(PCM) Playing the role of a husband is not too much of a stretch for Ben Affleck, who has been happily married for nine years to actress Jennifer Garner and raising three young children.
Although in his latest film, a thriller called “Gone Girl”, he is a beleaguered crime suspect in connection with his missing wife’s murder.
During a recent chat for Gone Girl, which opens Friday, October 3, he looked a bit tired and as if he was fighting a cold. But he still had an easy banter with his film co-stars, Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris.
The world premiere of “Gone Girl” took place on opening night as the gala selection of the 52nd New York Film Festival, which runs until October 12.
In Gone Girl, Nick’s wife, Amy, played by the lovely Rosamund Pike, has disappeared on her fifth wedding anniversary and their lives become the focus of an intense media circus, soon he sees the spotlight turned on him when it’s suspected that he may not be innocent. Nick is quickly convicted by the court of public opinion in their small Missouri town, but there is a big mystery: Is Nick a murderer? Is Amy who she appeared to be?
The 42-year-old Affleck took the role of Nick Dunn, after his triumph as a film director in the movie Argo, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture.
Affleck is animated when he talks lovingly about his film work and his family – actress/wife Jennifer Garner [Dallas Buyer’s Club, Draft Day and The Odd Life of Timothy Green] and their three young children: Violet, 8, Seraphina, 4, and Sam, 2.
He is best known as a writer, director, producer, actor and activist, who has given his time for cancer research and to feed hungry people through the food bank, as well as other causes.
The film, Gone Girl from 20th Century Fox, is based on a mystery novel from Gillian Flynn, which was published in 2012, and quickly became a best seller.
The book showed readers just how much suspense can be generated by the politics of a disintegrating marriage. Flynn also wrote the screenplay for the movie, which wowed audiences at the current New York Film Festival.
David Fincher, the film’s director said that when you are working with a novel that sold six million copies there’s a tendency to work backwards from the book, but the best adaptations work forward through the characters.”
Fincher added that he chose Affleck for the role because, “I needed someone who understood the stakes of the kind of public scrutiny that Nick is subjected to and the absurdity of trying to resist public opinion.” As someone in the public eye for decades, “Ben knows that, not conceptually, but by experience.”
You can see our “Gone Girl” film review and “Fincher-Thon” here!
Q: How did you handle such intensity in this very dramatic story in the movie Gone Girl?
BEN AFFLECK: There were a lot of days where I went home drained and depressed and feeling like I’d kind of been swimming around all day. Just because of the story, and what happens in the story.
Q: What do you think this movie says about marriage?
BA: I would say this take is sort of dark. It’s not necessarily an indictment of marriage, but [the director] David [Fincher] does suggest there are some real dangers in it and some inherent dishonesty. I think for David this was a movie about how we sort of wear masks when we’re in the process of getting into a relationship with somebody, and then we close the door and the masks come off and we find out who the other person really is, and that sometimes can be dark and scary.
Q: Did you pick up any pointers about marriage from this?
BA: It is a little bit of the Magic 8 Ball thing. You try to shake it, and you hope you get lucky. I’ve been very fortunate myself. I feel very lucky.
Q: Why did you decide to step into the shoes of this character in the movie?
BA: It is maybe the deepest dive into a dark character that is more grounded in realism. The idea was to tell a very real story about a very real guy, a guy who’s described in the book as average and normal and ordinary, over and over again. And yet one who we start to suspect may be capable of some really dark stuff.
Q: What else is involved?
BA: Well, any time you have to play a character, your first job is to empathize with the character and to see the world through their point of view and not make judgments about the character. Part of what Nick represents, thematically, despite the aspects of his character that are dark, is the male view of relationships.
Q: How did you feel personally about this?
BA: I tried to adopt that, although my own marriage, [to actress Jennifer Garner], thankfully, is quite a bit different than the one in this movie. Nonetheless, I think you can tap into the ways men and women misunderstand one another. I knew that it had to be a nuanced performance. David wanted a very natural kind of thing. You see the naked man, the soft underbelly. It couldn’t be a performance with any vanity, otherwise it wouldn’t feel real. That was the organic side of it.
Q: Talk about working with the film’s director David Fincher?
BA: The thing about David that I really learned had to do with his undeniable mastery of filmmaking, the process, the technical aspects, the methodical, meticulous, clockmaker aspect of his work. That was remarkable every day, a very real, very open, warts and all representation. His mastery over so many different facets of the process was kind of astonishing to me. I’ve worked with people who didn’t know how to do any of them. And here was David and he could literally do it all.
Q: The movie is also about how scary the media can be, talk about that.
BA: You have CNN on or Headline News on in the trailer, and there comes Nancy Grace every day. You can’t escape it. You hear that kind of strident over-simplification, the demagoguery, the reductive, manufactured rage, all of these things that are generated to get people to tune in because shock and dismay and anger gets viewers.
Q: Please tell me more.
BA: My own experience with the media is not this, but in some ways a parallel to this in the sense that I do know what it’s like to not recognize myself on the television screen, or in print, in the way I’m being characterized.
Q: What else is your take on this?
BA: But really the critique of the media in this movie is not so much about celebrity media but in the way in which the cable news monster needs to be fed, you know, every fifteen seconds. And what it feeds on is scandal and outrage and sanctimony. It’s reductive and it’s salacious and it’s meant to keep audiences outraged and engaged. That’s why we have so many famous criminals. Notoriety is sort of the next best thing to fame. Maybe they’re the same thing.
Q: Lastly, what can you say about your role in the new Batman movie?
BA: I can tell you that I’m very excited and it’s very exciting. I can tell you that in my entire career, I haven’t had so many people come up to me and say how much they’re looking forward to the movie. Naturally, that’s a lot of pressure, but I love the script, I love the director; I love the studio. I’m very much looking forward to it.
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