Iâll come out and say it⦠I didnât think Ben could do it.
When I first heard that Ben Affleck was going to write and direct a big Hollywood movie and it would be based on a book by Dennis Lehane (â
The film stars Benâs younger brother Casey (whoâs having a fantastic year) and Michelle Monaghan as two private investigators in
Of course nothing in the investigation is simple, and every layer uncovered causing more questions.
So to help promote the film, Miramax held a press day here in
As always, you can either read the transcript below or download the audio as an MP3 by clicking here. And if you missed the movie clips I posted from the film, you can watch them here.
âGone Baby Goneâ opens at theaters everywhere this Friday.
Question: So did you ever think that uttering the line (singing) âI thought I had a double burgerâ would lead 10 years later to all this?
Casey Affleck: Has it? [Laughter] Thatâs the thing. I was trying to figure out what exactly brought me here. Yeah⦠Nope. That was something that I made up in the moment. I donât know where it came from or why but it was ⦠I probably afterward felt like âJesus, why was I singing the double burger song?â
Q: How was it being directed by your brother?
Casey Affleck: Has he said anything about me yet?
Q: We havenât talked to him yet.
Casey Affleck: No. I donât know. Should I slam him or should Iâ¦? [Laughter] It was real easy. It was great. It was easy mostly because it wasâ¦you knowâ¦we kind of just spoke the same language, very comfortable saying to one another âI think thatâs a terrible ideaâ or saying like âThatâs a great idea and what ifâ¦?â We could sort of both build on the otherâs excitement or the way that we agreed. We also kind of had a shorthand where we could go likeâ¦you knowâ¦heâs trying to articulate something and I wouldnât get it and heâd say, âItâs like the time that we went and saw Frank at the place and we showed up and he was asleepâ and Iâd be like, âOh, right, okay. Now I get it.â And those kind of things are really helpful because thereâs not a lot of time when youâre doing a movie. Very often itâs like you do a take and then you rush over and go âNow try it like this. You gotta do it a little bit faster and on the second line you gotta do it like this.â And if you can have some kind of master key that creates some common reference, some sort of reference, itâs really easy. So there were a lot of things that made it great, but more than anything, I have to say it was sort of not that special. It wasnât something that changed our relationship. It wasnât like a huge difference between the way that we relate to any other director. I would just say that he did it very well. He articulated what he wanted. He was also very inclusive, collaborative, patient, and he would listen to me. He would say, âI want to do it like thisâ and I would say, âI really want to try it this other way first.â âFine. Do that.â It was always that attitude and that made me and the other actors and the cinematographer and everyone else I think feel like they were included in the process, that it was their ideas that were on the line as well. And that brings everyone together and makes everyone feel like they all want the movie to be good because itâs their stuff thatâs out there.
Q: Is he sort of the proverbial big brother â kind of gives you unsolicited advice, looking out for you, kicking you around a bit?
Casey Affleck: Heâs not, not really any of those things. Heâs a lot better than that.
Q: Did you have lots of family and friends coming by to visit? Itâs your home and everyone knew where you worked from The Boston Herald.
Casey Affleck: Yeah, theyâre all coming by and standing around. Thereâd be like the camera and then thereâs all the people in front of the camera and then thereâs all the friends and other people that heard about it behind the camera and very often Ben would just say, âLetâs take everyone thatâs in front of the camera and move them behind the camera and everyone thatâs behind the camera move them in front of the cameraâ and in that way youâd kind of get like a real, a much moreâ¦bothâ¦you get to sort of employ your friends and neighbors but you also get a more authentic, like actual, literal neighborhood vibe.
Q: It felt so authentic. Would that just be spontaneous?
Casey Affleck: He did that a few times, yeah, for sure, and thatâs great. Thatâs kind of what he wanted and I think that worked in the movie. I felt like the one thing above all is he captured a real sense of place. Itâs not easy because thereâs a way of doing things. You know like conventionally in movies you have to go through the casting director to get extra castings, to get the 100 people who are supposed to be sitting in the park, and what shows up are the 100 people in Boston that do that for a living that are actors. So you get all these kind of (strikes an actorly pose) actors who are sitting there on the benches and they donâtâ¦and itâs exactly the thing you didnât want. He has a good eye for that and I think that adds up being a real asset.
Q: How often do you actually get a chance to go back home?
Casey Affleck: Well pretty often, you know, holidays and stuff, just enough to go home in the summer for a month or so or a few weeks and hang out. I love it and my family likes it. I still have a lot of friends there and it feels great. L.A. is kind of like home to nobody, you know, city of many kind of a place so even though I live there, I never really feel like itâs my home but
Q: Being a father yourself and seeing what your character did at the end of the movie, do you agree with that?
Casey Affleck: I donât know if I would have done that. I donât think I would have done that but I definitely agree with it. I mean the problem is that itâs sort of required an enormous, I think, a considerable amount of wisdom in the moment to make the right choice. I donât know if I would have had that and been able to kind of put my emotions aside and make what is really kind of in the bigger picture the right decision. I think itâs the right decision because two wrongs donât really make, obviously as youâve heard, donât make a right. Itâs something that you canât just kidnap a kid from a bad home. Itâs not the way it works, you know. That would be total anarchy and the truth is that most of these children sadly who are kidnapped are kidnapped by people who think theyâre doing the right thing for the kid. Theyâll say, âWell Iâm taking him because Iâm the better parentâ or âIâm taking him because Iâm crazy and I think that I can love them in the right way.â You know what I mean? Whatever it is, itâs very rare that you get that kind of bogey man off the street who just wants to do something horrible. Itâs a parentâs worst nightmare, both cases, you know, but the truth is that most kids are taken by someone they know, a relative or someone who think theyâre doing the best thing for the kid and thatâs not the case. And the way we need to stop letting children down and protect them better in this country, because we are sort of letting them down and not protecting them, is to intervene before that happens. You know, get in there, Social Services needs to have more power, they need to be able to intervene, parents need to be protected less. So I think that he made the right decision. He also ends up following up and taking care of the kid.
Q: Do you think your character regrets the decision he made at the end?
Casey Affleck: Yeah, I think heâs definitely conflicted about what has happened. He shows up and the mother still sucks and no ones doing anything about it and it tears him up inside but he also says itâs not completely out of his control and he knows that and heâs going to stay and watch this kid. One hopes that the real life version of that character would then get involved in the kidâs life and makes sure she has a good life. But yeah, heâs not completely comfortable with the decision he makes for sure.
Q: Do you like this kind of moral ambiguity in the script?
Casey Affleck: I think that was always the strong suit, the ending, the kind of moral ambiguity at the end of the movie, and then that was sort of woven backwards throughout all the decisions of characters and moments in the movie. That to me was the movie. âA,â the question of what do you do? And âB,â how do you know whatâs right?â That appeals to me for sure.
Q: âThe Assassination of Jesse Jamesâ apparently had a lot of different versions or cuts before it finally came out. I wanted to know what you thought of the final version. Also, could you talk about some of the stuff that we might have not seen on screen?
Casey Affleck: My best stuff. [Laughs] No. There are a few versions, not as much as has been reported. Always when a movie takes a long time to come out people go, âThe studio fighting, the director canât agree, the stars are taking the movie awayâ or whatever it is. That wasnât the case. It wasnât as exciting or dramatic as that. Andrew is kind of a perfectionist and he just took a long time. I mean itâs absurd sometimes they offer you⦠You shoot a movie for 4 months, you prepare it for 4 years, sometimes the directorâs a writer, a writer-director, and then they want you to edit it in 4 weeks and it doesnât make any sense. The editing in a movie can be a million different things in post production. So it took a long time because it kind of had to. It was definitely Andrewâs vision throughout. Itâs a kind of hand made movie by Andrew Dominik and every last little detail. It would be hubris to say, âWell I think 20 minutes here, we cut out this scene there, the movie would work better.â I wouldnât want to say that before I sat down with the movie for 4 years like he did, you know, because itâs hard to say what makes a movie. Sometimes you go see a movie, you see two versions of it and you go, âA is betterâ and a week later you go, âWhat was I thinking? B is definitely better.â And then with 3 months distance, you then change your mind again and again. It takes a lot of time to really feel like youâve found something that is the âquote unquoteâ best version. The stuff that was taken out ⦠It was a 165 page script. It mostly got wittled away here and there, you know, little trims. The scenes themselves stayed intact long, you know. He liked the scenes that played. They start in the beginning, a man walks up to another man, begins a conversation, the conversation ends. Instead of, as you see in some movies, they cut right into the middle of the conversation, to the point of the conversation that tells that point of the story. He just didnât want to do that so he left the scenes as they were, as far as I can tell, and took out the scenes that he didnât need without trimming the scenes themselves. You know what Iâm saying? Some of the stuff that was taken out was always to me some of the really interesting stuff, you know, what happened to Robert Ford after people in the country turned against him, how he sort of had to go on living once he was despised by everyone. It was like the worst of both worlds. He kind of became super famous, more recognizable than the President of the
Q: Did you go around with private investigators? What did you do to delve into the role?
Casey Affleck: I didnât go around with private investigators so much because it turns out private investigators donât really go around all that much. They spend a lot of time⦠Itâs not so glamorous as it is depicted in movies and that sort of stuff. Itâs kind of like they spend a lot of time sitting at their desks, very smart people I talked to, but itâs a hustle. Itâs a hard job, long hours, and they kind of sit at a desk and gather information and try to track people down through their records and through this and through that and deliver that information to somebody else and itâs all done on the internet. Thereâs not a lot of smoking in the shadows or tailing people in cars. That discovery sort of led us to want to depict the private investigators in this movie in that sort of more mundane kind of work-a-day way that you donât often see which is why when they come to findâ¦you know, when you meet these characters in this movie, they donât seem like Jack Nicholson in âChinatown.â You know what I mean? They seem like these people that sit around their house. Theyâve got their CD rack and they watch movies and they go to work and they donât do anything that special. And this case, when it falls into their lap, is like a really big deal, very foreign to them. They donât really know how to handle it, how to go about it, or even to take the job because they donât feel qualified.
Q: Does your character have more of a history in the novel?
Casey Affleck: Well yeah, thereâs a lot more information about him and his history in the novel. The movie changed quite a bit from the book. The relationship between the girl changed, what his history is as an investigator has changed. The movie wanted to introduce him sort of at the beginning of his career which I think was a good choice, instead of someone who had been around forever and was weathered and seasoned because thatâs someone who has already discovered the kind of moral grey areas in life. You know what I mean? It wouldnât have been as interesting at the end of the movie if he was someone who had been through this and been broken and put back together a million times, whoâd been through divorce, seen people killed. I think that was a really good decision that they made. But yes, in the book he definitely has a history. Did you like the movie?
Q: A lot.
Casey Affleck: You did?
[A chorus of yeses from everyone]
Q: Did you have much involvement with Ben when he was writing it?
Casey Affleck: A little bit. He worked with Aaron Stockard who wrote it with him, but I came onto it, I was doing âJesse James.â He came up and gave me the script and asked me if I wanted to do it and then it was about 6 months later that we started shooting. So it was over the next 6 months there was a fair bit of back and forth. The thing about Ben is that he is really comfortable. I donât think he felt insecure. So he was totally comfortable saying, âWhat do you think of this?â or hearing or taking my ideas and putting them in the script. Thereâs a lot of people that might go or feel sort of territorial or like âMan, if I take this guyâs idea and put it in the script, or if he doesnât like my idea that I suggest to him, what does that say about me as a director or writer?â You know, heâs won an Oscar. Heâs had a lot of success. Heâs sort of a confident person. I think that that enables him to be as collaborative as he was which was great.
Q: Can you talk about the similarities between your character Robert Ford and your character in this film? Theyâre both guys that other men pick on and tell them they canât do that. What appeals to you about that kind of character?
Casey Affleck: Well, I donât know what appeals to me about it. There are definitely some similarities. I mean thereâs one small similarity I guess between Robert Ford and the character in âGone Baby Goneâ which is just that people donât take them seriously or think that theyâre capable of what the character thinks that heâs capable of. Other than that, the character in these two movies couldnât possibly be any more different. As far as why it appealed to me, it wasnât that quality necessarily that appealed to me about the characters but it was sort of other things about both. I guess there was a little bit of overlap there.
Q: No, theyâre so different. I didnât meanâ¦
Casey Affleck: No, I know what you mean. There is definitely that. Itâs a good question but I donât really have a good answer. Iâm not really sure why because I think that the answer is that it wasnât that quality that appealed to me about the characters. You know what I mean?
Q: What did you think about the delay in
Casey Affleck: I wasnât aware of any case in the couple months that we were shooting this that had been going on, but certainly thereâs always something. Thereâs always some kind of kidnapped child media sensation thing or whatever. Iâm not sure why they pick the ones that they pick but itâs usually because theyâre white or because they come from a neighborhood where you wouldnât expect kids to be taken or whatever. There are a lot of kids that get kidnapped all the time that donât get that kind of media attention. I canât really say why those ones get chosen without sounding horribly cynical. Obviously we did this movie well before the Madeline thing. Itâs a sad story, a sad case. Itâs horrible, kind of a parentâs worst nightmare, and I hate to even think about it really. I donât know that much about the details. It was kind of a bigger thing in
Q: What do you have coming up?
Casey Affleck: Nothing. I donât know. Iâm sort of doing this stuff for a while. These movies are both going to roll out a little bit.
Q: What about âAardvarkâ?
Casey Affleck: Iâve got âAardvarkâ to get back to which is pretty exciting actually. Iâve never done a thing like that. Thatâs exactly what Iâm working on from now until Christmas, probably Iâll be doing that. I donât know. Itâs just the holidays and nothing is going to come down the pike yet.
Q: Itâs definitely your season so Iâm sure something else is going to come along soon.
Casey Affleck: Well thanks.
Q: Congratulations on both films.
Casey Affleck: Thank you very much.
Q: Itâs a great performance. I think youâll definitely be nominated. Is that anything that occurs to you when you do a film?
Casey Affleck: Not really. Not really but I canât tell you how nice it is that people responded to both movies. Iâve been on the other side of things and been at tables like this that havenât been so warm so itâs very nice. [Laughter]