What happened to Martin Brest?
The once lauded director has long been locked out of Hollywood. His fascinating and under-appreciated filmography speaks to an originality squeezed from the mainstream today.
His movies have made over $700 million dollars. An illustrious role-call of legendary actors, among them Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt, George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg (yes the Lee Strasberg) have starred in his films. His three picture run of Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run and Scent of a Women stands as some of the best - if not iconic - examples of mainstream Hollywood from the mid-80s through early 90s. A critical and commercial hot-streak representing an effortless aptitude for smart and engrossing cinema. Stories with resonant universal appeal and artistic merit that more than returned on their investment. The kind of eclectic, ostensibly commercial, quality mainstream Hollywood picture-making you see far less of these days.
But then Gigli happened. A spectacular failure that still stands, twenty years later, as his directorial swansong, infamous for its critical panning and catastrophic box-office. A $7 million gross against a $75 million budget made it one of the biggest flops of all time, effectively ending the career of the one-time Hollywood A-list director (although it did introduce Ben to Jennifer and time has brought that relationship full circle).
Martin Brest is now something of a recluse. A 2021 Q&A with Paul Thomas Anderson - an avowed fan apparently - is one of the only conversations to be found on record in the twenty years since the Gigi debacle. His disappearance is remarkable for precisely that – a lack of remark. Considering that Brest was directing Hollywood icons George Burns, Art Carney and Lee Strasberg at the age of 28; scaling new levels of box-office success with era-defining action comedy at 33; pushing Robert De Niro into new territory as a comedic actor; and shepherding Al Pacino to his overdue Oscar all by the time he was 40, you imagine more people would notice his absence.
His movies have aged well. Scent Of A Woman remains a great coming-of-age movie despite Pacino’s ostentatious bellowing. Midnight Run has become a revered classic with a mountain of retrospective praise raising its stature. Even the misfires of Meet Joe Black (much maligned on release but enjoying a gentle revaluation thanks to time and memes) and career-finishing Gigli don’t seem to hit as bad anymore.
He was a hotly tipped young director. His debut studio picture, the 1979 caper, Going In Style, just happened to star three legends of screen, George Burns, Lee Strasberg and Art Carney and started the wear-weird-masks-when-bank-robbing trend so beloved of many crime movies that came after. By his second movie some of the seeds of his soon to emerge “difficult reputation” were being planted. Brest was attached to WarGames, the 1983 science-fiction thriller starring Mathew Broderick and loads of early-days wiz-kid computer themed “hackery”. He was fired after less than two weeks. Brest has said being kicked from WarGames almost ruined his career but, thanks to Jerry Brukheimar’s insistence, he bounced back to direct Eddie Murphy and Beverly Hill Cop the following year. His flair and fluidity - encouraging Murphy to improvise widely - amid the production’s instability and lack of a solid script must be seen as a fundamental part of the film’s massive success.
From outcast to top director status within the space of a year. It was a whiplash turnaround. However it was four years before he returned with the superb buddy-cop action comedy Midnight Run. By the time it hit screens in 1988, Brest’s reputation for playing it hard and demanding on-set (and sometimes off) had been well and truly established. It was as if actually being fired from a project - WarGames - had emboldened his vision and how he must achieve it. He had already quit Rain Man (after initially developing the project) over creative differences with Dustin Hoffman before Midnight Run. Then Brest insisted Charles Grodin was cast instead of the studio’s first-choice, Robin Williams. According to those who’ve worked with him he exhibits an exhausting attention to detail and relentless working drive when shooting. Five weeks into Midnight Run’s shoot his camera crew, assistant director and several other production staff quit.
In later years, on Meet Joe Black, Anthony Hopkins pushed back against demands for him to do multiple takes of faking a heart attack. He went through four screenwriters and an eye-watering $90 million budget for the romantic fantasy drama which contains little in the way of special effects (Spielberg made Jurassic Park for $63 million by comparison). By the time Gigli bombed in spectacular fashion in 2003 it might have been the moment studio executives were waiting for. The last straw for their patience, indulgence and stretched pocketbooks and an opportunity to ostracise a director who, in their eyes, was not worth the trouble anymore.
The man is still only 71 years of age, relatively young by directorial standards. The statute of limitations to any commercial or reputational misgivings would probably apply were he to attempt a comeback (this is the same industry that keeps giving David O Russell work after all). The question of whether there is a studio willing to take the chance on him seems less important than whether he wants to return or even has anything to say. After such a prolonged absence one wonders if, at this point, it is self-imposed exile. Still, it would be an unprecedented and fascinating return.