For someone who was the youngest person ever to win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, at the baby age of 25, Ben Affleck sure has an interesting way of phrasing things. In an interview conducted by his bestie, Matt Damon, for Entertainment Weekly, Affleck addresses his famous 2003 flop Gigli. He acknowledges that it “didn’t work,” “doesn’t work,” and is full of “things that seemed they could work at the time and don’t in retrospect.” Really, it’s “a sort of horse’s head in a cow’s body.” Not on a cow’s body, inside of it.
“There are things where my daughter will be like, ‘This is ableist and disgusting,’ and okay. The way we see stuff has changed a little bit, or a lot in some cases,” he says, echoing the time Damon’s daughter taught him that homophobic slurs are a bad thing. But Affleck is also grateful to Gigli, crediting it with his directing career and his relationship with Jennifer Lopez. He figures, “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.” And yes, he “did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life.” So Ar-go say thank you to Marty Brest for making Bennifer happen.
