree. Yeah, exactly. Or retirement, effectively.

Which I think is sad. I mean, listen, he's not wrong. I'm sure that he would have lost some of the creative control that he'd had in the past, but I'm not convinced that he couldn't come back and make an amazing movie. And there are occasional rumors that he'll make a return. He said he's worked on scripts, but he always kind of slaps his own hand away saying, don't put yourself out there. And I hate that. I can... Again, from my very limited experience, directing a movie is so hard. And I've never done it at the scale that he has. No, and imagine going through that fight and giving up and then having what was just excoriated.

Like, this is... Well, that's what I mean. The movie literally became synonymous with trash. Yes. Like, Gile was the one word, eponymous title of The Worst Most Most Most Merex. movie ever. I mean, it took it from Ishtar. And it had the, it was, I believe it's the same number of letters and it's equally unclear what it is. You know what I mean? It, it, it, it, it unfortunately, it was a bit of a self-inflicted wound in that sense that, you know, the title played into the

bad reviews. Interestingly, I think the title briefly changed to tough love and then shifted back to Jolie at some point. But yeah, it's not a great title. Yeah. Anywho, I, all I'll say is it's, it requires You really put yourself into, I think most directors would agree, and just artists or performers or creative people in general, you put yourself into what you make, hoping it's well received. And then, of course, knowing it probably won't be universally well received, and you hope that there's enough people that like it that you can find a community or an audience and to then be rejected so soundly, so unanimously to be the butt of every joke on every talk show. Horrible.

And I think that people forget that this was the person who had drawn. directed some really beloved movies. Yes. Like, had recently directed Academy Award nominated movies. Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of the Academy Awards, when Ben Affleck accepted the Oscar for Best Picture for Argo, one name stood out in a list of thank yous, and that was Marty Breast.

His actors have universally loved him, and I believe Ben, when he said he learned more from him about directing than anyone else. So, Marty, I have to say, from the bottom of my heart, please put yourself out there again. For all the crap it gets, Gile really should not be a career-ender. I really strongly feel that way. So, Chris, what went right? So I had a couple that I was thinking about giving it to. I will say, because we can only say the finished product, not the original script.

Yes. So I think Jennifer Lopez proved, I'm going to kind of say, based on what I know the movie was supposed to be, that she can continue to do really interesting things as an actor. And I'm thinking about like out of sight from a few years before this, which is awesome. She's great in Selena. She's really good. She's great in Selena. But I was thinking like out of sight, she goes kind of toe to toe with George Clooney in that movie.

And it's sexy and it's fun and it's thrilling. So I think she's gotten some flack for a lot of the rom-com fair and maybe some of it's deserved because it seems like it's pretty safe sometimes. But I think this movie is maybe even a reason why she took a step away from riskier material like this. So it cuts both ways. Yeah. Would you take risks if you were received like this? No.

I barely take risks to begin with. So why would I do that? So I'll say her, and I just want to reiterate. Well, can I say two other things really quickly? Sure. I want to reiterate, none of us, with some exceptions, should be remembered solely for the worst thing we ever did or ever made. Unless you're Hitler, yeah. Well, that's one of the exceptions.

Let's not celebrate the painter. So in this instance, I would petition our audience. If you've not seen Martin Bress' earlier films, like, go watch Midnight Run. It's a blast. Sentive a woman's great. Beverly Hill Cops, a lot of fun. I mean, Mito Black for me. Best three hours you're going to spend this weekend doing anything.

But I think it's better to. celebrate the makes, then laugh at the misses. And hopefully that's what we do on this podcast. Last thing, the movie was always going to suffer from Brian's character. Yeah, you did not need to do that. It was never going to work. Like, it's not Justin Barthas, it's everybody's fault in the sense that, like, it was not going to work. And it's clear this was a flaw.

So I stand by Rain Man. I like that movie. I like Dustin Hoffman's performance in it. And I know for a fact they did an incredible amount of research, and they tried. tried to be as sensitive as possible. Yeah, I don't think they did that here. Exactly. They changed the end of Rain Man

because it was going to be a happy ending where he changed and he went and he lived with his brother. Well, Chris, save it for the episode. Anyway, so long story short, we're not saying the movie would have worked. You know, holy is my point. For me, what went right? Guys, I'm going out on a limb here.

I'm going to say, Benefer. Oh, the two of them. The two of them. They met the love of their life on this movie. That is something. Sure, we all as a culture absolutely destroyed it for them and we're doing it again, but that's something to say for this movie, at least something that was really important and impactful for both of them came out of it. And it's a relationship that is with them for their entire lives. So I will say, Ben Affir. I'm rooting for you guys. Pull through this time, please.

I'll also say Ben Affleck, the director. Just because it sounds like we kind of got that. Because he's a great director. And I've really loved a lot of. as movies. So also Ben Affleck, the director. Definitely. Lizzie, like you said, it's not Ishtar in the sense that I think Ishtar is actually pretty solid, but it is not the movie that it has been labeled as, I would argue. No. If you guys want to watch it, it's streaming on Criterion. And somebody made a snarky comment about that, but Criterion specifically selects movies of cultural impact. And this movie certainly is one. Yeah. So it totally makes sense.

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Very hot. My sister texted me and she's like, Kianu was such a babe. Still is. I said Patrick Swayze too. Yes. And she goes, no, his head was too big. Stop. I'm going to be keeping an eye out for that.

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What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman. Additional research for this episode provided by Sarah Baum.