February has been marked in red on Jennifer Lopez's calendar for months. In a few days, the New York artist will start one of her most personal, but at the same time strangest, projects. A triad of album, video clip and documentary, with a clearly musical orientation, but also autobiographical and even dreamlike. A strange audiovisual Frankenstein with which she releases new music, reviews her career and recapitulates her 20-year love for Ben Affleck, with whom she was about to walk down the aisle in 2003 and whom she finally married in the summer of 2022. A hybrid that no one, not even those who worked with her on the project, seems to fully understand, but which she has decided to embrace. Enough to finance it with $20 million out of his own pocket.
The singer and actress revealed the figure and the difficulties in realizing the project in a long interview with Variety, the cover of which is also decorated with a spectacular photo production. What he has created is a kind of complete package of music, audiovisual media and private life. In 2002, Lopez released her third studio album, This is me…, a huge success that sold more than six million copies worldwide. A few years ago he played it for his twins Emme and Max, almost 16 years old and the product of his relationship with Marc Anthony, and they loved it. He asked her for more music like this, personal and narrative stories. Therefore, the sequel “This is me… now” will be released in 2024 with 13 songs released on February 16, although two have already been revealed. But the album will also have two audiovisual branches, very different from the classic video clip, into which Lopez has put his effort and fortune.
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First there will be a kind of music film or long-form video called “This Is Me… Now: A Love Story”, which she co-wrote with her husband, among others, and which Dave Meyers (regular in the music videos for Usher, Ed ( Sheeran, Coldplay) and Lopez himself) and in which everyone from actress Sofía Vergara to musician Post Malone appears. It will be a kind of mega video of all the songs on the new album, but it will also have a script, a common thread. And second, days later she will release a documentary called “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” inspired by the letters Affleck has sent her over the years. The scenes from both the album and the music film are told. Both will be shown on Amazon Prime Video, where they have already been purchased for an undisclosed amount.
According to Lopez, it was the romantic correspondence that inspired her to write the three parts when she discussed these letters with her manager of many years, Benny Medina. In a conversation about their painfully failed relationship and eventual reconciliation two decades later, he encouraged her to make music, an album, about her story. The musical film, in the form of a long video clip that accompanies it, stars Lopez herself, although in some interviews and previous performances it has been revealed that it is a kind of version of herself, a mixture of Lopez herself and one she created figure. and by Affleck, who not only co-wrote the story but also appears in it, like many other famous people.
However, not everyone wanted to be part of this strange project. For example, as Variety reports, Khloé Kardashian refused to appear in it, and Jane Fonda, a good friend of Lopez's (they worked together on 2005's Mother of the Groom), was close to saying no. The 86-year-old actor, winner of two Oscars, spoke personally with Medina to inquire about the project, and later even with Lopez, in a conversation featured in this behind-the-scenes documentary, reported by Variety little preview. “I want you to know that, I don't know why, I'm on your side and on Ben's side, and I want this to work,” explains Fonda Lopez, in a kind of sentiment that he shares with thousands of other people in this one Moments later they reconciled. “But that is absurd. It's like trying to prove something instead of living it. You know, there are a lot of photos of the two of us kissing and hugging.” Lopez replies with a laugh, “We're just living our lives.”
Lopez tries to take away the feeling of strain to prove her love that Fonda sees in the documentary, explaining that their relationship “fell apart under the weight of pressure” in 2003 and that she now wants to show the rebirth that she is capable of Something special was made by a global star, a box office actress, a Super Bowl star, a style icon and a devoted mother of two as well as the wife of another movie star. But instead of recounting his journey in a documentary (like the one he made with Netflix a few years ago that focused on his performance with Shakira at the Super Bowl), he did it in a hybrid project that spawned multiple investors and she put many millions into one of them.
“Everyone thought I was crazy. In fact, I think I was crazy too,” she laughs in this interview as she explains the project, which she kept top secret and from which she demands the strictest confidentiality. As Lopez was recording her album, she began developing the idea of this musical film (neither she nor her agents want to call it a long video clip) and an accompanying documentary. A project that is difficult for many to understand due to its content, with a strange mix of elements that came from his mind and that several screenwriters helped; a process featured in the subsequent documentary, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” which hits theaters on February 27th. In the previews seen in the last two and a half minutes of This Is Me… Now: A Love Story, there are hummingbirds sending messages, fires, motorcycle accidents, several different friends, a kind of group therapy (“We Think, “You're a sex addict,” her friends chime in), slamming doors, drama and choreography at weddings (yours, of course), on basketball courts and in factories.
Jennifer Lopez arriving at the Elie Saab show at Paris Haute Couture Week, January 24, 2024. Edward Berthelot (Getty Images)
The $20 million he had on the table alone helped make this personal smorgasbord a reality. Many said no, even the producer with whom he often works, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, who explained in the interview that she was worried, did not understand anything and still does not understand it to this day. “People are afraid to go there,” Lopez reflects in the documentary. “I understand it, even if it took a while. I'm afraid, too. But I don't pretend I have it: that's the secret to my whole damn career.” But for her, there was something to tell. “It was time, Ben and I rediscovered each other and now that we are married I have something new to offer. “This is the definitive piece that closes a chapter and allows me to move on to the next part of my life.” A chapter so stressful that he told Entertainment Weekly that he didn't know if he would make any more albums. “It's J. Lo's ultimate project,” she said of herself. “It could be my last album. I feel like it's the end of an era and the beginning of a new one for me.
In the newsletter that the artist sent out via email, she provided details about the project and also expressed her feelings about it. “I haven't been this nervous, excited, scared and excited to share something with you in years,” she said in mid-January. “The story of the journey from This Is Me… Then to This Is Me… Now is the most personal thing I have ever done.” Also the most expensive and risky thing, success is a change in the perception of your career and your personal Images or a complete fiasco. We'll just have to wait a few days to find out.