The plan, as I’ve been telling you all along, was to let Batman take over. To give the divorce gossip its due time before crushing it with work talk and superhero excitement. And now we’re seeing the rollout.
Warner Bros announced yesterday that Ben Affleck will begin directing Live By Night in November. Elle Fanning, Zoe Saldana, and Sienna Miller had previously been confirmed to star. (Ben Affleck and Sienna Miller on a set together, after all that’s happened recently. I want you to think about that.) He’ll take the summer to work on the script and more casting. The film, so far, is still supposed to be released October 2016. Deadline then reported that Ben will be co-writing, directing, and starring in a Batman standalone movie after he completes Live By Night. That’s also for Warner Bros.
I’ve written often about the Warner Bros boys – Ben, Leo, Tom Hardy. There’s an entire studio machine behind him, supporting him practically through no matter what. Because for Ben, it’s always been the work that helps, always temporarily. As I mentioned the other day – click here for a refresher – it’s almost like he f-cks up so that he can come back. He did it after JLO. He’s trying to do it now. This is classic gambler mentality. I understand it because I have it.
For six months between second and third year university, I was a reckless gambler – mahjong and Casino Windsor. There were some weeks I was so skint I ate one fast food meal a day, using the rest of my money on cigarettes, and cash-withdrew from my credit card to try and chase. The chase is what a gambler lives for. It’s no fun to sit down at a table and be up right away. The excitement comes from being down. You’re in the hole for several hundred dollars and you have to chase your way back. The high when that happens? It’s AMAZING. This is Ben Affleck’s pattern. He goes into the hole and then he has to chase; it’s boring to just get to the top and stay there.
Here’s Ben in Atlanta yesterday, with the wedding ring back on, after visiting the Centre for Civil and Human Rights. PEOPLE continues to report on the breakdown of the marriage and the narrative that they’re driving is called:
Fed Up vs Controlling.
She was “fed up” with his shenanigans and he couldn’t stand it anymore because she was too “controlling”. Oh but what guy couldn’t relate to that magic word?
Controlling.
It’s an interesting battleground we’re setting up here, isn’t it? Jennifer Garner has the MiniVan Majority on lockdown. So why not appeal to the Dude? Ben’s playing Batman. He’s running his own show. He’s just been unleashed. He’s the one who’s living the dream, man! He’s the one we can all live vicariously through. Think about it. You ever listen to a group of guys talking about The Town? Men LOVE The Town. This is Ben Affleck’s demo. The same demo that could secretly relate to Nick Dunne. Are Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner basically Gone Girl?
Yesterday I wrote about David Fincher’s comments about Ben’s performance in the movie. Click here for a refresher. A few entertainment outlets have since picked up on that. I have more that they can use, once again from the Gone Girl DVD commentary. (Cleary we need to be watching movies with commentary for more gossip.)
So that confrontation scene near the end of the film, you remember? Ben as Nick calls Rosamund Pike as Amy a “c-nt”? Turns out it wasn’t scripted that way. It was Ben who suggested the word, the reaction:
Fincher says, “This is a scene that we kind of Frankenstein-ed from two or three other scenes that were written for this moment. We were rehearsing on the day and kind of sent the crew out as we were trying to figure out what the thesis scene was going to be. We needed a scene where he gets trapped, but that they also have a discussion about what all this is — what it all means. So Ben grabbed Rosamund and [said], ‘I’d just call her a c-nt. I don’t know any other way.’ I said, ‘OK, so you would do that.’ Everybody [said], ‘Oh, no. You can’t. You can not use that word. You can not use that word.’ I said, ‘Well, what if Rosamund takes the word back? What if she says, ‘Yeah, OK. That word has no power over me. Let me tell you what, if that’s how little you think of me that you would use that word, let me remind you that this is who I am. I’m that person, yes. But if you look at your life, you were never more alive and never better than when you were trying to be somebody that this person would like.'”
Fincher adds, “And then it pushes him into this kind of honesty where he says, ‘What is it about this what you would even want?’ He rattled that off. Ben, when he gets on a roll, he can get angry and he went on this roll about ‘Yes, we loved each other, but look what’s happened, look where we are now, look what it is,’ and Rosamund just said, ‘Well that’s marriage.’ And I said, ‘Hm, maybe not that reading, but that’s a pretty powerful idea that that’s what it’s all about. It is about knowing your limitations and knowing the things that you are attracted to and knowing that they are unhealthy to you. It certainly illuminated for me what this relationship is about and why it was as poisonous and dramatic as it had become.”
“I’d just call her a c-nt. I don’t know any other way.”
He’s a writer. So he could have been thinking through this scene as a writer, totally. Sometimes though, writers get to where they need to go by drawing from personal experience. Way back in July 2013, before they cast Gone Girl, you know who I suggested for Amazing Amy?
It was Jennifer Garner. Click here to revisit that post.
Source (Thanks V!)
