How much longer can Ben Affleck ride this wave of pity? It’s three weeks to Oscar. Voting ends two weeks tomorrow. And the Directors Guild has just joined the Actors Guild and the Producers Guild and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Broadcast Film Critics Association in naming Ben Affleck and Argo the best of the year.
We get it. He was snubbed. But this…
This is extraordinary.
An extraordinary campaign, non?
The Afflecks have been happy-family-ing their kids since October. Even when other contenders revealed themselves, even when they started talking about Lincoln and Les Miserables and then Zero Dark Thirty, even then the Afflecks dutifully showed up at the Farmers Market every Sunday, Ben in new clothes, smiling at his wife, affectionately giggling with his daughters, they never gave up.
According to Sasha Stone at Awards Daily, the Argo Oscar campaign is being managed by the same people who worked on Crash. Crash crept up on Brokeback Mountain and surprised everyone, including a stunned Jack Nicholson, you remember? Jack voted for Brokeback, but everyone else voted for their friends. In Crash. Think of the cast of Argo. Think of that ensemble. Now think of all their friends. The Argo campaign team is relying on those friends. And on Ben’s MiniVan Majority popularity, helped, always, by his MiniVan-friendly wife Jennifer Garner, who continues to join him at these events, only they continue to refuse to pose together on the carpet, which, I mean, you have to appreciate the absurdity of this, non?
When it’s the paps, and their kids, oh, because it’s an “accidental, not on purpose” sighting, we get them in the same frame. On an official outing? Husband and wife at the photo call? Never. They would never dream of exploiting their marriage that way!
No doubt, it’s all been planned. Everything. At this point, even her wardrobe is being planned by campaign staff. Look at this here, Garner at the DGAs on Saturday night. This is political wife hair. It’s a safe political wife dress. She was just baking cookies earlier in the afternoon, you know? And how can a suburban mom resist a pair of (gross) satin shoes?
