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Daredevil Interview: Ben Affleck Dares To Be A Hero

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Continuing Comics2Film'scoverage of Twentieth Century Fox's Daredevil press junket wepresent the latest transcript of the round-table interviews. 

In this segment,Ben Affleck talks about bringing Marvel's man without fear to life.

This interviewdoes contain SPOILERS, so read it at your own risk.

Q: How does it feel to be part of what Hollywood is calling the world's mostcelebrated love affair?

That's you that's calling it that. That's not Hollywood. 

It's a little weird.That's a little strange, so it's new for me. I've been in public relationshipsbefore, you know, with Gwyneth [Paltrow] and it wasn't quite the same type ofthing. I don't know what's different about it. I didn't anticipate that it wouldbe different. I thought, 'OK, there's a degree of publicity that kind of goesalong with this,' but I was a little bit shocked. 

I feel like I take a lot ofcomfort in the fact that there's only so much you can say about that stuff andthen there's somebody else, then Colin Farrell's dating Britney Spears andyou're off the hook entirely.

Q: Do youwant to clear up whatever the rumor of the week is about the wedding?

I'm not even abreast of all the rumors in the ways that you guys probablyare. I can tell you that nothing's changed as far as I know. I'm not up to datewith the papers. 

I'm not getting married any time in the near future, so don'tworry. 

Q: Was itdifficult playing a blind person. Did having to pretend to have a handicaphinder you or help you as an actor?

OK, I'm glad to get to some of the questions that won't make any of the copy,but yes, you can all take a little break now.

Yeah, it was interestingplaying a blind man. What's interesting about it,as opposed to, you look at like Red Dragon where Emily Watson, I thought, did agreat job. I watched that, playing a blind character. Pacino did it famously andwon the Oscar in Scent of a Woman. So there was a high bar for playing blindpeople that's out there. 

The interesting thing about this was that, while he'sblind with his eyes, because of this sort of superpower that he has, with thisadvanced hearing that allows him to create this sort of three dimensional map,using sonar, of his surroundings, that he's not, in the way that we think ofpeople who are blind, technically blind.

A lot of times, as Matt Murdock, it's kind of an act that he's having to playat being more helpless than he really is. What I did is I worked with a guy bythe name of Tom Sullivan, who's blind. He's one of these guys who like, jumpsout of airplanes and is a really good skier and makes you feel reallyinadequate. He helped me in terms of talking about how one, who is blind, whocan't use their eyes, uses their other senses to navigate their surroundings,and so on.

The big cheat for me was that I was able to use these contact lenses, whichwere completely opaque, which I couldn't see out of at all, which meant that Ididn't have to consciously act blind. It just sort of took that away. So then thechallenge was just not walking into furniture.

Q: What isyour brother, Casey Affleck, reaction to you being a superhero? How about KevinSmith?

My brother, I feel is a superhero. 

Incidentally, my brother has a movieopening this weekend as well, which I think is one of the great, American artmovies ever made. It's a staggering movie. Worth checking out. Really, reallybrilliant. Matt [Damon] is in it. Gus Van Sant directed it. It's called Gerry.It's like playing art houses and stuff but really worth seeing.

I think Kevin's Internet Boy. That would be his superhero. Talkback man!Kevin manages to keep up with every single person who posts on the internet inthe world, about movies, Kevin writes a reply.

Q: Daredevildeparts from the comics in that the hero lets the guy die near thebeginning. How did you feel about that?

That was a realcontroversial issue. I know that the really hard-corefans,  myself included and I think probably even Marvel felt that that wasstepping over a line, in a way. We went back and forth on that many, many times.

Ultimately what we decided, and that's the one way that it kind of deviatesfrom the heart of the book. Where Daredevil never killed anybody. He does letBullseye drop in the comic book and in this one we throw him out the window, andthat's very consistent with the comic.

He was not as vengeful as we portrayedhim in the beginning, but for the sake of giving the character an arc fromletting him go from a guy who's seeking, ultimately, vengeance to a guy who understands the difference between that and justice, and whounderstands aboutmercy and compassion, largely through the love of this woman. We kept it inthere.

You know, there's part of me that's ambivalent about it, because it is themost significant departure from the tenor and tone of the comic book itself,which is the thing that I wanted to be the most faithful to, but I do think itworks in the context of the movie and I think, ultimately, he's not ThePunisher. He's not a guy who would just a guy who's a vigilante who shoots badguys and kills them in the comics. And ultimately that's not where Daredevilends up. Where Daredevil ends up at the end of this movie is very, veryconsistent with who he is in the comic.

Q: Anotherdeparture that will upset fans is the use of prescription drugs.

I thought that was emblematic of a way in which this has its own tone.

It's alittle grittier, a little bit more realistic and it represents the fact that, inthis comic book superhero universe when a guy gets hit, or stabbed, he bleedsand there're consequences to it. Still, as a comic book movie, you have tosuspend your disbelief if you were to add up all the  injuries the guytakes over course of the movie it's...borderline, right, that you could reallykind of keep going. 

I think that speaks to the violence issue that there areconsequences to violence, that this is not wonton, graphic, random violencewithout consequence, that it hurts. People suffer. So I supported that and Ilike that part of the movie.

Q: If you had to giveone of your senses, which would it be?

Probably smell. 

I have a friendof mine, a guy named Chris Andrian, who Iknew when I was a kid, who, in fact, introduced me to Daredevil when I was nineyears old. I just ran into him again. He e-mailed me, I hadn't seen him inyears, 'I can't believe this. You're doing Daredevil. It's amazing.'

He sort of couldn't fathom it so he came down and visited me on the set andwhen he came down and visited me it turned out that he had this very rare,little known condition. I was like, 'What's the story with this condition? Whatdo you mean?'

And he said, 'Well one of the things is I can't smell anything.' 

I said, 'You have no sense of smell?'

And he was like, 'No.'

I said, 'I never knew that.'

He said, 'Yeah, when people would say, "oh that stinks," I wouldjust kind of go along with it, you know?'

But like Chris never seemed to be lacking anything of any kind so I have tosay, and I never noticed it, so that has to be the most disposable of allsenses. Although if you have it, I think you'd miss it.

But half the things you smell though you wish you hadn't so that's like, youknow...

Q: You'vesaid you're a big fan of Daredevil. Why is that?

It's hard to say, probably. I suppose it reveals something. This is probablya conversation better suited to my shrink, but then, why not? Every other issuein my life I seem to be capable of bearing with the world.

I don't really know. I know that when I was a kid, I think there was acontrast between the heroes in the spectrum of this comic book universe, manyof whom were very chaste, boy-scout, black and white, golden age, fifties comicbook heroes that were predictable. You always knew they'd always do the rightthing. They were fighting intergalactic foes. 

It was fun in a kind of little kidway but it was nothing that I could ever kind of identify with and as I got intopre-adolescence and into adolescence, this guy represented something to me thatI guess I thought was more realistic. That sounds funny to say about a guy whoputs on a red suit and fights crime at night, but it was like he was a flawedhero. He had his own struggles. He was openly religious. He had these tragiclove affairs. He struggled with himself as much as he struggled with the rest ofit. He didn't always win. He didn't always do the right thing. I guess thatresonated with me a little bit more.

It was also more, kind of like,  ground-level guy. He wasn't fightingvarious other intergalactic empires or traveling to alternate universes. Therewas never a ring that shot green rays. He was just a guy who would evolve. Also,I think in particular, he had this handicap. He had this peculiar vulnerabilitythat I thought was really interesting.

And I also just have to credit thewriters and artists who worked on thatcomic then and now and made it, in my opinion, a really significant work. One that I was really drawn to. 

It's hard to say what makes a story good and anotherstory bad. It's relative. It's subjective. If I polled all of you in the roomyou'd probably all have different opinions about various movies and novels. It'sjust something that I thought was good.

Q: Whatdo you think accounts for the surge of interest is heroes? Will this help orhurt Daredevil?

It'sinteresting. There's been a kind of seismic shift about how the CIA isreally represented  in a way that's different. If you look back at...whatwas the Redford movie...Condor. Where he says, 'You people. You think that notgetting caught in a lie is the same as telling the truth.'

There was a time when the anti-authoritarianism and the government scandalsand the Viet Nam war had made a generation of people very skeptical of authorityand wanted to pull back and reign in secret government programs and the like. 

Now, with Colin's movie [The Recruit] that's out now, I haven't seen thatactually but theywere citing lines in the movie where guys were saying like, 'Do I get to killpeople,' and Pacino says, 'Do you want to kill people?'

And it's very much like the Bill Casey mentality of like, 'Give us free reignand we'll be able to fix the problems and don't ask questions.'

I think it's a question of like, as people feel more and more in jeopardythey want these kinds of guardians, the watchmen, the policemen, even thevigilantes...there's more sympathy for them. The NYPD went from dealing with theAmadou Diallo case and all these scandals and segued right into: people recognizenow, by and large, that these people are heroes. They're here to protect us.

I think probably, that that trend, means that people are more interested instories about heroes and the conflict of people being out there, trying toprotect us at large.

I don't know how that'll help us or hurt us with the movie, or if it's reallyrelevant, but I do think that it's interesting to not that, societally we'remore willing, all of a sudden, to be less restrictive of the people who areprotecting us and maybe less judgmental of them.

Q: Whatinfluence has Kevin Smith had on your career and on this movie?

Kevin is the reason Good Will Hunting got made. Kevin is the reason I have acareer, playing leading roles and not being stuck playing obnoxious, bad-guybullies. Kevin believed in me after Mallrats, cast me as his lead in Chasing Amy. 

We were doing Chasing Amy and he told Miramax who had already passed onGood Will Hunting initially that they should read the script when it was inturnaround from Castle Rock, and that's the reason we got it made there.

Kevin has always been a big believer in me. I really owe the guy a big partof my career. If not the whole thing. Don't tell him that because he'll ask formoney.

He's also seen, kind of coincidentally...I guess he's sort of the godfather,in some circles, of the comic book movie connection. Here he is, the guy is sucha comic book enthusiast, he owns a comic book story, he worked for Avi, writingDaredevil and he's a filmmaker. I think it was a natural connection for Mark togo to this guy. 

In some ways, when you do something like this, take a character that'salready been built, you kind of seek peoples' blessings, who are people who havealready worked on it. Kevin did a great run of Daredevil. Like the people likeFrank Miller, Kevin Smith are the people that Mark and I kind of wanted toplease with this because they represent the hard-core fans, the base supportgroup.

Kevin was very enthusiastic. Brokered my connection with Mark and has been achampion of me doing this. Very encouraging. Came in and watched early cuts ofthe movie. Gave feedback. 

Is in the movie and actually isn't nearly as bad anactor in this movie as he is in his own movies, which is curious. It kind ofseems like he should get a guest director to come in and direct him. Tell himlike not to bug his eyes out so much. Kevin does like a weird, Al Jolsonperformance thing in his own movies.

But he's kind of grounded and down-to-earth.

Q: Is ittrue that you originally went after the part of Bullseye rather than Daredevil?

What it was was,they wanted to go really early. I was shooting Gigliand by the time I heard about this Daredevil thing, that they weredoing it and Kevin brought it up to me. I was already doing this other movie andthey wanted to go in that slot, which broke my heart because I so wanted to beinvolved with this. 

They had a release date issue that they wanted tomeet. Movies have another whole side to them that has to do with what quarterthey come out and where they fit. Movies, particularly with large, mufti-nationalcorporations, they're basically these huge pipes. The pipes cost a lot of moneyjust to maintain and the pipes need to be filled with product at specificintervals, so there was that issue.

So I said, 'Well, Jesus. I guess I can't play Daredevil because I'm notavailable but maybe this Bullseye...' I'd always loved Bullseye. In theforward I wrote to Kevin's graphic novel, the run of Daredevil that he did, Italked about sympathizing with Bullseye. I thought he was one of the greatvillains. You kind of love him. Colin was the perfect choice for that because heis literally the lovable rogue, you know.

So I went in and sat down with them just to say, 'Well maybe I'll be able todo this just for a few weeks.' They could compress the days and so on and soforth and Mark was like, 'I think maybe we could work with you as Daredevil withthat. What do you think?'

I said, 'That would be a dream come true for me.'

So that's how it evolved from Bullseye to Daredevil. I would have been happyto play Bullseye. That's a great part.

Q: But thenthey started the movie later than planned anyway. Why did Fox change their mindabout the scheduling?

What happened was, I guess they just decided...a lot of times you'll hear,'We really need to go. We really need to go because the studio wants togo.' 

And then, as it turns out they're kind of like, 'Well, actually we won'treally be ready until a couple of months after that and we would really ratherhave this much time to prep and we could go that soon but it'll cost moremoney,' and the urgency fades.

I'm sure what happened was that Fox rearranged some movies. You'd have to goask Sam Rothman or Rupert Murdoch. I don't really know the answer to that. 

They slid the movie, functionally is what happened. They compressedback-to-back. They started shooting two weeks of the origin stuff with thelittle kid, while I was still shooting Gigli so technically I hadtwo movies shooting at the same time. I just wasn't in that two-week section offilming and then as soon as I wrapped Gigli I went right into thenext day they were doing Daredevil, which meant that a lot of thephysical training that I had to do for this movie was that after work on GigliI would wrap and then go train for three or four hours at night. That was sortof exhausting.

Q: In Daredevilyou play a man without fear. In real life, is Ben Affleck a man without fear?

I have so many fears that it would be hard to itemize them all. My realsuperhero would be like Anxiety Guy, I think. 

What was that movie with Ben Stiller? Where the all --? You know what I mean?They all had funny --

Q: What'syour worst fear?

I used to be really scared of flying until I took, actually from Pearl Harbor, in fact. One of the good things to come out of my doing that movie. Itook flying lessons and that really got me past that fear. 

It's like a control thing with me. I don't know why I think I'd do any betterflying the plane. Clearly I'm much worse, but it's just that thing of you don'thave control over it. 'Are you guys alright up there? Is everything good?'

So that was fear of mine. I don't know, as you get older you get muchmore...you know...I put my seat belt on now. Stuff like that. I am just muchmore conscious and fearful [of things]. I think everybody kind of is, especiallyin the last year or two of just. Even look at yesterday's news [of the SpaceShuttle tragedy]. There's that kind of fear of turning on the TV and somehorrible thing has happened. 

So living with that kind of awareness, that's a lot of anxiety.

Q: Doyou think Daredevil will do well with your personal life so muchin the spotlight?

I'm hopeful that it'll all go alright.

Yeah. Ultimately I'd like to be able to work in this business and make moviesand quite be so, as somebody astutely put it, in the middle of the tornado of itall. Basically the trade-off is money. I just means you don't make as much moneybut you still can, based on the merit of your work...like right now, the bigpart of why I get cast in things, I suppose, I like to think it's because I'm agreat towering talent of an actor. But no, some of it has to do withmarketability, visibility, name on a poster, sitting down talking with youfolks.

That's the trade off. You make a bunch of money because you kind of sell yourlife along with the movie. The story of yourself, that sort of thing. So there'sa part of me that wants to segue from doing that kind of acting and work with movies to a kind where you get to take more of a back seat and somebodyelse is up here talking about their love life and all their personal details.You can do acting in the way that I did with Shakespeare In Love, or Boiler Room, and come in and out and do stuff. 

Or maybe direct and write stuff whereit's not so much about...the work speaks for itself. And you know, nobody evenwants to talk to directors all that much.

Q: Daredevilaims to be a more gritty and realistic superhero movie, yet it still hascostumes and an element of fantasy. Is that difficult to balance?

Well I will say...you do movies like this and they take place in thisalternate universe. This one is unique in the comic book movie adaptationpantheon in that, while it has this tonal thing of people dressing up incostumes and fighting crime and super villains and stuff, there is a dual tone.There's also an element of realism in it. That's not tongue in cheek. 

It dares to ask the audience to take the characters seriously and to reallyget invested in their emotional journey which could be absurd. So you have tosort of invest yourself in it, be convicted of it.

In order to do that, that was hard for me because it's a little far a fieldfrom my everyday life; putting on a costume, doing flips, fighting crime, peoplegetting stabbed and just operatic, melodramatic-scale good versus evil. 

One ofthe things I could identify with this movie was, what's at the center of itreally, which is this love story. The transforming power of love and theredemptive qualities that falling in love has.

Without going into too much detail I can tell you that that's the thing thatI could identify with and I used that, as an actor, as a kind of center piece tohold onto when sometimes it felt like, 'boy, I'm trying to think what this islike in my life and I can't think of anything.'

Q: What does Matt think about you being a superhero?

He's threatened. 

He feels he's intimidated and wishes he'd made that choice. A little jealous.He likes the tights.

What does Matt think? He's kind of like, 'Hey, man! So, you're doing thesuperhero thing.'

Matt's a hale fellow, a pretty genial guy but I think he's a little bitintimidated. I know he feels a little bit comforted because on those lonelynights, when he hears a noise in the room he can say, 'Honey, get up. Will yougo look downstairs,' and you know, I'll go down and look downstairs.

Q: What does JenniferLopez think of all that?

Jennifer always is the one who goes downstairs. I'm like, 'Honey, get up! Golook downstairs.'

Check backtomorrow for part II of Ben Affleck's Daredevil interview!