- 4 minutes ago
Ben Affleck tries to remember lines from Good Will Hunting, Batman, The Town, and more, and talks about his friendship with Matt Damon.
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00:00I'm ready.
00:01You got me flummoxed on this one.
00:03All right, pretty good.
00:08Been in a surprisingly long list of movies at this point.
00:12I'm waiting for the longevity award.
00:15That's the real prize in this business.
00:17How long can you survive?
00:18Stick around.
00:21I'm rich.
00:22This would be the thing about what's my superpower.
00:28I'm rich from, I guess, The Flash, right?
00:30Is that what it is?
00:31Or Batman?
00:32Batman and Superman?
00:33Batman versus Superman.
00:34Batman and Scooby-Doo take on the aliens from, you know.
00:40It's got to be a Bruce Wayne line because he says, I'm rich.
00:42I can't remember which of them it is.
00:46Is it Justice League?
00:49I'm rich.
00:50I like Zack's cut a lot, yeah.
00:52I thought Zack did a great job.
00:53You hire a filmmaker, especially a filmmaker who
00:55has a very specific grammar and language and tone.
00:58You want to let them do that thing.
01:01Otherwise, they're probably not the right person
01:02to direct the movie.
01:04And in that case, I think there were a lot of tensions
01:07around that movie about sort of what version of the movie
01:10is going to be, which is a very bad way, in my opinion,
01:13to make a movie because it doesn't work well by committee.
01:16And I think that was a little bit of what happened on that movie.
01:19And I think he kind of deftly navigated in a kind of a fun way.
01:24That was very satisfying, particularly since that was
01:26so hard a movie to do.
01:27It was really nice to see him, I think, feel gratified
01:31and get to do his vision of the movie.
01:32Christian and Rob Pattinson and George and Michael Keaton.
01:36I mean, everybody who's played that part is a terrific actor.
01:38I would be flattered to be thought of in their company.
01:43You're sitting on a winning lottery ticket,
01:44and you're too much of a pussy to cash it in.
01:47I do remember this one.
01:49This is from Good Will Hunting.
01:50You're sitting on a winning lottery ticket.
01:52You're too much of a pussy to cash it in.
01:55We shot this at the work site where Matt and I actually had done
01:59that essentially same job for that same contractor.
02:02It was a good job.
02:03Like, we worked at Summers $8 an hour.
02:05I remember it was so difficult to get permission to use Paul's sign.
02:09We really wanted to use the real sign.
02:10In retrospect, I'm like, I don't know why we fought so hard to advertise
02:13this guy's like construction business.
02:15And this was a scene that we had read so many times
02:17and played so many times, like in the writing and then improvising
02:21and then just reading the script through.
02:22And I thought about performing it so many times.
02:24It was kind of anticlimactic.
02:26We shot it, we did a couple of takes.
02:28That was it.
02:28And I was kind of like, that's over?
02:29You know, it was this thing I had been waiting for for so long.
02:32What inspired that was that we wrote something that was entirely designed
02:36to play to what we thought was our strengths as actors.
02:39Mostly that we could do accents that were from Boston
02:42because that's where we were from.
02:44And then we kind of built a sort of fantasy story around that,
02:47really just geared around the things that, you know, we were thinking about,
02:50about like, you know, father figures and coming of age and navigating relationships
02:55and having a sense that you have like something to offer to the world
02:58and being afraid to engage in that.
03:00But the need to sort of take that step.
03:03I always liked the idea that it was about like young male friendship
03:09and the value and power of that.
03:11But to even be willing to kind of let that go for somebody else's sake.
03:14And the way they have to do that was to kind of have to challenge him.
03:18And it was, yeah, it was a fun scene.
03:21Anybody tells you money is the root of all evil doesn't fucking have any.
03:25Boiler room.
03:26Anybody tells you money is the root of all evil doesn't fucking have any.
03:29I shot all my stuff in a day.
03:31As an actor, you first start getting a lot of opportunities
03:34and you just think like, I have to do all of them, you know,
03:37like it's sort of a starving person that gets invited to an all-you-can-eat buffet
03:40and just shoveling food in your face.
03:41And this was like, I squeezed this day in somewhere in a schedule that was,
03:46you know, had me running around.
03:47And it was so much fun.
03:48Jen Todd produced it.
03:49Ben Younger was the director.
03:51And I look back at it now, I'm like, wow, I was really young, you know.
03:55But I was grateful to Ben that he wanted me to do it.
04:00Well, we all gotta die, right?
04:01I'm the guy who gets to do it saving the world.
04:04Armageddon, um, with Bruce Willis, just lovely, sweet guy.
04:09We all gotta die, right?
04:13I'm the guy who gets to do it saving the world.
04:15I had food poisoning this day that I shot this.
04:18They had a garbage can, like one of the big ones.
04:20And I just was vomiting in it, like between takes.
04:23Michael just didn't care.
04:24Nobody was like, go home.
04:25You know what I mean?
04:26You're sick.
04:26But I actually remember such a young actor, I was like, it's great for the scene.
04:32I really thought I was martyring myself.
04:33Because it was just, I felt so miserable.
04:35I felt like that would somehow get me into this place of like, you know,
04:40how it is when you're on an asteroid and you're gonna sacrifice your life
04:43to save the rest of the world.
04:44Yeah, so that's how I got in touch with that.
04:49I need your help.
04:49I can't tell you what it is.
04:50You can never ask me about it later.
04:52And we're gonna hurt some people.
04:54This from the town.
04:56I need your help.
04:57I can't tell you what it is.
04:58You can never ask me about it later.
05:00And we're gonna hurt some people.
05:01When I went and made the town, I had directed one movie.
05:04I was really nervous because at the time, it was like a real open question as to whether
05:10or not I was gonna really have a career in an ongoing way as an actor.
05:13I thought, okay, there's a lot riding on this.
05:14Like I have to get this.
05:16This movie's gotta work.
05:17It's gotta be good.
05:17I remember we were shooting that scene.
05:19I was just supposed to go in and get Jeremy and we were gonna get in the car.
05:22And I remember thinking, oh, I need one of the kind of matte kind of lines.
05:26So I just wrote it outside the set and was like, oh, I'm just gonna try this idea and this
05:31line.
05:31Maybe it's too much.
05:32Maybe it won't, you know, it's like pushing it a little bit.
05:34And I remember Jeremy was like, yeah.
05:37And then you just say like, what car are we gonna take?
05:38Because like all the rest of this stuff goes without saying.
05:41And he liked it.
05:42So I tried it and did a couple of takes.
05:43And then I ended up liking how it worked.
05:50Does every guy have to go through all this just to find out your name?
05:58Seems like a decent line.
06:01But you got me flummoxed on this one.
06:04I mean, it's not Daredevil, right?
06:07It is Daredevil?
06:08All right, pretty good.
06:10So does every guy have to go through all this just to find out your name?
06:13The real fun of that movie was getting to work with Jan and doing the fights.
06:17And like, she was so good at that stuff because she did it on Halleus.
06:19You know what I mean?
06:20And I was kind of like, is this going to look like the Matrix or am I going to look
06:23like an idiot?
06:23But we had a good time.
06:28When I think of my wife, I always think of her head.
06:31I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brains, trying to get answers.
06:35Yep, that's gone, girl.
06:36I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brains, trying to get answers.
06:43With David, it was like, I had a chance to work with one of the great filmmakers,
06:48I think ever, you know, such a great freeing experience because I just, I wouldn't do anything.
06:53You know what I mean?
06:54Feeling that like trust and like this movie's going to work.
06:57This person really understands what they're doing.
06:59This is a wonderful, freeing feeling.
07:02And I loved every day of that movie.
07:04I'm still afraid of Rosamund Pike.
07:06I'm like, hey Rosamund, how are you?
07:08This just makes me vaguely.
07:10But she still has that sort of look, you know what I mean?
07:12Hello, Ben.
07:13It's nice to talk to you.
07:14It's good to see you again.
07:16And I'm like, oh, fuck.
07:18She still has that, I don't know what, that quality.
07:20It was great performance.
07:21She was great in the movie.
07:22Hello, Ben.
07:23How are you?
07:24Nice to see you.
07:25You can't die.
07:26You know why?
07:28Because you're going to be a father.
07:30You're going to be a daddy.
07:31I wasn't supposed to tell you.
07:33You're going to be a father.
07:35Can't die.
07:37You're going to be a father.
07:40You can't die.
07:43You're going to be a daddy.
07:44I wasn't supposed to tell you.
07:45I have no fucking idea what this is.
07:51You can't die.
07:54This is like a dying scene where someone's on the verge of death.
07:57And I'm urging them to hang on to the tether of life.
08:02And oh, the flash.
08:05I have no fucking idea.
08:07Oh, this is the end of Pearl Harbor.
08:11Right.
08:12You can't die.
08:13You know why?
08:14Because you're going to be a father.
08:17You're going to be a daddy.
08:19I wasn't supposed to tell you.
08:20That movie and Armageddon both were Michael's movies.
08:23He was making the very biggest in terms of scale and cost and all that stuff.
08:26And I didn't totally appreciate at the time that like, oh, you know,
08:30this sort of scale is going to become more and more rare.
08:33But it has.
08:34The movie looked beautiful.
08:36John Schwartzman shot it and did a great job.
08:37And it was also cool to be in one of those movies where, you know, you sit there like sort
08:41of a,
08:42you know, what they call a buck, you know, like an empty thing going like.
08:45And then to watch it all put together with the visual effects and all that stuff was
08:50quite impressive.
08:51And that was kind of the focus of that movie, which is why this slipped my mind.
08:58If by some fucking miracle long shot you haven't heard of my reputation,
09:02let me tell you who the fuck I am.
09:03I am the fucking Sultan of Slick Sadie.
09:06I am the rule of fucking cool.
09:07You want to be a gangster?
09:08You want to be a thug?
09:10You sit at my feet.
09:12Sit at my fucking feet and get the pearls that emanate forth from me
09:16because I'm the fucking original straight first foremost pimp back
09:21fucking hustler original gangster gangster.
09:24This must have been cut down in the final version of the note.
09:27Did this end up verbatim in something of Slick Sadie?
09:30I remember this sort of generally and it's...
09:39You want to be a thug?
09:46Oh, this is Gigli.
09:47Because I'm the fucking original straight first
09:50foremost pimp mac fucking hustler original gangster's gangster.
09:55You really can't do anything that's I think like actually special or memorable or meaningful without
10:03being willing to like take risks.
10:05So what happens is you got to go out there and like take a sort of home run swing at
10:09it
10:10and the risk of that is if you miss, you look bad.
10:12And in this case, it was like it's obvious that the movie missed.
10:16There's this thing of like, oh my god, it looks bad.
10:18And you sort of have to be okay with that.
10:20Like if you're not willing to take a risk, if you're not willing to try stuff,
10:23you will consign yourself to doing things that people have seen before that they kind of expect.
10:28And then that's a kind of worse and less interesting form of failure, in my opinion.
10:34I really learned how to direct on this movie.
10:36Working with Marty Breast, I just pay attention to every little thing.
10:39I was quite mindful of him about to, I want to direct movies.
10:42And I love Marty and he's a good director.
10:45And that's the interesting paradox of this job is that you can be really good and still miss.
10:54Pan American Airstream, 34 feet, 7 inches long, 8 feet, 5 inches wide.
10:58Dimensions which are perfectly adequate for one person, preferable.
11:01The Accountant.
11:02Dimensions which are perfectly adequate for one person, preferable, even.
11:06I love this movie.
11:07I love this character.
11:09Once they were finished with this, I was like, so what are you going to do with this thing?
11:12I guess they had an extra one too.
11:13They had to buy a double.
11:14I ended up buying this Airstream and still to this day, I use it as my little makeup and hair,
11:20you know, trailer and I've dragged it around with me ever since.
11:27I worked my ass off for four years now because of one lying bastard.
11:31My life is ruined.
11:37Lying bastard.
11:56I always wanted to direct.
12:03I didn't always think that I could, you know, it was a very daunting and intimidating idea.
12:08But I also wanted to be an actor.
12:10The question was going to be to what extent was I going to be able to work to get myself
12:14able to
12:15be whatever it is validated or let in or given the opportunities.
12:19School ties was, I still look back, I had such a great time on that movie.
12:22Like me and Matt and Brendan and Chris O'Donnell and Andrew Lowry and Randall Battenkoff and
12:27Anthony Rapp and Cole Hauser.
12:29We are this group, you know, and we all wanted to be in character and we all lived together in
12:34these like crummy corporate apartments.
12:36And nonetheless, like that experience of making school ties was so formative and so meaningful.
12:41And I was so lucky.
12:43I felt so happy to be there and so grateful.
12:46And it was like making this a real studio movie that was going to come out, a real theater.
12:49Not only these like fake art house, there's an actual theater where they showed multiple movies.
12:54I still remember what it was like in 1991 feeling like maybe I had a chance to
13:02to just do this for a living.
13:04I just wanted to not have to say I was an actor slash something slash waiter slash whatever.
13:11And I had like the hope of that and the thrill of it.
13:15And I'm not sure I've ever had like such a kind of new and thrilling and kind of wonderful
13:22experience as I did playing this like odious and forgettable guy in a movie that's,
13:26you know, probably most people don't even remember.