Interview With Ben Affleck
By: R. Burke |
Sunday September 10, 2006 |
| Ben Affleck discusses "Hollywoodland," reassessing his career and the things that matter most to him now. |
| Ben Affleck is hoping that Hollywoodland, the new film that examines the
death of George Reeves, who played TV's "Superman" in the 50s, represents a new
beginning. After a string of genuine box-office flops the 34-year old actor
took stock of his career and his life, reassessing everything and concentrating
on projects he could be proud of rather than simply making a big payday. It's
funny to consider the lines Kevin Smith wrote for Affleck in Smith's Jay and
Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) where the actor gives "advice" to his co-star
and friend Matt Damon: "You gotta do the safe picture. Then you can do the art
picture." For awhile there, Affleck did nothing but so-called "safe pictures,"
losing sight of the qualities that people liked about him and taking work in one
dog shit picture after another, each finding less of an audience than the one
previous to it. But Hollywood and audiences are a forgiving lot, and as long
as Affleck doesn't make any more films like Paycheck or Gigli in
the future, he'll probably be a-okay.
Recently you said that you were making an effort to keep a low profile. So what will getting back into the spotlight do for you? Ben Affleck: It's just more about me not doing some movies for awhile and wanting to sort of take a break and keep things quiet. I made a decision to just do the kind of movies that I wanted, and that I could be proud of being in and not work for money or work to be famous, or for any of that stuff. I got really lucky that the first movie that I did in that period was this one, which turned out really well. I'm really proud of it, anyway. I got to work on the script and work with these extraordinary actors and this wonderful director. It feels great to be up here and talking about a movie that I'm really proud of. You're playing George Reeves, a real person, in this movie. Can you talk about how you saw him and why you wanted to play him? Obviously, George Reeves was an iconic guy because of who he played, and that was in some ways tragic for him. And that very tragedy and kind of paradox, in the sense that he got the thing that he wished for and ultimately it was very destructive, is part of what makes the story so good, and part of what makes the character so good. The onus was on me and on Allen [Coulter] and on the writers to be consistent with who the guy really was because there is a sort of burden and responsibility. And I think that even more so because I think of George as a guy who never really got a fair shake. So I thought that it would be the least that we could do here to give him his fair shake, finally, that he kind of didn't get in his career or following his death. So I researched it pretty meticulously and there was tons of research that had been done before I even came on. I was keyed into where to look and who to talk to. I wanted to play him as authentically as possible, and fortunately he left behind a body of work that I could look at and watch. I saw a hundred and four episodes of the television show among other things - 52 in color and 52 in black and white. He obviously had other work, like he was in the beginning of Gone With The Wind. But to not belabor the point, yes, I really wanted to try and treat him fairly. And you benefit from the huge wealth of information to draw from. So, if I screw that up I really have no excuse. This movie is about life in Hollywood and not having life really go as it was planned. Can you talk about your life in Hollywood? Why is that question directed at me? [Laughs] To me, it's about the condition of humanity whereby it's never really enough. It's that feeling, that ambition that drives you to achieve and for people to invent rockets and to build machines and the industrial age, and it also keeps us perpetually kind of dissatisfied, that sort of grass is greener thing. And that those things that propel us at the same time frustrate us and stifle us in trying to live and manage those two things. It's really that contradiction and the contradictory impulses that are universally human that I believe everyone can understand and that are really painful. It's like in life us going, "If I just had this then I would be happy," and then finding out that that's not really the thing. And I think that's really what's at the root of it all for me. And I think that it really kind of transcends Hollywood, even though it is a really good example of that kind of thing because it is to the extreme. Hollywoodland Trailer Is Hollywood a little bit more invasive today than it was back then? I think that Hollywood is really different now than what it used to be. There were three networks, one kind of studio-approved magazine and some whistle stop tours for stuff back then. It was a much different thing. It had not become, for better or worse, the kind of cult of personality, culture of celebrity, kind of continual, carnivorous, voracious machine of fifteen outlets, however many of you are writing for the internet - the internet, bloggers, gossip, every kind of - there are just additional layers upon layers. Those exist because there are people out there who are demanding that and so there is a faster, almost immediate news cycle now, and there are more mouths to feed so to speak. Also, there was a kind of, ironically, polite distance then. Reeves interestingly highlighted the kind of beginning of that period. He got into this car accident and none of the articles mentioned him by actual name. "Superman crashes car. Faints at sight of own blood. Man of steel..." and so on. So it was a kind of wry sort of schadenfreude, slightly smug, detached putting down of people who are supposed to be elevated. And that practice of journalism, which I'm sure none of you practice, grew and has grown over the years. But I think that was the very first beginning of having idols who seemed bigger than everything, and then the treat of it and the perverse thrill was finding out that they weren't really Superman, that in fact they were human and seeing them be destroyed to prove it, and then lamenting them and looking back on the good things that they did. (elaborating further) The degree to which private lives being made public being accepted as what makes news, and to what degree the media has to govern its own self, it's like, 'Hey, look, we have this set of standards and we have to cite sources.' And the degrading of that is all part of the transition that he [Coulter] is talking about, because the media really is a reflection of ourselves and what we show ourselves, and there is also the thing where, as the clothes became less formal, as the spotlight became less formal, the way that we interacted and looked at one another and showed ourselves in our own society became reflective of that. I think that the movie doesn't necessarily pass judgment on that. The interesting thing, I think, the movie really points out, among other things, is the beginning of the conflation of people in television and movies and, like, giant American icons that are important. There is some sense of separation - and then the degradation of both. Reeves is this iconic person of great interest to the country, and when he dies it represents something damaging to people and to children. And that sort of highlights, for me, the absurdity, in some ways, in which we kind of look at these kinds of characters who put themselves out there for drama, for the amusement and entertainment of either adults or children. I'm just wondering how being a father has affected your life? Without going on too long so as to not bore the fellows in the room, I love being a father. It's wonderful. It's changed my life. It all sounds like platitudes and clichés, and that's because they're the truth. It fast became the most important thing in my life and kind of reorganized my priorities instantly in a way that feels really good. I love that. My wife is a spectacular mother, a spectacular everything. It's been a really interesting period of sort of reevaluation for me, and a really nice time. Things that are really important to me, like my family, are wonderful and spectacular. I don't see myself out in the press and in the papers as much, which has been really nice. Has that lessened for you? It's nice to have it diminish and be at a period in my life where I started out wanting to be an artist and do stuff that was really beautiful and that I was really proud of. I think that I kind of got cynical and decided that I was going to carve out a niche for myself, set a period of time out and just say, 'Fuck it,' and make money and have this and do this. Be a popcorn star? Yeah, do popcorn stuff and I did that. There are good popcorn movies and bad popcorn movies, but ultimately I found myself, at the end of that period, to have sort of a horrible feeling, to be trapped inside and part of this whole tabloid situation where my personal life is out there. So just being able to take a couple of years and reassess what I want to do with my life, what do I want to be, has been great. I have a family. I'm working on stuff I like. I directed this movie now, which was extraordinarily terrifying and wonderful and horrible and great all at the same time. So I'm in a nice place. You sort of rewrote life for yourself and got out of the news and started again. Slowly it's starting to give me a little bit more room to do other stuff in my life, which is nice. That means not having the golden ring thing that people obsess about, I think, but it's also the advantage of not having to get where Reeves got to because it's not like there is a there there. You keep on running on this treadmill and reaching for another movie or another prize or another accolade or someone else to ask for my autograph or another TV appearance, it never gets there. It's hollow. So that's how it kind of works and I've done that and am getting to the point where I'm lucky. I got to kind of see that and then say, 'Okay, well, what do I really want to do?' In the course of that, I got dinged up plenty and now there are things that will probably come along that I won't get the chance to do that I would like to, that being that guy would afford me the opportunity to do. |
