Question: What appealed to you about the film and
working with David and creating this character, Bob?
Affleck: The first attraction I had was
because the script was so well written, and I liked the way that David used
language. The dialogue felt unique and
poetic in a way. I don’t know if it read
that way to anybody else on screen, but just reading it, I could tell that he
really cared about language, and I liked that.
I also am drawn to characters whose internal fantasy of themself is at
odds with the reality of their situation and who they are. That was true for this character for
sure. But mostly, I just liked the way
that David talked about film, and about this film and the story. I wish I had a formula for how I chose films
that I wanted to be a part of. I just
don’t. It’s still a very instinctual
process. I sat down and met with David,
and I knew in the first five minutes that I wanted to do it, because I just got
a feeling from him that he loved movies.
He loved this story. He wasn’t
doing it because he just wanted to be a film director and that he really cared
about this. He really listened, and
immediately it was a good match for me.
All the way through the process, I was glad that I had done the movie.
Do
you think, given your characters in The Assassination of Jesse James and Ain’t
Them Bodies Saints, that in your past life you might have played a better
cowboy?
Affleck: (laughs)
Maybe. I do love the
Western. David is so smart that he
subverted the Western genre and also subverted the lovers on the run. Anytime there was some familiar trope of some
genre, he either went around it or he would find a way of making it different
in some way. Someone asked me if this
was similar to Jesse James. There’s
really nothing at all that is similar about the two even though they had
similar influences, the obvious being (Terrence) Malick. There again, it’s completely different movies
and characters. It’s hard to find any
movie these days that isn’t in some way influenced by the impression that
Malick made in the early seventies and today.
What
did you like most about your character, Bob, and his relationship with Ruth?
Affleck: Other than having this romantic vision of
himself and the world and the way it should be, and that vision coming to
loggerheads with what the world really is, which is an interesting conflict to
play, I liked that he just had a good heart and had good intentions. I’ve played a lot of people who are assassins
or murderers or just creeps this way or that, and that always feels disgusting,
and it was great to play somebody who had everyone’s best interest in mind and
was a much better person than anyone thought.
It’s really interesting that through the whole movie, no one ever finds
out that he didn’t even kill anybody and that she had shot a policeman. It wasn’t even him. He’d never hurt anybody. So, all those little things I liked about
him.
We
don’t see it on screen, but the two of you are outlaws. What kind of crimes did you commit and how
are you different from Bonnie and Clyde?
Affleck: Well, we’re younger, for one thing. She is better looking at least. It goes back to the question about David. This was kind of the sequel to Badlands, but
it’s a different way of seeing things.
You don’t actually see any crimes.
With Bonnie and Clyde, you see them do all this stuff. What the crimes were is left to the
imagination, but it’s probably robbing banks, robbing things, stealing
stuff. I think it was smart not to show
that stuff because it’s so much a part of our culture. Even just filmically, immediately when you sit
down in the movie theater, there are five different movies that come to mind
about a young couple who are on a crime spree.
So what’s the point in showing it?
You don’t have to show it. It
would have become redundant and sort of boring.
Although David could speak better about it, I think he wanted to show
the reality of that situation, when the glamor and the romance of the Bonnie
and Clyde lovers wears off, and you’re left with just the reality of trying to
live out a life. You’ve got a kid. She’s got a kitten. You need to marry someone who has a job. You’ve got all that stuff. When that collides with the teenage, youthful
sort of idealism of being lovers on the run, then what happens? So, in that way, I think that the movie is
different than Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands. And the characters are different
mostly because you’re seeing her, and through her story, you get to see her
mature at this really accelerated rate because of the circumstances. She has to deal suddenly with does she really
want to be with somebody who’s on the run, who’s a fugitive, and doesn’t have
any way of earning a living or supporting them?
Or is she going to be attracted to this slightly more boring but stable
guy who she never ever thought she would be with who is a police officer? And I think that seeing her come around from
her love for me to just entertaining the possibility of being with this guy,
not actually being attracted to him or having a relationship with him, but just
maturing to the point where she can see what might be nice about him and what
could be lovable about him is what separates it from those other movies.
Affleck: Rooney said that?
Yes,
she did. What is it about her that you
like? From what I understand, you did
not know each other before making the film.
Affleck: That’s true.
We didn’t know each other, but that’s often the case when you start a
movie. Rooney is a very mysterious
person. There are some things she plays
close to the vest and doesn’t give a lot, but the camera sees a lot. She has that enviable, magical quality of
being something that just comes alive on screen, and she’s very interesting to
watch because there’s a lot happening in her head, and for some reason you can
see it. She likes to say it’s just
because her skin is so pale, but I think it’s something else. I loved not knowing what she was thinking and
what she was going to do and say, even though I knew on paper what she was
going to do and say. I think she’s a
very brave young woman for doing all these roles that she’s doing and for
jumping in the way that she has. She
doesn’t have a lot of run up to movie stardom.
She was doing nothing, and then she was working with all these huge
directors and doing all these big parts, and they’re all very different, and
she hasn’t blinked once. I know that I
would have screwed that up, and so, that’s one of the many things that I like
about her.
Personally,
what do you like about her?
Affleck: She’s so incredibly charming and she has a
very dry sense of humor. She doesn’t
pretend a lot. You can imagine that if
you tell a joke and Rooney doesn’t like it, she’s not going to smile. I enjoy that about her, and she’s
honest. She’s brutally honest and very
forthright. I like people that are a little
bit too serious, so I have a lot of affection for Rooney.
Casey,
you didn’t get to shoot very much with Rooney or Ben. What were your impressions when you first saw
the movie?
Affleck: First of all, when I saw it, the very first
scene that I saw was the scene between the two of them in her house, and I was
astonished at how believable and subtle and nuanced they were. I just thought – and this is true – I came
out [of the screening] and said, “There is no way that I can fit into that movie. I don’t want to see any more of it.” I really was totally blown away by it. I thought they were so present, both of them,
in those scenes. I was totally
intimidated, and I thought back on all the stuff that I had done. I was imagining this beautiful, naturalistic,
emotional movie, and then that cartoon rooster walking into it. You know what I mean? I could feel it. That was my reaction to seeing them in the
movie. I think Ben’s terrific and I
always like watching him.
Can
you provide some insight into your approach to your character and that scene
where he gets shot?
Affleck: I love that he was this kind of guy. Like I said, he never shot anyone and he
wouldn’t shoot anyone. It doesn’t even
cross his mind that kind of malevolence, and violence is not something that he
would [engage in]. It so takes him by
surprise. I hope you see in that moment
just how different he is than what people think of him. There are always people that are after him
and want to kill him. People put him in
jail for killing someone, but he’s nothing like that at all. In his mind, he was thinking there might be
some people who are after him for this or for that. I can’t remember what the line is, but it’s
something about clearly he was not expecting this guy. He didn’t even know who this guy was. It was like, “Why are you…? Who are you?”
Maybe I read into it too much, but it always felt as if that moment was
a little bit of a metaphor for the surprise of the young man who meets the
grown-up world where there are real consequences for your actions. You stole money from people. You’re not living in Badlands. I mean, there are consequences in Badlands,
but you’re not living in True Romance.
There are people who you have pissed off, and this is how some people in
the world get revenge.
Affleck: That was one of the rare instances in the
movie where we just did something that wasn’t scripted. It was just a moment where we wanted to show
a glimpse into what was in his mind, his expectations about what was going to
happen, so that you would see how they weren’t met, and so you could feel the
surprise of it. The script is so well
written in my opinion that it never needed anything to be added or
changed. But at that moment, I wanted to
try something, largely just try a couple …
It wasn’t exactly improvised, but it was very spur of the moment, last
minute planning, kind of what will we say?
We wrote a couple quick monologues and then tried them on. That was how that happened.
Bob
is a very romantic character and he wrote so many love letters from behind
prison bars. Are you a romantic guy in
real life? Have you ever written any
love letters?
Affleck: Yes, I’ve written some love letters in my
life, I can say. Is that enough? (laughs)
Yes, I think he’s a very romantic character, and I really liked playing
that part of him. It’s always an
endearing quality. My only concern was
making sure that he wasn’t so familiar in his romanticism in the context of the
movie that it becomes a cliché. I think
all of those characters are a little bit romantic, kind of like the ones in
Bonnie and Clyde, in Badlands and beyond even that. That character is someone we have seen in
films because it is such a great character.
But because we’ve seen it so much, you have to make sure that you find
something that’s real about him and that’s different about him. Now, that said, when other actors say that, I
go, “There’s no way you can ever do anything that’s like anybody else because
you’re you and you’re unique, so just do it the way that it resonates for you
and then don’t worry about it.” But I
can’t take that advice myself from other actors. So I’m always looking for ways to make it
stand out in the landscape of other movies, which I think is an aesthetic, but
I do do it myself.
Affleck: Yes.
He has seen this movie. I told
him about it. We’re very close and so we
talked throughout making the movie. I
was very happy for him. He did have an
enormous amount of success. We both
started out as children doing this largely because my father was in the theater
and our mother took us to the theater all the time, and we just had a lot of
people around us that were in the arts, and we both had this very influential
teacher in high school. We had these
similar paths all the same, so it’s not a coincidence we both could have wound
up doing this. But then you get out into
the real world and there are all these crazy ups and downs of your own individual
career paths. I did this movie when I
was 17 called To Die For, and he hadn’t been in anything. I was introducing him to Matt Dillon, and he
was in awe and star struck. When you’re
the younger brother, usually it’s not that common that you’re having these
experiences that your older brother is in awe of. And then, he took off doing Armageddon and
had a lot of success and fame. It was
somewhere around there. And then, he had a low around the same time that I was
starting to get a lot more of the movies that I wanted to be doing like Jesse
James and so forth. And then, we crossed
paths again and did Gone Baby Gone together.
Then, as a director, he came up again.
It’s just funny.
When
you’re younger, you pay attention more to every little this step, that step of
your career choices, and then you get a little bit older — I’m only 37 — and
you start to see more of the patterns.
It’s nice to see how there are these ups and downs, and it doesn’t mean
that he’s finished just because he’s unhireable for a couple of years. It’s nice to remind him of that when he’s on
top and winning lots of awards.
(laughs) I feel really lucky to
have been able to not only have him as a brother because I love him and he’s
such a smart guy and an interesting, fun guy, but also have a friend to go
through and chart and navigate the waters of Hollywood which can be kind of
alienating and lonely at times just because everyone is always … you know what
it’s like. I’ve also been lucky enough to
have been strangely really close to, you know, I grew up with Matt Damon, and
then I became best friends with Joaquin (Phoenix) and all these people who have
been successful and famous, many of them much more than myself. So I get a glimpse of it. I get to see and be very close to people
across the entire spectrum of movies and fame and success and that has been
enlightening, and it has taught me a lot when you see someone who is super
famous and everyone loves him, and then he crashes and burns, and everyone
hates him, and then you see other people and they’ve all had totally different
careers. I think of Matt as a brother,
and Joaquin as my brother-in-law, and Ben is my actual biological brother. They’ve all taken very different paths and
I’ve been able to be close to all of them and learn from all of them.
What
is next for you?
Affleck: I did a movie called Out of the Furnace with
Christian Bale that Scott Cooper directed that is coming out in the fall.
What
about Third Person?
Affleck: Third Person?
No, I’m not doing that movie. I
know that’s on the internet, but I’m not doing that. That’s it.
Directorially,
is there anything that you’re lining up or looking at?
Affleck: Sort of.
I do want to do something again because I feel like that movie (I’m
Still Here) was an amazing experience for me.
I love directing that way and working with Joaquin. I learned so much being in a different
position and working with an actor. But
it also left a bad taste in my mouth a little bit, and I would like to cleanse
my palette and do something different, something that’s as different as I can
find. I’m looking for something, but on
the other hand, I really want to keep working as an actor. I feel like I’ve been picky through the years
and would do one movie a year or one movie every two years, and I want to work
a lot more. So if I can find something
that just happens right away as a director, I’ll do it if I really love it, but
otherwise I want to keep working as an actor and getting better.
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