J.Lo and Ben Affleck can never break up

It's Gossip Time!

Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. Today, we’re breaking down J.Lo’s three-part ode to Ben Affleck, including her album, “musical film,” and documentary about the making of the musical film (mostly the last one, which — spoiler alert — deserves an Oscar). This post is just for paid subscribers; if you’d like to sign up, you can do so in the box below. 

Much like a wind machine going full bore at J.Lo’s perfectly razored curtain bangs, the Amazon Prime documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told blew me away. The doc tracks the incredibly fraught making of This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, which is a “musical film,” which is a visual interpretation of J.Lo’s new album, This Is Me…Now, which is a callback to J.Lo’s old album from 2002, This Is Me…Then. IT ROCKS. 

Celebrity “documentaries,” especially those produced by the celebrities themselves, are not typically revealing. But Jennifer Lopez is not a typical celebrity. She loves to share. And so The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which was produced by Lopez’s ex-fiancé/current husband Ben Affleck’s fancy new production company Artists Equity, is teeming with gossip. It is, yes, a point-by-point breakdown of Lopez and Affleck’s breakup and make-up, but it is also: a scathing indictment of other celebrities who declined to participate in J.Lo’s artistry (“TOO SCARED”), a meditation on the inescapable influence of social media on personal relationships, and a workplace comedy about hapless production managers failing to realize J.Lo’s vision of “mud” for a scene in which she dances in mud. 

The mud

When I first learned that Lopez spent $20 million of her own money to produce a musical film about her new album that nobody has really listened to, I thought, Oh no, why? But now it all makes sense. J.Lo needed to make a musical film so that she could also make a documentary about making it. This is her gift to us. In fact, if you haven’t watched the musical film yet, I’d say go ahead and skip right to the doc — you see enough of the film in the doc to get the idea, and the dance numbers make more sense when J.Lo is explaining them in voiceover. 

If you don’t plan to watch any of this, or if you do and want a preview of the delights that await, I have collected the salient gossip below. 

Important facts gleaned from The Greatest Love Story Never Told, Now Told, Re: This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, Based On the Original Album From 20 Years Ago, This Is Me…Then: