In a television interview from last December, Barbara Walters asked the wildly talented actor, screenwriter and director Ben Affleck how today’s Affleck would advise the one of yesteryear on how to navigate stardom. Implicit in Walters’ question was the assumption that he would tell the Affleck of old to avoid the myriad errors that had reduced him to a Bentley driving, J-Lo dating, and bad script choosing joke.
As National Review’s Ross Douthat put it about Affleck in a review from last November, after winning a screenwriting Oscar for Good Will Hunting, “Affleck spent the next decade embodying Hollywood as we wish it weren’t. He starred in bad action movies, mediocre dramas, lousy comedies, and bloated Titanic wannabes. He made not one but two bad movies with Michael Bay….” [read]
