Martin Brest

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. He then directed Scent of a Woman (1992), starring Al Pacino, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, and earned Brest nominations for Best Director and Best Picture.

He followed up 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 rewritten and reshot version,^[2] which became his first and only unprofitable film,^[3] a box-office bomb that was widely panned. It remains his last film to date.

Early life and education

Brest was born to Eastern European Jewish 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 the one 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".^[1]

Brest graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1969 and from New York University's School of the Arts in 1973.^[5] His NYU 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"^[7] and is in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. Brest graduated from the AFI Conservatory with a Master of Fine Arts in 1977.^[5]

Career

Brest's major studio debut was Going in Style (1979), starring George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg.^[8] Brest was then hired to direct WarGames (1983), starring Matthew Broderick, but he was fired three weeks into production amid conflicts with the film's executive producer and replaced by John Badham.^[1][9]

The dismissal from WarGames left Brest pessimistic about his career until Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer recruited him to direct Beverly Hills Cop (1984), starring Eddie Murphy.^[1][10] The film grossed over $300 million worldwide^[11] and received Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) and 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."^[12][13]

Brest was in pre-production for Rain Man (1988) when he cast Tom Cruise for the role opposite Dustin Hoffman before Barry Levinson directed the film.^[14]

Brest's next film was the action-comedy Midnight Run (1988), starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin.^[15] The film was another critical and commercial success, earning Brest another Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy and De Niro a Best Actor Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy nomination.

Brest's work on Scent of a Woman (1992) earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama. The film also won Golden Globes for Al Pacino and screenwriter Bo Goldman and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Chris O'Donnell. It received four Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay (Adapted), with Pacino winning Best Actor.^[16]

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.^[2] During filming, production company Revolution Studios took creative control from him, resulting in a radically rewritten and reshot version.^[2] It became one of the more notorious films of its time, widely panned by critics. 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.^[2] 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.^[19] In 2023, 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.^[1]

Brest has received the American Film Institute's Franklin J. Schaffner Achievement Award, which "celebrates the recipient's extraordinary creative talents and artistic achievements."^[20]

His essays about art and artists have appeared in various books.^[21][22][23]

Awards and nominations

Two of Brest's films, Hot Dogs for Gauguin and Beverly Hills Cop, have been entered into the National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress.^[7][12]

Filmography

Acting roles

References

1. ^ Gilchrist, Todd (July 18, 2023). "Director Martin Brest Revisits the Triumphs of 'Beverly Hills Cop' and 'Midnight Run,' and Reflects On His Post-'Gigli' Hollywood Exile". Variety. Retrieved July 18, 2023.
2. ^ Patches, Matt (December 19, 2014). "Martin Brest Directed Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run and, Yes, Gigli. Then He Vanished. Why?". Playboy. Archived December 22, 2014 at the Wayback Machine.
3. ^ "Martin Brest - All His Movies Ranked". Death By Films. Retrieved 2024-02-09.
4. ^ "Martin Brest". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved April 5, 2023.
5. ^ Coleman, Bryce. "Martin Brest". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on June 11, 2015. Retrieved April 5, 2023.
6. ^ "Marty Brest, Clicking". Washington Post. December 5, 1984. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2024-06-10.
7. ^ "Michael Jackson, the Muppets and Early Cinema Tapped for Preservation in 2009 Library of Congress National Film Registry". Library of Congress. December 30, 2009.
8. ^ Canby, Vincent (December 25, 1979). "Movie: 3 Widowers Try 'Going in Style'". The New York Times. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
9. ^ Brown, Scott (July 21, 2008). "WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars". Wired
10. ^ THR Staff (December 5, 2016). "'Beverly Hills Cop': THR's 1984 Review". The Hollywood Reporter
11. ^ "Beverly Hills Cop". Box Office Mojo
12. ^ "'Star Trek II,' 'The Social Network' added to National Film Registry". Washington Post. 2024-12-17. Archived 2024-12-18 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 2026-02-05.
13. ^ "The Washington Post - Breaking news and latest headlines, U.S. news, world news, and video". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2025-05-17.
14. ^ Breihan, Tom (June 12, 2020). "Rain Man's movie-star chemistry holds up better than its depiction of autism". The A.V. Club. Retrieved June 19, 2022.
15. ^ Canby, Vincent (July 20, 1988). "REVIEW/FILM; DE NIRO AND GRODIN IN CROSS-COUNTRY CHASE". The New York Times
16. ^ Idasetima, Courtney (December 23, 2017). "The Cast of 'Scent of a Woman,' Then and Now". The Hollywood Reporter
17. ^ Maslin, Janet (November 13, 1998). "FILM REVIEW; When Death Comes to Call, Serve Peanut Butter". The New York Times
18. ^ "Meet Joe Black". Box Office Mojo.
19. ^ Saito, Stephen (July 26, 2021). ""Every Day Was Like, 'How Do We Pull This Off?'" Martin Brest on "Midnight Run"". Moveable Feast. Retrieved September 15, 2021.
20. ^ "Franklin J. Schaffner Award"
21. ^ Wendy M.; Siedell Daniel A. Brest, Martin; Blazier (2009-01-01). An Unfinished Conversation: Collecting Entique Martinez Celaya. Boca Raton Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-936859-80-4.
22. ^ "Tom Chamberlain: Regardless". Drawing Room. Retrieved 2024-02-09.
23. ^ "Text Book Tamy BenTor Miki Carmi". SPDBooks.org. Retrieved 2024-02-09.