Leah Greenblatt
MATT DAMON:Ben Affleck, it’s great to see you here today.
BEN AFFLECK:Hey there, man!
Welcome to the red carpet.
Ben Affleck on Entertainment Weekly’s February 2022 cover.Guy Aroch for EW
Before we get into your project, who are you sleeping with?
I promptly called George and he said that it was because you were cheaper than me.
But as the month went on, I started to wonder if he was telling me the entire truth.
Ben Affleck.Guy Aroch for EW
He told me that you argued too much.
“I got tired of dealing with Damon’s bull—-.
You’re gonna do what I tell you, right?”
Ben Affleck.Guy Aroch for EW
How was I going to just take his notes and not say anything?
You’ve always been very smart about picking great directors, and lucky that good directors have picked you.
I mean, especially today, right?
Ben Affleck.Guy Aroch for EW
Yeah, I knew that this was kind of mine to screw up.
I wanted to do it for myself.
So I showed up and I really got ready and did my thing.
Ben Affleck.Guy Aroch for EW
We did the first take and I thought,God, this is it.
This is all working.George came over and he said, “Yeah…
Giving a car to someone is supposed to befun.”
Ben Affleck.Guy Aroch for EW
That’s what he said?
I was like, “Right, yes, of course.
I’ve been playing it completely wrong.”
All that stuff was very familiar to me.
So my only concern was, “Should I be working harder than this?
It shouldn’t feel this smooth.”
It’s interesting, because that was the very first thing George did.
I mean, a director’s job in large measure is tone.
Is it more comic?
And on the side of the box, it says, “Steal from the best.”
George does that better than I do.
I mean, he bent over backwards.
He’s got to sell coffee
He sells tequila, too.
That’s no joke.
He’s got you in the morning and the night.
I’ll tell you what I want to be.
I want to be George Clooney selling coffee and tequila.
Because that really frees you up to do the movies you want to do.
Don’t be afraid to relieve yourself of some of that burden, if it feels unduly burdensome.
I take my job very seriously here atEntertainment Weekly.
That’s what I’m afraid of.
Is that why your performances are so good of late?
Like what you did inThe Way BackandThe Last Duel.
It’s full, it’s rich, it’s invested.
And you’re not reaching.
That means a lot.
You’re not as stupid as I thought you were!"
I have some performances as a younger person that I really liked.
I knew [Good Will Hunting’s] Chuckie Sullivan.
I felt an affinity for Ned Alleyn inShakespeare in Love, and really connected with the character inChasing Amy.
Changing Lanes!You were great in that one.
That’s where I met Bradley [Cooper], actually.
Starting off, you have these ideas about success.
You know, my mother made $28,000 a year.
So I would be like, “How could I justifiably say no to this?”
Just not understanding the value of turning things down.
Like, “No, Marty, I’m good.
I’m going to doSurviving Christmas.”
Part of our fates are controlled by the opportunities we have in terms of material and directors.
That’s a big one.
Because you could’t, as a storyteller, alienate the audience from your protagonist.
And that just blows the whole thing up.
It’s deceptively difficult to play the leading-man role.
That’s a level of being interesting so that you draw people in.
And the more I figured it out, the more accessible that was.
I had a really nadir experience aroundJustice Leaguefor a lot of different reasons.
Not blaming anybody, there’s a lot of things that happened.
But really what it was is that I wasn’t happy.
I didn’t like being there.
I didn’t think it was interesting.
And then some really s—ty things, awful things happened.
But, that’s when I was like, I’m not going to do that anymore.
In fact, I talked to you about it and you were a principal influence on that decision.
I want to do the things that would bring me joy.
Then we went and didLast Dueland I had fun every day on this movie.
I wasn’t the star, I wasn’t likable.
I was a villain.
And it was all just stuff that came along that I wasn’t chasing.
‘Cause it’s elusive.
But I’m happy now.
I’m feeling it now.
And I do think I’ve gotten better.
I think people generally get better with the age and experience
Some might not.
They might get in really bad, corrosive habits.
If you’re smart, you learn from people who are really good.
And I think our friendship helped kind of inculcate that knowledge in me.
We were very generous and open with stuff.
Being around other people that you liked and respected and were smart just made you better.
Everyone’s got bad ideas.
But then you find out he has the humility to go, “Oh, huh.”
I remember that with the Coen brothers, more than once.
Matt Damon, hold the mug!
Obviously it was a box office failure.
But interestingly enough, it’s number one on iTunes.
You know, I won’t hedge, because that’s always boring.
We were just talking aboutNarcos: Mexico,Succession,Mare of Easttown.
There’s these amazing things being done on streamers.Roma!
It’s not just some formulaic TV procedural like when we were kids.
And you could only watch it like my dad, on an 11-inch black-and-white TV.
If I had to bet, a drama likeArgowould not be made theatrically now.
That wasn’t that long ago.
It would be a limited series.
I think movies in theaters are going to become more expensive, event-ized.
And there’ll be 40 movies a year theatrically, probably, all IP, sequel, animated.
The Last Duelreally clinched it for me.
I’ve had bad movies that didn’t work and I didn’t blink.
I know why people didn’t go because they weren’t good.
But I liked what we did.
I like what we had to say.
I’m really proud of it.
So I was really confused.
That’s where the audience is."
Let’s start withSchool Tiesbecause that was the first time we did a feature film together.
What do you remember?
I knew my nine lines back to front.
I loved every day I was on a call sheet, every day I got to come to work.
You were there, in Boston.
It was one of the best experiences of my life.
Even by the dump in Lowell.
We literally were next to a dump and thought we were kings.
you might doReservoir DogsorSlackerorClerksorDo the Right Thing.
People were kind of working outside of the system, and that was inspiring.
Look, it’s a bunch of 19-year-old kids shooting nights in a party scene in Texas.
So it was barely distinguishable, the time at the hotel and the time on the set.
I got to know Matthew [McConaughey] when he was first starting out.
Rory [Cochrane], I stayed friends with him, he was inArgo.
Anthony Rapp and Joey Lauren Adams and Renee Zellweger, it was just an abundance of riches.
And then it bombed.
Nobody saw the movie, but it got great reviews.
And again, I was the single unappealing character in a movie of enormously appealing people.
So not a great career strength.
[Laughs]
Well now, speaking of DIY filmmaking:Mall Rats.
I was, once again, playing the bully, running around, throwing people into their lockers.
But I liked Kevin.
He’s funny and smart and charming.
Kevin also savedGood Will Hunting.
This is not a small side note.He is the reasonGood Will Hunting got made.
We were dead in the water, all the offers had evaporated.
I promised him I would thank him if we ever got an Oscar and promptly forgot.
And I think Francis [Ford Coppola] vouched for me with Robin.
God, he was a wonderful guy.
It was the first time I ever got to hang out with somebody that talented and that famous.
And all everybody in Boston would say was “Nanu, nanu.”
We got split where people went, “Oh, well, Ben’s the big movie guy.
And Matt’s the serious guy,” because I didSaving Private Ryan.
But the fact was that we were desperate to get another job, and I would’ve happily takenArmageddon.
You would’ve happily takenSaving Private Ryan.
That was a terrific cast.
Yeah, Bruce Willis, Owen Wilson, Billy Bob [Thornton], Mike Duncan.
This was real Hollywood, which I felt like I had never seen.
Why are they training oil drillers to be astronauts rather than astronauts to be oil drillers?
You would think the learning curve would be somewhat more steep on the oil-drillers-to-astronauts route.
But it was fun and the right time.
Oh my God, really?
And I was a little naive about the opinions people would form about me.
They made me fix my teeth and work out and be sexy.
Be sexy, how do I do that?
“Go to the gym!”
And you know, what can you say?
We could have made, I think, 400Chasing Amysfor what we madeArmageddonfor.
“What are you, driving a tank on the moon?”
But they had fun, you know what I mean?
They won’t even watchThe Town.
So there you have it.
My kids won’t watch my stuff, either.
All right, wow, they have a lot of movies they want me to ask you about.
Skip to the ones that are interesting.
Let’s touch onGiglibecause it’s directed by one of our favorite directors, Marty Brest.
Where does it sit with you now?
You know, it’s an interesting thing because it was a really easy choice.
I lovedBeverly Hills Cop.
I lovedScent of a Woman.
Marty’s obviously enormously gifted.
There’s no question in my mind that this was a guy I wanted to work with.
There was wonderful stuff in there.
The way we see stuff has changed a little bit, or a lot in some cases.
And there are things that seemed they could work at the time and don’t in retrospect.
It doesn’t work, by the way.
It’s a sort of horse’s head in a cow’s body.
They want the two of them together.
More of that!"
And it was just like thatSNLsketch:“Bad Idea.”
that have lost more money thanGiglihas.
It’s just that it became a story in and of itself.
This is asbadas it gets.
I thought my job was to be a cipher.
It engendered a lot of negative feelings in people about me.
So in those ways, it’s a gift.
I can sell magazines, but not movie tickets."
I remember feeling like it was the worst of both worlds.
And I didn’t go into it blindly.
I knew that Sean Penn and Madonna were a tabloid story when I was young.
I knew that could happen.
Famous for being an a–hole or a failure and not able to work?"
I can’t think of a worse outcome.
Because I’ve never found any virtue in fame at all.
I’ve probably gotten out of a couple of [traffic] tickets.
I’ve gotten reservations at restaurants.
But the whole point was to be able to do this job.
Otherwise, what is it worth?
It changes the relationships you have with other people.
Well, this doesn’t work.
I’ve got to do something different."
I’ve definitely learned more from failure than I have from success.
You won an Academy Award for Best Picture, which is really the highest mountaintop in our business.
I’m wrapping this up because I’m late for dinner.
My kids are staring at me through the window.
I know how it goes.
And I dare say your writing is pretty damn good.
I was really proud of the work you did onThe Last Duel.
I love you, man.
I want you to do all my interviews.
[Laughs]
I’m free, actually.
It’s true, it ends on a much happier note.
Not easy and not always smooth, but good.
This friendship has been essential and defining and so important to me in my life.
So let me take this opportunity to thank you
in a Zoom interview.
[Laughs] Congratulations on another great piece of work, and I hope people go seeThe Tender Bar.
We’ve just got to get people to see the movies.
Well, that may go away, but we’ll always be good.
And we’ll finally have figured it out when we hit the dinner-theater circuit.
We’re each a fan club of one for the other.
All right, man.
I love you, buddy.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
