future nostalgia

Kevin Smith Wants to Remind Everybody He Coined ‘Bennifer’ the First Time Around

Bennifer themselves on the set of 2004’s Jersey Girl. Photo: Tom Kingston/WireImage

For those of us who lived through Bennifer in the early aughts, it’s wild to realize our nation’s youth may very well have no memory of those heady days when Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck shared both romance and the silver screen in films like 2003’s Gigli and 2004’s Jersey Girl. But Kevin Smith hasn’t forgotten for a second, which is why the Jersey Girl director decided to get out ahead of rumors of a rekindled Ben and J.Lo romance and remind everyone that he, personally, came up with “Bennifer,” before the rest of us plebes even knew the pair were dating.

“‘Bennifer’ is trending,” Smith tweeted Monday. “It’s a name I first gave the kids during Jersey Girl pre-production, before the world found out they were dating. I’d later drop the name in an interview with the @nytimes. Shortly thereafter, it appeared in the article and then entered the vernacular.” The rest, as they say, is history. And since history tends to repeat itself, we’d like to put the idea of a shot-by-shot remake of J.Lo’s “Jenny From the Block” music video out into the universe, just in case history is looking to do a full reboot and needs a refresher on the best moments of Bennifer 1.0.

Kevin Smith Wants to Remind Everybody He Coined ‘Bennifer’