Martin Brest (born August 8, 1951) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. After his feature debut, Going in Style (1979), he directed the action comedies Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Midnight Run (1988), which were critical and commercial hits.
Brest then directed Scent of a Woman (1992), starring Al Pacino, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance. He followed it with Meet Joe Black (1998), which received mixed reviews. Brest's next film was Gigli (2003). After disagreements between Brest and Revolution Studios,[1] creative control was taken from him, resulting in a radically re-written and re-shot version of the original film being released,[2] which became his first and only non-profitable film[3] and, in fact, a major box office bomb, receiving scathing reviews. It remains his most recent film to date.
Background
Brest was born to Eastern European immigrant parents in a working-class neighborhood in the Bronx in 1951.[4][5][6] He was influenced by watching The Honeymooners as a child, saying in a 2023 interview, "I was a kid watching it in a household that was economically not that different than in the show. I felt like it was a show made for my neighborhood. And that character of Ralph Kramden really touched me, that angry soul whose spirit blossoms".[7] Brest graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1969 and from New York University's School of the Arts in 1973.[5] His New York University undergraduate student film, Hot Dogs for Gauguin (1972), starring a then unknown Danny DeVito and with a small part by then unknown Rhea Perlman, was one of 25 films chosen in 2009 by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress to "be preserved as cultural, artistic and/or historical treasures"[8] and is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Brest attended the AFI Conservatory, where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 1977.[5]
The dismissal from WarGames left Brest highly pessimistic about his career, until he was recruited by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to direct Beverly Hills Cop (1984), starring Eddie Murphy.[7][11] The film grossed over $300 million worldwide[12] and received Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) and for Best Actor (Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, Eddie Murphy), as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. In 2024 it became the second of Brest's films to be chosen by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress to "be preserved as cultural, artistic and/or historical treasures."[13]
Brest's next film, Meet Joe Black (1998), starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, was a loose remake of 1934's Death Takes a Holiday.[17] The film had an American box-office return of $44.6 million, taking in an additional $98.3 million overseas for a worldwide total of $142.9 million.[18]
Brest wrote and directed Gigli (2003), starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.[19] During filming, production company Revolution Studios took creative control from him, resulting in a radically re-written and re-shot version of the original film being released.[19] That version became one of the more notorious films of its time, with a scathing critical reception. A 2014 article in Playboy observed that in the then-eleven years since Gigli's release, Brest "went Full Salinger", appearing to have left the entertainment industry completely, without any further credits or major public appearances to his name.[19] However, in 2021, he appeared as a featured guest at a screening of Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run in Los Angeles, where he was interviewed by fellow filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.[20] Two years later, he gave an interview to Variety in which he reflected:
Once [Gigli] happened, I thought I'll never be invited back [to make more films]. 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 had a good run, and I enjoyed success and freedom, and that was fantastic. I would've liked it to go on longer, but everybody likes everything to go on longer.[7]
Brest has received the American Film Institute's Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award, which "celebrates the recipient's extraordinary creative talents and artistic achievements."[21]
His essays about art and artists have appeared in various books.[22][23][24]
^Wendy M. ; Siedell Daniel A. Brest, Martin; Blazier (January 1, 2009). An Unfinished Conversation: Collecting Entique Martinez Celaya. Boca Raton Museum of Art. ISBN978-0-936859-80-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Steve Baker, Ricky Blitt, Will Carlough, Tobias Carlson, Jacob Fleisher, Patrik Forsberg, Will Graham, James Gunn, Claes Kjellstrom, Jack Kukoda, Bob Odenkirk, Bill O'Malley, Matthew Alec Portenoy, Greg Pritikin, Rocky Russo, Olle Sarri, Elizabeth Wright Shapiro, Jeremy Sosenko, Jonathan van Tulleken, and Jonas Wittenmark – Movie 43 (2013)
