Ben Affleck has had several failures throughout his career -especially painful for the writer of this was ‘The last duel’-, but none as big as ‘A dangerous relationship’, the film in which he starred with Jennifer Lopez. The actor himself acknowledges that she is a disaster, describing her as “it’s a kind of horse’s head on a cow’s body“, but highlights that it also gave him two of the greatest joys of his life.
For now, Affleck states that “If the reaction to ‘A Dangerous Relationship’ hadn’t happened, I probably wouldn’t have ultimately decided: I really have no choice but to direct movies.“, for him his great passion. Not by chance, only four years have passed between the premieres of ‘A Dangerous Relationship’ and ‘Goodbye, Little Girl, Goodbye’, her first behind-the-scenes film.
In addition, the protagonist of ‘Deep waters’ comments that “In that sense, it was a gift. And I also met Jennifer Lopez, with whom I have had a relationship that has been very significant in my life.“. Let’s remember that Affleck and Lopez were a couple for a while back then, resuming the relationship several years later, to the point that they were recently married.
Why he wanted to do it and his explanation for the failure
It is logical then that Affleck does not regret having participated in ‘A dangerous relationship’, a film that destroyed the career of Martin Brest, who has not returned to direct any film since then. The actor acknowledges that he was one of the great reasons why he wanted to do it: “I love ‘Midnight Run’, I love ‘Hollywood Detective’ and I also love ‘Scent of a Woman’. Marty is very talented, there was no doubt that he was someone he wanted to work with.“.
With a budget of 75 million dollars and a pyrrhic worldwide collection of just 7 million -in case you haven’t seen it, I’m telling you that it’s not even a joke about one of those great films that unfairly failed-, ‘A Dangerous Relationship’ it was also panned by critics. Affleck comments on how it ended up being such a disaster:
The studio at the time was intoxicated with the idea, because I had started to have this relationship with Jennifer Lopez, who was selling a lot of magazines and seemed to generate a lot of excitement – they latched on unsurprisingly, ‘The [público] he wants a romantic comedy, they want the two of them together. They want to see that. More of that.” And it was just, it was like that ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit. Bad idea.