No such thing as bad publicity? Consider 'Gigli'
The paparazzi gantlet for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez at Sunday's "Gigli" premiere was as hungry as it was long. But when the film's stars climbed out of their Rolls-Royce Phantom, Affleck and Lopez first ignored the many cameras, walking across the street to greet scores of frenzied fans and sign dozens of autographs. It was a rare -- and fleeting -- moment of adoration for a movie that has suffered some of the most negative attention since Madonna's disastrous "Swept Away."
Opening Friday, "Gigli" provides a textbook tale of how circumstances beyond a studio's and a filmmaker's control can undermine a movie at every turn. Revolution Studios and Sony Pictures, which respectively made and are releasing "Gigli," are now nervously awaiting the film's reviews, fearful critics will do battle to be the meanest. If the film's history can be trusted, their fears are understandable: Plenty of movies struggle and often fail, but few do so publicly and with so much gang tackling.
From "Gigli's" first test screenings, where writer-director Martin Brest clashed with Revolution studio chief Joe Roth over the film's final act and pace, to the film's poster, which allegedly featured a retouched version of Lopez's famous derriere (which the studio denies), nearly every step of the film's path to the screen has been chronicled by the Internet, the tabloids and, eventually, the mainstream media.
Taken together, "Gigli" has single-handedly disproved the maxim that there's no such thing as bad publicity.
A number of people involved in "Gigli's" production talked about marketing the film on condition they not be identified by name. They told a story of swimming constantly against a tide of bad press and an off-screen romance that ultimately proved to be the film's greatest marketing liability.
Despite the bad early buzz, Affleck and Lopez both went to bat for the film, playing off their celebrity sizzle. "They were out there," Revolution partner Tom Sherak says of the two actors. "They cared. They were involved. They were both busy making other movies, and they still did everything and anything we asked them to do."
Neither a romantic comedy nor a standard drama, the $54-million film stars Affleck as a Los Angeles thug named Larry Gigli (it rhymes with "really"), ordered by his gangster boss to kidnap the disabled son of a federal prosecutor. Soon after Gigli abducts the young man, a second mobster named Ricki (Lopez) arrives at Gigli's apartment to make sure everything's under control. Gigli quickly falls for Ricki, who lets him know she's gay. But will they still fall in love?
