The Daily Mail has a maybe-new interview with Ben Affleck, posted to coincide with the UK DVD release of The Town. (It’s possible it was conducted back in September when the movie was first out in England, but it’s hard to tell from their description.) Affleck talks at length about the process he went through to research the movie, which included spending hours talking to convicted robbers from Charlestown, the neighborhood in Boston that was portrayed in the film. He also said that his best friend, Matt Damon, viewed the film in five different stages of completion and gave him “pages of very smart notes” of where to go with it.
On how Matt Damon helped with The Town
We’ve been friends for 30 years. I can’t believe I’m old enough to say I’ve had a friend for 30 years. But he is a friend, and a partner in a company we have together. He saw The Town in five different versions and each time he saw it he presented me with pages and pages of very smart notes. I’ve got to a stage in life where I have learnt who my real friends are. You don’t need many, you just need good, solid friends. My brother, Casey, is another one and my godfather is a really brilliant guy.On his research for the film with convicted robbers
I spent hours just talking to the inmates. I developed an excellent relationship with the authorities and we shot one scene in a real maximum-security prison. When you walk in you can just feel decades of sorrow and pain, anxiety and terror, loneliness and misery.I met one guy who had served 15 years before being released. I asked him to audition for a part in the movie, but I remember being pretty intimidated by him. Then he came in and read and he was amazing. He said, ‘My daughter told me if I get in the movie I’ll be a millionaire.’ I said, ‘You know what, you’re not going to be a millionaire but we’re going to put you in the movie and see what happens.’ It changed his life. There are guys in that movie who have been nothing all their lives. Now they are legends at home.
On why he’s a good poker player
Maths aside, it is really a game about knowing yourself and reading other people. There are all these tiny nuances of human behaviour you can tap into, which is why so many actors get into it. Actors are good at it because they learn to detect truth. Tobey Maguire is a better poker player than most poker professionals – he’s a genius. It’s mesmerising to watch him.On how he’s content with life
You make mistakes in life and that is what learning and growing up is about. In the movie business it is very easy to get carried away. But now it is nice to be in a place where I feel lucky with my family and really blessed.Failure is just a function of risk. I look at my great heroes as actors and directors and none of them have perfect records. I imagine I will have an even more imperfect record. I think you have to still be brave enough to take risks. Today I am enjoying the success. Being number one at the box office is pretty cool. But I’ve been round the block enough times to know it won’t last forever.
[From The Daily Mail]
This begs the question: how much of Damon’s input was used in The Town (which should have earned an Oscar nomination)? I’m sure Affleck is a talented director, and Damon has said as much, but how much of The Town can we credit to Damon? Like those excellent, close up car chase scenes through the labyrinthian streets of Boston bore a certain resemblance to the chase scenes in Prague Paris that were shown in The Bourne Identity. I’ll admit to stirring the pot on this one, but that really occurred to me when I saw the movie.
Also I’m impressed with how Affleck has grown as an actor and family man. He has a good head on his shoulders now and has definitely matured. It’s nice to see his career pick up again.
Thanks to Kaiser for the lead!
Ben Affleck is shown at the BAFTA Awards on 1/15/11. Matt Damon is shown on the LA set of “We Bought a Zoo” on 1/25 and 1/26/11. Credit: WENN.com
Ben Affleck the director/writer is brilliant and I can’t wait to see what he does next behind the camera. It would be lovely if him and Damon teamed up again. However Ben Affleck the actor and person annoys me to no end.
Is it me or is Matt Damon looking like a younger, puffy Marky Mark lately? Blech!
His expression in the top pic together with the word fragment SAPP….pretty funny.
Well they are both very talented and it would be great if they did do another project together.
The thing is I bet Matt contributed alot to The Town- but there’s no denying that Ben is GREAT as a director as we saw with Gone Baby Gone
I liked “The Town” because it depicts the bank robbers as real people. It’s much more interesting than the typical one-dimensional cops-and-robbers flick.
Obviously Affleck did his homework in researching criminal types, and it shows.
The Town was amazing and I was shocked that it didn’t get an Oscar nod. I think that Matt is a better actor than Ben but The Town and Gone Baby Gone proves that he’s going to have a pretty successful run as a director.
Agreed – Ben deserved a Best Director nod for The Town. Definitely one of the best movies we saw last year.
The input would have been small. The movie was done but cut a few different ways with several versions. He handed him pages. Ben didn’t say he listened to every comment.
There’s a reason Ben has directed two great movies and Matt hasn’t. Matt has talked about how blown away by how good Ben is as a director and knew his strength lies in directing.
giving people a second chance at life is pretty cool
Give me a break! Ben is talented in his own right he doesn’t need Matt or anybody else to “help” him make a good movie ,he has proven that with Gone Baby Gone.Anyway Matt is busy with his own career .Ben deserves more recognition for his work and less attention to the gossip crap.
Don’t doubt that Matt gave some input but hardly think it was about the car chase scenes. A lot of movies have taken style points from the Bourne movies, even Bond so I think the chase look is a general evolution.
What I think is amazing is that Matt and Ben have stayed good friends in their business. Says a lot about them I think.
I think it’s great they both found their own path in the business, and as bluhare said have stayed friends.
The Town was terrible. Why is it that people sweat this movie? Do I hate it because I’m from Boston and, for one thing, the production of that crapfest kept me from getting to work on time like 5 different times? I’m a nurse, for f*ck’s sake. I need to go to work… Affleck doesn’t need more money. Is it because every time they make a movie set in Boston, they make every character sound like an idiot with a speech impediment? Not EVERYONE here has a ridiculous accent. I would just like people from other parts of the country to be aware of that. We don’t all sound like morons when we talk. I will say this: Jeremy Renner was good. Ben Affleck was, is, and always will be a terrible actor who spends all his time onscreen with his mouth hanging open. If his character had gone to another, better actor, I bet this movie wouldn’t have sucked so much. Plus, he had zero chemistry with what’s-her-face. I didn’t buy that “romance” thing at all. You really all think this movie deserved an oscar nomination? Ugh. Should have given Jeremy Renner the Ben Affleck part. It would have been so much better that way.
No, not everyone in boston has ‘that accent’-but having grown up in and around boston, most of the working middle and lower class, including all of my family, had one version or other of said style of talking.
Then there’s the blue blood bostonians-who don’t have it-
something about the cash….
And, now boston is full of transplants and is much more diverse-MA as a whole is,
but still-you travel west or more rural areas of MA, and certainly the poorer areas of boston-including charlestown, however gentrified it may have become-and you WILL hear this accent all the time….
you hear it from bus and T drivers, workers all over the city,e tc.
I no longer have that accent, having lived away for so long-but my family all do….it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and I like that movies have taken to portraying that subculture-ish aspect to the region….it is authentic.
Different takes on it, I guess…
I’m born and bred Bostonian as well. Amanda-calm down. The movie takes place in Charlestown and yes, almost all of the people who have lived here their whole lives have Boston accents. It’s really not something to be ashamed of. If you’re so offended by movies depicting Boston accents then why go see The Town? What exactly were you expecting? Next time you should go see some movie based on a Jane Austen novel and you can get your fill of *proper English*.
Well, you never publish my comments but I read this in another blog so here goes: They used The same Bourne Identity action editor in the Town so that is why there are similarities. Nothing to do with Damon, other than he might have introduced the editor to Ben.
I can’t believe how many other crap got nominated over the Town. That movie was great.
Kitten, I’m sorry you’re taking it so personally that I didn’t care for a dumb movie. Regardless of the accent, the movie was terrible. I watched it because it was set in Boston, plain and simple. I loved The Departed. The Town was trite, and Affleck can’t act. Mainly it was that Affleck can’t act. His brother can act circles around him and that’s a fact.
He’s a lucky bitch to have someone he trusts look at his writing and go ‘that’s shit, bin that, that bit rocks.’
The ‘intimate editor/wing’d, adjective-snatching monkey’ sidekick is the greatest gift of all. That said, Matt should have spoken up a few more times in recent history. Jesus!
Damon is just love.
I didn’t like the town because the female characters were so flat. You totally had Madona-whore roles with the “criminal hero” falling for the “good girl” and yeah, that’s super trite these days.
If you want to make a good movie why not have interesting female roles instead of making everything about your male lead?