The Big Picture - Ben Affleck | Career Arc

Episode Date: March 15, 2019

With ‘Triple Frontier’ now streaming on Netflix, we launch the first episode in a series of career retrospectives on Hollywood’s biggest stars. From ‘Good Will Hunting’ to ‘Gone Girl,’ ���Armageddon’ to ‘The Town,’ ‘Justice League’ to the "Jenny From the Block" video, we identify Affleck’s breakthrough moments and peak performances before breaking down his latest movie. Hosts: Sean Fennessey, Amanda Dobbins, Rob Harvilla Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean fantasy editor in chief of the ringer. And this is the big picture, a conversation show about our movie stars. We're doing something a little bit different here on the big picture today. Maybe something we'll be doing a lot more in the future. We are analyzing the life, career work, filmography of one of our favorite actors,

a person who has had a complicated, fascinating, long, fascinating, long, deep, and sort of weird career. His name is Ben Affleck. He's in a new movie called Triple Frontier that is streaming on Netflix at this very moment. So you can watch that. And if you don't want to have Triple Frontier spoiled for you, maybe go watch that before you listen to this. Joining me today are two expert Affleckologists, Rob Harvilla, staff writer at The Ringer, and Amanda Dobbins. Guys, thanks for joining me. Hi, Sean.

Thanks for having me. So guys, we're going to do this in an interesting way. We're going to do it in sort of a tripartite approach. There's going to be the breakthrough moment of Affleck's career. There's going to be the personal pinnacle, and there's going to be the new thing. So each one of us has chosen a breakthrough moment and a personal pinnacle, and then we'll talk a little bit about Triple Frontier. So Amanda, why don't you start us off with your first choice for breakthrough moment?

And maybe you can talk a little bit about the sort of the Tao of Affleck in doing so. I'd love to. So I went with the obvious breakthrough moment because when the obvious answer is right in front of you, I like to seize on it. And in this case, it would be Good Will Hunting. And you asked us to seize on it. And in this case, it would be Good Will Hunting. And you asked us to pick specific scenes. And for me, the specific scene is not the heartbreaking one at the end, although that is a really beautiful scene. And I think that means a lot to people. But

my breakthrough moment is definitely Retainer. Nobody in this town works without a retainer, guys. You think you can find somebody who does? We tell you, you have my blessing. But I think we all know that person's not going to represent you as well as I can. Will, our offer is $84,000 a year. Retainer! Retainer. If you don't remember, it is a moment in Good Will Hunting where Affleck, as Will's, Matt Damon's best buddy, goes to a job interview in Will's stead

and doesn't take it very seriously and makes a lot of demands while having his pants hiked up really high and wearing tube socks. And, you know, Good Will Hunting more generally was our introduction to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, which became this storied friendship that people really

invested in on a celebrity and metanarrative. Also, obviously, they wrote Good Will Hunting together and won an Oscar for best screenplay and gave a really historic speech, which I watched recently. And it's just as delightful as it was in 1998. But anyway, so Good Will Hunting is when these guys went mainstream mainstream for lack of a better word they won an oscar we knew about them together they were as a unit which is something we would invest in forever and you really did also see the various sides of affleck as an actor even though he was in the supporting role in this situation you get to see him be emotional but he doesn't push it too hard you get to be him see him be emotional, but he doesn't push it too hard.

You get to see him be funny and sort of a wise ass, which is a theme that I'm going to come back to a lot in this podcast because I think that's my ideal Affleck. Affleck is, you know, he's tall and handsome and has charisma and is the definition of movie star as we understand it or have understood it in kind of more of the 40s and 50s. He just looks really great on scene and can deliver a wisecrack. And I am more drawn to Affleck when he is in like slightly funny wise-ass mode because when he gets too serious, which as we'll discuss, he tries a lot in his career, it doesn't really register for me. So retainer is the scene for me where you can just kind of see all the shades of Affleck. Do you guys think that Affleck would

have sort of been more, he certainly wouldn't have been as rich, but would he have been more beloved if he had just done more parts like Chucky, more parts like the sort of the comic relief, the character actor, the guy supporting the player. He's obviously so tall and so handsome that it's understandable that he was inclined to pursue high level stardom. But I'm curious if you think that he maybe should have had a slightly more of a Brad Pitt approach where every once in a while he just shows up and is the side man. I mean, for me, yes. And I think we'll talk a lot about the rest of his career and all the times he didn't do that. It is a really long resume and it's not always full of highs. That's the most generous way that I can put it. There are some really tough stretches on it. But yeah, in general, I do think that we like to see people have a little fun every once in a while. And I think especially for him, it's just the purest expression of the energy that he brings to a screen.

Rob, what about you? I think it was immediately apparent that he could really carry a movie though. And there aren't that many movie stars around. When you get into Chasing Amy, that's a really tough movie to lead just because of the clunkiness and the ugliness of it. There's very few people who i think could have made that work you know and even goodwill hunting even like the big scene in goodwill hunting like the the best part of my day like the funniest thing to me about that scene is is his smudged face it's just such a beautifully smudged face it makes very clear to me that like this is not a man or a character who has actually done physical labor ever in his life. And that's probably not true of the real Ben Affleck.

But it's so obvious, even in that moment, even in how glamorous that moment is, that he's slumming. He can't quite pull off the down-and-out character because he's so obviously a huge star and i i think that it's difficult when you radiate that magnetism to let go a more character actor or a humbler or just a less you know less glamorous route you know it's just that that path for the people for whom that path is open to you like you have to take it it would be a huge waste to not take it and i think he had to start going big immediately and like the troubles with that you know the chaos of that is very very well documented but i it just you see that guy in that moment like this guy has no choice but to just try and hit grand slams every time out you know and to strike out you

know 75 of the time but still like he has to go for it yeah i think that's a good point it's interesting if you look at the first four or five major roles of his career, they are essentially just supporting parts. And part of that is him just trying to break in and get a career. But in School Ties and in Days of Confused, of course, is O'Banion and in Mallrats, which I would say is a legendary performance as Shannon Hamilton. He's basically playing a side part. He's playing a supporting character. He's playing a villain. There's something complicated about Affleck because he is both, like you say Rob, like a real star. There's a sort of

magnetism and a sort of cut glass jaw feeling about him. But also there's something a little bit unlikable. And if you look at O'Banion and the Mallrats guy, he has no problem playing a real shithead. But that's not my breakthrough. i think a lot of people would say o'bannon is a breakthrough because that's a very memorable

character but you know you mentioned chasing amy rob and i have a vivid memory of um having a serious relationship with the movie chasing amy when it came out and thinking that it was a meaningful and deep movie and that is the surest sign that i was 15 years old when Chasing Amy came out. Chasing Amy has not aged terribly well. Rewatching it, I was struck by just its sexual politics are just weird and all over the place and the position that it puts its characters in

to talk about sexual politics is weird. I don't think Kevin Smith is ever a dishonest writer and he's the writer-director of this movie, but he does, as you said, put Ben Affleck in this tough spot where he has to kind of lay bare his emotions in a kind of a dumb way, most famously in a car when he professes his love to his lesbian best friend, Alyssa. And it's just incredibly spine-tingling in a bad way, and yet somehow deeply effective and memorable.

Let's listen to that. Why are we stopping? Because I can't take this. Can't take what? I love you. You love me. I love you, and not in a friendly way although i think we're great friends and not in a misplaced affection puppy dog way although i'm sure that's what you'll call it i love you very very simple very truly and so i think to, Rob, too, this was really assigned to me

more so than like a Good Will Hunting or Shakespeare in Love or the things that were going to come shortly thereafter that Affleck could be the centerpiece of a movie for an hour and 50 minutes, even if that movie is flawed. I still kind of look back fondly on Chasing Amy, though I think it's kind of like a,

it's the celluloid version of a bad think piece in a lot of ways. Rob, when you think of his breakthrough moment what do you think of i mean i have to jump to chasing amy i agree with you in part because again he's sort of rising up over like intensely problematic material like the speech is so clunky like just the words coming out of his mouth are so clunky to make them sound at all believable and human is like a superhuman feat and like in the scene you mentioned like the big romantic rain scene like you can see a cameraman

in like a window it's just there's there's a fundamental sort of lovable shoddiness to that movie and it's aged like really terribly and just i i've always when i watch romantic comedy i always dread like the ugly fight that happens reliably like two-thirds of the way through the movie, and then they get back together, and that's the end of the movie. But the ugly fight in Chasing Amy is the ugliest thing that I've ever seen in any movie. But for me, I would go to Armageddon, which is a really fantastic movie to rewatch it now. I feel like it's aged really well and just how corny it is and how massive and how unapologetic it is. And I think that he's great in it and that he doesn't try to do too much. He's sort of the handsome guy and he's the guy who Bruce Willisis is chasing all around and it's when they get to like the moon or whatever like when he's driving the little rover thing and he's like i have no idea what i'm doing i have no idea like this button i don't know what this does like it's

he's just he plays up the cheesiness and the hugeness of that really well like he just he he's an action movie star in that moment without trying too hard you know without trying to lean on like the actual prestige that he has at that point you know thanks to the oscars or whatever like he's just he's very comfortable in that moment and i i can't think about him and armageddon without thinking about him in the armageddon commentary that has been passed around on the internet quite a bit where he started he's talking over the scene where Bruce Willis is sassing the astronauts because the astronauts don't know how to drill, be oil drillers,

and he's just sort of pointing out the absurdity of that plot. You think it's just drilling a hole? There's a lot you've got to know about. And when you're going to break, snap off an edge in a tranny on a corner of a hot pipe, and you're going to get a gas pocket. Like, yeah, well well what about when the booster rockets don't fire and your eva suit and your zero gravity you know didn't you see

didn't you see apollo 13 boy yeah he's sort of the wise ass like super prestige guy in that moment but he's he can play both roles really well and i just i i don't know how many people who enjoyed armageddon at the time also watched that commentary at the time. There's a little retrospect applied to that. But it's just that DVD commentary or whatever it was just kind of shows how he could be the big, dumb, lunky action hero, but he could also be smarter than that or think that he was smarter than that. And it's really hard to be a dual than that or like think that he was smarter than that. And it's really hard to be a dual threat that way. Yeah. I love having an actor who's in on the joke, you know, and he

knows that there's something kind of silly about Michael Bay in general, kind of ridiculous about him. And there's kind of something kind of ridiculous about the way that they told that story. Amanda, you also had Armageddon for a category, but we're going to move into our new section, which is Pinnacle. And you chose Armageddon. Why? Yeah. So this is a little bit of a flex by me. And also just because there's a more academic correct answer that someone else claimed. So there's the responsible answer and then there's the I was 15 once too answer. And this is the I was 15 once too answer. But I have a theory. And, you know, I can't think of, I think of two things when I think of Ben Affleck and Armageddon.

The first is I think of everything that came pretty soon thereafter, especially in his blockbuster career. Because as you guys noted, Armageddon is Ben Affleck leveling up. He's embracing the jawline. And he's just like, now I'm going to be in a Michael Bay movie and a giant action summer blockbuster where things explode a lot. And from then on, you know, he does a couple other important movies that we'll talk about. He's a supporting role in Shakespeare in Love. She's pretty sarcastic and good in that. He's in 200 Cigarettes. He's in Forces of Nature, which we don't need to talk about. He's in Dogma. He's in Boiler Room. I think we will talk about those a bit more.

But then you got Pearl Harbor. And then from 2001 on, it's just, it's a really tough stretch. He's soon, he's Daredevil. Then there's like Gigli and Jersey Girl. There's Paycheck, which is like a really literal manifestation of what's going on at the time. There's Hollywoodland, which I saw in a theater and I would like those hours of my life back. It's a really, really tough stretch of big swings and more misses than hits. So part of this is just kind of Armageddon is to me the purest example of Ben Affleck accepting his movie star destiny, his blockbuster leading man charisma.

And related to that point, the other thing that I think of when I think of Armageddon is Ben Affleck singing Leaving on a Jet Plane to Liv Tyler. Can we play a bit of that? Hold me like you'll never let me go cause I'm leaving on a jet plane don't know I'll be back again leaving on a jet plane

I don't know when I'll be back again guys that is just a minute of movie star magic he is just singing leaving on a jet plane to live, Tyler. It is romantic. At 15, I was like, wow, this is what all relationships should be. There's nothing more tragic.

He's going to save the world with her dad. But first, he will sing this folk song to her. But there is that kind of energy. And I think it's not totally earnest, which is great. I'm really, really uncomfortable with pure earnest Affleck. I don't think it's not totally earnest which is great I'm really really uncomfortable with pure earnest Affleck I don't think it's natural I cannot re-watch that Chasing Amy scene for that reason I'm just like this is this isn't right he is he he doesn't take things that seriously even when he's trying to so he is doing this and it's sweet and romantic but it is also

kind of ridiculous and over the top Michael Bay movie. And he kind of knows that. So it is both funny and ridiculous and it's all centered around him. And to me, that's kind of his purest blockbuster moment, for lack of a better word. You had kind of a bonus add to the pinnacle here, Amanda. Do you want to talk about that? Well, I think we're going to have to talk about the meta text of Ben Affleck because he is obviously such a large celebrity in of Good Will Hunting. And that's a really feel-good story. And then you moved into phase two, which was Bennifer, the original Bennifer. And Ben Affleck was literally in the Jenny from the Block video.

He was like, he is on a boat, a yacht, I believe, just admiring Jenny from the block. And he agreed to do that while in the middle of pursuing a major blockbuster career. And I find it fascinating and kind of hilarious in retrospect. I'm not sure he would make that choice again, though I don't know. But it is, he was on people's consciousness for years, and it really did create this myth of Ben Affleck, like, dogged by the tabloids, dogged by celebrity. He became kind of an underdog, which in many ways led to the, quote, comeback that produced some of his best movies later in his career that we'll discuss. So it's a pinnacle of narrative. How about that? I love narrative, and it's a pinnacle of narrative. How about that?

I love narrative. And it's a very special record. Yeah, I feel like it's almost like a turning point in a lot of ways. Because in 2002, he basically has these two sort of bland leading man roles in The Sum of All Fears, where he plays, I think, the second or third iteration of Jack Ryan, and Changing Lanes,

which is actually not a bad movie starring him and Samuel L. Jackson. But his stardom is at this awkward point. It's post Pearl Harbor. It's pre Daredevil and Gigli. And he's not quite bomb fleck. He's not quite the sort of the bad movie star that we point to and say, how could that guy keep choosing these terrible movies? But he is in this hyper famous relationship. And as a person who is clearly very self-aware and has a great sense of humor, it's odd to see him make something that is so obviously ridiculous with his girlfriend. I guess Jennifer Lopez is a very powerful and influential woman, and that's how she keeps compelling these super famous guys to look silly, as we just saw last week with A-Rod and J-Lo.

I thought that was romantic. Sure. I'm rooting for those kids, you know, and at least it's not a music video. At least it's not a music video. Yeah, I guess. Rob, you have also kind of a two-part pinnacle. You want to talk about yours? Sure. I mean, I would start with Boiler Room. You know, if you're just queuing up YouTube and you want just peak asshole Ben Affleck, then you think of his big speech in Boiler Room. Now, y'all look money hungry, and that's good. Anybody tells you money's the root of all evil doesn't fucking have any.

They say money can't buy happiness. Look at the fucking smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari. 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid.

He's really explicitly just taking the torch from Alec Baldwin in Glen Gary, Glen Ross. And Alec Baldwin, of course, Glen Ross. And Alec Baldwin of course was also the first cinematic Jack Ryan. The text there is pretty explicit but just Ben Affleck standing in a room full of aspiring millionaires saying, I have every toy you could imagine. That's about as explicit

as it gets in terms of that aspect of Ben Affleck. So that's the peak of him in that guise. but my other one is gone girl so your wife has no friends here is she kind of standoffish ivy league rubs people the wrong way she's from new york it's just complicated just got very high standards type a well that can make you crazy if you're not like that. You seem pretty laid back, type B. You know, with your fast-forwarding now past both, you know,

the Geely daredevil lows, but also, you know, the highs that came after, the town and Argo. When you think of an actor sort of playing with no vanity, you know, playing ugly and just being willing to subvert their handsomeness for a role, you think, like, they gain 50 pounds, they have false teeth, whatever. But Gone Girl is just Ben Affleck getting his ass kicked for two and a half hours. And he's doing it as himself. He's doing it as his blandly handsome self.

And just the way that that movie sort of weaponizes everything that's good about Ben Affleck against him, down to the way he smiles. Everything he does in that movie is wrong. And just whether it's Amy, whether it's the cops, whether it's all the press, just the extras on that movie. Everyone in that movie hates Ben Affleck the entire time. You're not going to see a more explicit tearing down of a movie star in a movie than that just for two and a half hours and so i think just the the poles there between boiler room and gone girl just the range of that is breathtaking and just how high you have to get success wise to pull off boiler room and how low you have to sink you know in critically and in

some cases in your personal life to like pull off Gone Girl. It's just, I don't know if we've had another actor with that range. Let me ask you guys a question. Do you think that Ben Affleck is still self-aware? Because I felt like one of the takeaways from Gone Girl, especially as I watch it now five years after it's come out, is that I feel like David Fincher is kind of bullying him in this movie. Yes. And there's something about, and if you listen to the commentary on Gone Girl, you can hear him describing what he really thinks of Ben Affleck. Now, obviously, he's chiding him a little bit, and Ben Affleck has chided directors on commentary,

so there is some synchronicity to this. But he really kind of makes a mockery of Affleck in that commentary. And obviously, as you said, Rob, kind of makes him just look like kind of a doughy, dim, foolish, aging, middle-aged American kind of beta male who thinks he's an alpha male. And I think Affleck knows that that's what he signed up for,

but I don't fully know. Amanda, what do you think? Yeah, I think it's a fascinating movie about Ben Affleck. It is like, you can read it as analytical text of everything that Affleck has done in terms of celebrity and trying to get by on his charm. And it certainly, in that sense, reads like an indictment from David Fincher. I remember seeing it. You guys will recall,

Gone Girl is actually a book about a woman. And that main character in the book is actually a complicated female character named Amy Dunn. And I remember being like, wow, he really flipped this. He meaning Fincher. And so my theory has always been that Affleck signed on thinking that he was playing something of a supporting role in this story about a woman. And then Fincher just kind of flipped it when he saw the potential to make this meta text about Affleck so I have never thought that he was like yes it's I'm ready to the joke's on me though he in general does seem like a guy who embraces a little bit of

self-deprecation just not quite this much yeah I think that's right um I'm choosing the town as my pinnacle. All right, here's a little fucking cheat sheet for you. It's never going to be me and you and your sister and Shine fucking playing house up there. All right, you got it? Get that in your fucking head. I'm tired of your one-way fucking bullshit. It's a very obvious choice, but I'm the host of this show, so I'm doing what I want. And the reason I chose it is because it is, I think, Affleck fulfilling the prophecy that he has seen for himself. It's his second film that he's directed after Gone Baby Gone from 2007,

which is also a really great film, but he doesn't star in that movie. His brother Casey does. And The Town is just a classic heist movie. It's a local shoot-em-up, you know, two kind of brother-esque friend figures rising and pulling off heists. And then there's a love story that kind of falls apart in the middle of it. There's a tough guy, FBI agent chasing down the guy. The framework of the movie is very straightforward. It's very obvious thus and clear. What Affleck does is

it's the first time I think that he is taking on the most straightforward, earnest part in the movie and fully succeeding. And that's impressive because he's also directing the movie. Obviously know, he obviously two years later in Argo, he wins best picture for doing fundamentally the same thing. He puts himself at the center of a movie that we've seen before, a docudrama about a high stakes international incident. And he makes himself the hero. The town though is very sharp. It's very sharp elbowed. It's very mean. It's kind of a nasty movie. It's very violent. It moves quickly. It's really, it's paced really well. It's beautifully shot, but not fussily shot. There's not a lot of stuff. There's not a lot of moments where you're like, oh, he's really flexing here. Look at this wide angle shot. Look at it. Look at these. It's just a lot of movie star closeups. It's a lot of

Clint Eastwood style, you know, bang, bang setups, very, very kind of flat, straightforward movie that works in the best kind of way. It's one of those movies we always talk about they don't make anymore. And he just seems fully in control of who he is after this really weird period of Daredevil and Gigli and even Hollywoodland, which was supposed to be this sort of big comeback for him taking this serious part, playing George Reeves, the actor who played Superman. And that's notable because obviously Affleck had played a superhero once before and failed and then of course will play a superhero again when we get to sort of the latter stages of his career when he plays Batman in a couple of movies for some godforsaken reason but the town you know just re-watching it I was just blown away by it's just sheer energy and straightforward

commitment to being a good movie and it's really not anything more than that it's just a good movie but that is when you are aspiring to a kind of movie stardom that Affleck saw it, that should be the goal every time. It should be to make movies that a lot of people want to see and that you think about them as the center of the movie. It's very like Steve McQueen. It's very Cary Grant. It's very like you're coming for this guy doing cool stuff. So I'm going to town with, I guess, a little bit of a sprinkling of Argo, though I'm not as crazy about Argo, honestly. What do you guys think about that kind of phase

of Affleck taking control of his career? Well, I think there's one crucial distinction between the town, which I agree is, like I said, it's the responsible, legitimate pick, and Argo, which is, in addition to the town being just like an excellent movie, Affleck is not playing like a a pure goody goody hero he is playing a bank robber so there is an edge to the character

and there is something there's a little bit of an internal conflict he can be earnest without being treacly if that makes sense there is some sort of expression of that conflict and not shitheadedness, but, you know, that tenor of danger that we all sense in Affleck. So I think that it's both a great film and obviously he directed it and it's a triumph for him as a director, but also as an actor, he picked the right role. And I think what we've been discussing is that there are a lot of times he's in the wrong role. Argo, you know, I enjoyed it watching it with my parents and he won an Oscar. So good for him. It's amazing to be so dismissive of the absolute height of someone's career. You know, like obviously Affleck was not nominated for best director. So there's a little bit of a, of a, an unfulfilled feeling around that situation.

But Argo is one best picture. Like, how many times do you make a movie that wins best picture? Rob, what do you think of that phase of his career? The town is definitely the one that struck me. I mean, I agree that it's unflashy and he's not trying too hard. He does have that one monologue, his character, you know, talking with Rebecca Hall about his mother. The sound woke me up. At first I didn't know what it was. It sounded like an animal that got trapped.

Never heard a man cry before. You can't readily find that scene on YouTube but you can readily find dozens if not hundreds of aspiring actors recreating that scene. The sound woke me up. At first I didn't know what it was. Sounded like a small animal trapped or something. Never heard a man cry before. When I walked into the kitchen the only thing i can remember was the ashtray it must have been like a hundred cigarettes in there must have been a hundred cigarettes

must have had a hundred cigarettes in there i mean there really must have been a hundred cigarettes in that thing ashley must have been like a hundred cigarettes in there must have been a hundred cigarettes in there wow like that's sort of an that's an underrated monologue sort of in the boiler room uh vein you know where it's just that's his one big moment and that too is underplayed i think in a really effective way but there there are flashes of sort of the the old guard movie stardom that he can he can still show you every once in a while you know and argo nothing about argo is as memorable to me as his when he accepted the award for Best Picture and he said that marriage was hard. And there was sort of a collective shudder in the crowd that obviously portended a great deal of what came after.

It is funny that Argo is an extremely well-made and extremely tense and successful movie that I don't spend a lot of time thinking about. And it's sort of a strange footnote to the celebrity aspect of his career. When, as you say, it's obviously the pinnacle or one of the pinnacles of, you know, the, the success, the prestige aspect of his career. It's, it's a strange juxtaposition, but you know, that's Ben Affleck for you. I do remember one other scene from Argo, which is the gratuitous shower scene featuring Ben Affleck. Just wanted to throw that in. Yeah. Effect effectively lampooned in Gone Girl two years later. I think it's unbelievable to me how sharp Fincher's blade was there. And what comes right

after that, I think is really interesting too, because before we get to Triple Frontier, there's this phase where Ben Affleck decides he wants to be the Ben Affleck from 1998 again. And I don't even totally understand why, but he makes Runner Runner, Gone Girl, Batman versus Superman, Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, The Accountant, and then he directs his first film after Argo, which is Live by Night, and then Justice League. One interesting thing about all of those movies, with the exception of Gone Girl, they're all bad. They're all sort of like aggressively bad. I think The Accountant is incredibly fun to watch, and there are things about it that make it interesting. But aside from that, all these movies kind of suck. And there's something so

interesting and self-defeating in Affleck's career, where every time he builds a head of momentum every four or five years, and that's part of the reason why I think he's the perfect person to talk about on this show, he tends to suck the life out of himself. And I don't know, what do you guys think compelled him, Rob, particularly to take on the mantle of Bruce Wayne and do this to himself after regaining all that credibility? Hard won. won i mean he just wanted the superstar aura back i think you know and i remember it's those movies those dc movies are not successful but i it seemed to me my reaction and i felt like the overwhelming public reaction was like ben affleck as batman is the best thing about batman versus superman like he is not the problem

in that movie you know and he he certainly cannot redeem that movie or make it watchable, but he comes out okay. It's the rest of the movie. It's the people stuck watching the movie who are really suffering. But The Accountant, that movie is ridiculous and fun to watch and sort of objectively terrible, even as you're enjoying it. And it just, I feel like that arguably is one of the higher degree of difficulty things he's ever done to not turn that into a heavily memed sort of train wreck on the order of Gigli.

Like it's just the entire concept of that is so ridiculous, and even his sort of quasi romance with Anna Kendrick, like there's nothing comfortable or safe or logical or not ill-advised about that movie. And that he comes out of that at all, upright at all, again, is really impressive. In terms of what he was going for, yeah, I can't think of anything else other than the box office prestige to, the Oscar-nominated prestige. Amanda, where are you at on the accountant?

You know what? I had a decent time. I had blocked out the part where he and Andrew Koenig have a pseudo-romance. Thank you for reminding me, Rob. The thing about all of these, I remember at the time, he said, and this is a great quote, whether or not it's actually true to the interiority of Ben Affleck's life, but he said at the time, like, I'm doing Batman because then I can tell my kid, hey, I'm Batman, which, you know, fair enough. I get it. But the funny thing about this whole stretch of movies and particularly with Batman in the mix is how joyless they are. None of these performances have any energy.

They're all pretty recessed. And his Batman, I mean, I understand that Batman is a grim, tortured character, but he really leans into it. It does not seem like he's having a great time being Batman and can't wait to tell his kid about it. I suppose some of that is the tone of the movie and the direction that DC was going at the time. But again, it just kind of feels like maybe not a bad choice because you can't always control how a tone of a movie comes out, but unlucky or misguided choices that just don't really fit with what is appealing to me about Affleck anyway. Yeah, I agree with you. There is something in particular about the film we're going to talk about now, though, that does appeal to me about Affleck. And your mileage may vary on Triple Frontier.

I have never had a feeling as pure or proud as completing a mission with all of you. Which is J.C. Shandor's, I guess, throwback action drama, men on a mission story about five friends who dive into the South American jungle to steal a bunch of money from drug lords. I thought this was a very effective brand of a certain kind of movie, though it's notable to me that our producer, Bobby, who is just a little bit younger than the three of us on the phone right now, was kind of nonplussed by the movie.

I think part of what I responded to was a sort of light John McTiernan quality to it, which is some wisecracking, but mostly a fairly serious approach to a straightforward and ridiculous story of international intrigue and theft. Affleck in particular, though. Somehow I just ended up against it here you know burning through my pension molly's job doesn't cut it i can't sell condos save my fucking life the only thing i have is taking care of these girls yeah yeah i understand that i really like what he's doing here which is it seems like he has accepted his fate at this stage of his career, which is, you know, he's a guy approaching his 50s in middle age. In his real life, we've seen him in the sort of sad Ben Affleck phase with the giant back tattoo,

going through a divorce, engaging in some complicated personal relationships, maybe having some complicated relationships with other things in the world. And he's kind of beaten, he's kind of worn, and there's a desperation and that sadness is kind of suffused into this movie. And even if you don't buy some of the more ridiculous elements of the story, there was something about him taking on this part. And if we can also maybe look at a couple of the parts he has coming in the future, both of which seem very wisely chosen, but this is a million miles away from Justice League as a movie, even though they both are essentially action movies

about people punching each other and shooting guns. What did you guys make? Rob, what did you make of Triple Frontier? I mean, it's the machoest movie I've seen in ages. And like, I watched all the Predator movies recently, and it is still the machoest movie I've ever seen in my life. I wish I had watched it with my wife, who is, I think, really good at sort of puncturing the super masculinity of it.

And she would have just been yelling at the screen and how stupid and how macho many of their actions were. Not to spoil it, but the last scene, the last action that these men take together with the woman in the room, she would have been yelling at the screen for how stupid these guys are, like just the entire time. But I, you know, you think about chasing Amy, you think about boiler room and,

and Ben Affleck is a poster boy for like, for lack of a better term, toxic masculinity, you know? And most of the time he's being so on purpose, there is some degree of self-awareness to it, but that fact makes him absolutely ideal at this phase in his career to play fading masculinity. You talk about vanity, he's a

little paunchy compared to all the other tough guys in this movie, and he's clearly beaten down. And just the turn in Triple Frontier when they're in the house and they realize that they're going to have to shoot a whole bunch of people. And he says like, call out your kills. And his voice is sort of cracking in a way that shows that he's not really up to this, or it doesn't seem like he's up to this, or he's play acting a little bit. I thought that was just a really effective moment and a really effective detail that sort of shows that he was this person person once he can kind of be this person again but like not really like not the whole way it's just it's it just as he was it's the perfect role for him to sort of cross that bridge from like super ultra masculinity to just the ways that that just

that ultimately is going to fail you and fail the movie amanda you and i saw triple frontier together were you thinking often of toxic masculinity as you watched? I mean, yes. It's a hilarious movie about masculinity, and I don't know how much of the movie is in on the joke, though I kind of think a little bit more than we might give it credit for, just in the basic story structure. Things go very wrong. And it's really entertaining. The REI dad fits are hilarious. And I think it just kind of seems like the commentary is baked in in such a way that I didn't have to worry about it too much.

And maybe I just wanted to be along for the ride because a colleague of ours, Kate Halliwell, has really been beating the drum that Triple Frontier is not for men. It's for the women and for people who love men, which I mostly do. I suppose I have a complicated relationship with that. Maybe I was more focused on my relationship to masculinity throughout this movie. And for the most part, I ended up on being like amused but non-threatened by it, which was pleasurable for me. And I thought what Rob said was correct, that it is Affleck accepting his place in life. It is a synergy of the outside world narratives and his career.

And I don't know how much of that was on his mind while he was accepting it. I do think it was probably a bit more obvious than, say, Gone Girl was that there would be some real world relationship. But it works out. It seems right for him. He's been in so many movies that you're just like, why are you in this movie? This doesn't make any sense. And I know why Ben Affleck is in this movie. And I was not surprised when what happened to Ben Affleck happens. So in that sense, I felt great about it. And I also really enjoyed it when the music was really loud. You know, fun fact, this is also a podcast for women who love men. So there's something beautiful about that. You know, the next couple of movies that Affleck is making are interesting to me. One of them is called The Last Thing He Wanted. It's a

Netflix movie directed by Dee Rees, who made Mudbound. And Anne Hathaway's the star, but Affleck is not the star of this movie. And that seems wise. It's based on a Joan Didion novel. And I'm wondering if he's going to slowly start, you know, powering down his desire to be a full-blown star and take maybe more of a Jack Nicholson approach in the latter stages of his career, where he's opposite someone, or he is taking the third most important role or the fourth most important role. He does have another leading man performance coming though. He is going to be the star of, I think, a 2019 movie called Torrance that Gavin O'Connor directed. Gavin O'Connor, of course, also directed The Accountant. And I'm curious to see him reunited with Gavin,

given some of the oddity of the accountant that we talked about. What do you guys want for Ben Affleck? Do you want him to be more of a director? Do you want him to power down into those character roles? Do you want him to just say, fuck it, I'm a movie star till I die? Rob, what would you like to see? I think after Gone Baby Gone and The Town his his willingness to sort of play up both his handsomeness and the degradation of that handsomeness which is sort of ongoing he seems like he's perfect to be like the star of one of those like a series of middle brow gritty crime novels where there's like 30 of them you know and he just does that for the rest of his life like he should be bosh

you know or alex cross or like whatever the snowman guy is like he he seems sort of perfectly suited to that you know sort of genius detective who is also an alcoholic who's a womanizer but sort of terrible at it like it's to find some sort of groove like that like not a jack ryan sort of thing but just the sort of degrading american man like the scene in triple frontier where they're all sitting around they're like we're the last of degrading American man. Like the scene in Triple Frontier where they're all sitting around and they're like, we're the last of a dying breed. We're warriors. You know, it's like the subtext sort of becomes the text

in a way that it's like, it's hard to believe that the movie isn't sort of in on it to a degree. But I think that's the sort of thing that he can do particularly well. And maybe he's one of the only people left who can do it.

Amanda, what about you? What do you want from Sir Ben Affleck? You know, I've got two answers. One, as soon as you said Brad Pitt, which is a great call, I was just thinking about Ben Affleck in a version of Moneyball. Is there like an NBA Moneyball we can do or an NFL Moneyball? You know, some other version where he gets to do the banter and be like a guy with some problems but he's trying really hard and can be funny it just that seems like a great Affleck situation perhaps trust the process featuring Ben Affleck as Brian Colangelo what do we think guys okay that would be great the other I was thinking a lot about George Clooney in relationship to Ben Affleck,

mostly because when I rewatched the Argo Oscar acceptance speech, I had forgotten that George Clooney was also produced on Argo and is on the stage with Ben Affleck. But they are two guys who have a lot of charisma and have had a hard time finding roles that really channel that charisma to useful ends. I think George Clooney is, we generally think of him as a more successful movie star than some of the movies might prove. But one movie that I thought George Clooney was very good in was The Descendants. And I can kind of see Affleck in a similar role, which is like older guy trying to figure out, and this would be playing more into his current state, but maybe some sort of Alexander Payne movie, maybe even he and Matt Damon could reunite on an Alexander Payne movie.

I'm just throwing it out there. Just a thought. True Detective season four. Yeah. I mean, I guess that's an interesting place for us to wrap, which is shouldn't Matt Damon and Ben Affleck do something together again? Isn't it so obvious that they should write a movie? Maybe they could co-direct a movie together. I don't know. It just strikes me as both a wise pursuit of the preservation of a friendship and a relationship to not work together again. But as somebody who

works with a lot of his friends, you know, there are rewards there too. And the last time they did it, they got an Oscar. Rob, would you would you welcome a reunion i absolutely would i'm trying to think of what would be the ideal vehicle for that but yeah it's just the symmetry of it you know and a reminder of the heights of their career both in a prestige and in a commercial sense like yeah i'm all for it it's it's what should they do together? Yeah. Triple Frontier 2. I'm sticking with that. Triple Frontier 2. There you go.

Triple or quadruple frontier then. It would have to be a prequel, I guess. But anyway. I'm thinking Hobbs and Shaw too. And they're the villains fighting Hobbs and Shaw. Any last lingering thoughts, Amanda, on your boy Ben Affleck? I'm rooting for him. I mean, that's the interesting thing about him, right?

Is that for 20 years now, we have all, as an audience going public, been really invested in the various comebacks, because there have been several by now, of Ben Affleck. We want to see him on screen, which is not something that you can say of everybody. And I think that that is kind of an indefinable asset that he has. So, you know, I'd like to see him in a slightly happier circumstance on screen and also in his personal

life. You know, I wish everyone well, but a lot of people really are still invested in him as a movie star. And you can't say that for a lot of actors right now. I completely agree. Rob and Amanda, thank you for breaking down the fascinating ups and downs of the career of Ben Affleck. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Sean.