Ben Affleck on ’Gone Baby Gone‘

Once renowned for all the wrong reasons, Ben Affleck is making waves with his striking directorial debut ’Gone Baby Gone‘, an adaptation of ’Mystic River‘ author Dennis Lehane‘s Boston-set crime and abduction thriller starring Affleck‘s kid brother Casey. The film‘s UK release has been postponed in sympathy with the Madeleine McCann case, but it's opening nationwide this week

Was there a certain amount of hometown pride behind your decision to pick this particular novel to adapt?
‘I wish I could say it was pride, I think it was mostly comfort. I knew I could rely on what I knew about Boston, what I knew about the culture, the accents, the people, the locations. As a director it was a safety net more than anything.’

Did you consider playing the lead?
‘Originally, I got the book to develop as a project for me to act in. I wasn’t going to direct it, I was going to write the script, act in it, find a director, the standard-issue actor development. And then six months into that process I was thinking: I want to direct. And this seemed like a good project.’

How did becoming a parent affect your perspective on the events in the story?
‘You just feel things more acutely. All things. Particularly those that have to do with mortality and intimacy, love and life and things that you were just too callow in your youth to think about much. Also, you understand what a profound loss is, in a way you never understood before. What the most profound loss is. I never really felt those ‘Missing’ posters, they never really touched me. I understood them logically, I saw them graphically, but I never felt what they meant.’

What do you think of the decision to delay the film’s release in the UK?
‘I think it was a good decision, a tasteful decision. Having worked with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, who consulted on this movie, you meet parents who have dealt with this for months and months, it’s obviously the most painful thing you can go through. And anything that potentially exacerbates that, you want to be very sensitive to. There are things that are more important than releasing a movie and making a few dollars.’

In the movie, cop Remy supports bending the law to protect kids in danger. Do you sympathise with that?
‘I do, I sympathise with him a lot. But I also see the other side. The movie sympathises with everybody, it doesn’t judge anybody. It views people in all the ways that they’re broken or holding themselves up despite whatever hurt or confusion they have, respects them as people, the humanity of them.’

Is there anything you’re eyeing as the next directorial project?
‘I’ve just finished “State of Play” with Kevin Macdonald. But I’m starting to miss directing. I get scripts and the opportunity to direct other movies. I’ve had some amusing, interesting offers.’

How has being an internet sensation (with US talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel’s ‘I’m Fucking Ben Affleck’ video) affected you?
‘If I could get a penny for each download… That video says over and over again: “I’m fucking Ben Affleck, I’m fucking Ben Affleck”, over and over, fuck, fuck, fuck. It talks about anal sex, and yet women in their fifties will come up to me with a sort of giggle, and say: I loved the video. It’s because you can watch the internet in private. Otherwise people wouldn’t see it, they wouldn’t rent it. If I was in a gay porn movie, they wouldn’t go see it.’

‘Gone Baby Gone’ opens on June 6.

---