Brest has never been a fan of interviews, but he clammed up completely after the debacle of “Gigli.” Released in the summer of 2003 to scathing reviews, the $76 million Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez vehicle grossed a paltry $7.7 million. It was a historic box-office flop, and, despite the director’s previous successes (“Going in Style,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Midnight Run,” and “Scent of a Woman”), it ended his career. He hasn’t made a Film since.

20 years later, Brest has broken his silence in a wonderfully candid, career-spanning interview with Variety’s Todd Gilchrist. He seems to understand, wistfully, that his time in this industry has passed (for better or worse), so he comfortably takes ownership of his missteps, even on his hits.

One particularly painful slip-up occurred on the set of “Scent of a Woman” during the supercharged scene where O’Donnell walks in on Pacino seconds before he tries to kill himself. He disarms the veteran and frantically makes a case for his continued existence, which is the tallest of orders for a clean-cut kid who’s never seen a day of combat. O’Donnell has to make us believe Pacino believes.

According to Brest, this was a draining scene for O’Donnell, and so he was concerned when, after somewhere in the neighborhood of seven takes, his actor simply wasn’t nailing it. So he played a bit of a mind game. “[I] thought, ‘This kid’s about to shatter.’ So I let him go back to the dressing room, and as he’s walking back, I put out a call on the walkie-talkie to come back. And when he did it, he went right over the cliff in the best way possible.”

And this is where everything went unexpectedly wrong.