00:02:05.860He's really interesting and he's really talented.
00:02:08.660And everyone was like, yeah, we've seen his terrible movies.
00:02:11.960he made a lot of bad choices in his life now I think we followed him for such a long time that
00:02:19.740we got to know a bit more about who Ben Affleck really is I interviewed him a few years ago I
00:02:25.800remember I had to fly from Los Angeles to Madrid because there was a press junkie there and I got
00:02:34.200five minutes with Ben Affleck and Charlie Hunnam they were paired together and I remember the
00:02:39.880editor of the tv show i worked for told me like hey we need some personal stuff otherwise we're
00:02:46.240not interested in the interview so i had this pressure on me when i walked into that room
00:02:50.680and as soon as i stepped inside someone told me from the sideline hey no personal questions here
00:02:57.140and i was like oh no this is not gonna work and then as soon as i sit down ben affleck just opens
00:03:05.060it up like this we will be in singapore tomorrow so how are you guys with jet lags and stuff are
00:03:12.660you are you good with that do you have like a trick that works honestly it used to be terrible
00:03:18.660for me and then when i um stopped drinking i found that that helped a lot like you actually get much
00:03:23.940better sleep and uh you know like you don't not just tempted to stay out late at night and then
00:03:29.540get less sleep you know so uh that's my tip not everybody may want to take it yeah that's what i
00:03:37.740love about ben affleck he's so unfiltered and that got him into trouble so many times he's saying
00:03:43.560what the publicists are probably telling him not to say but he's saying it anyways and sometimes
00:03:49.240he gets in trouble for it but most of the time i feel like people are like yeah let's be real
00:03:54.840there's so few real people in Hollywood and I think that's why we started really appreciating
00:04:00.820people like Ben Affleck. I mean when you see him sort of, not sort of, he was stumbling right there
00:04:07.040to find his balance. Hey Ben, how's it going man? Oh it's the final last night bro. Everybody's
00:04:13.080heard about you but I see you fine man. Well you know, it happens to slip but I'm not gonna let
00:04:18.260derail me in. That's right man. Are you gonna check yourself back into rehab Ben? Thank you very much
00:04:22.340Anyway, I wanted to talk about this new interview that Ben Affleck did with Josh Horowitz, this podcast called Happy, Sad, Confused, where he talks about this time in the beginning of 2000s where he's saying that he was so ridiculed in the press and it got to a point where people just could not stand him anymore.
00:04:44.420I was so uncool and so unsought after and so kind of,
00:04:48.420in fact at one point I went back and looked at some of the press
00:04:51.420like around and about me from like 2003, 2004,
00:05:08.420And there was this sort of gleeful celebration
00:05:11.420vibration and uh kind of hideous schaden cultural collective schadenfreude at at at what was going
00:05:19.220on with her and i experienced something kind of similar which was like i mean there were people
00:05:23.280who were saying like you know i mean literally like well one hopes ben affleck is dead soon
00:05:27.360you know stuff like that yeah yeah he also said in this interview that it was so bad that people
00:05:32.340wanted him dead and at that point he couldn't get any parts he said that all his bad movie choices
00:05:38.700had made him unhirable, basically, in Hollywood.
00:05:42.480And of course, a lot of the things that was going on in his personal life
00:05:46.940made it even more challenging for him to get accepted.
00:05:50.460And that's when he decided that he wanted to direct movies instead.
00:05:53.960And he said that he pitched projects to Hollywood
00:05:56.440where he would be invisible, basically.
00:05:59.160Like, okay, I have a movie, I'm going to direct it,
00:06:02.300and I'm not going to star in it, don't worry about that.
00:06:05.080And he said that he even didn't want to be credited in a big way on the movies so that when people saw his name, they wouldn't think that, oh, it's a Ben Affleck movie.
00:06:15.680Yeah. And then he mentions what's happening with Digger right now, the Tom Cruise movie that flopped so tremendously at the box office.
00:06:24.320A little bit like the high school bullying thing, like people who hadn't even seen movies that were supposed to be like you see it happening now, frankly, with Digger.
00:06:31.220Everybody wants to celebrate this bomb as if, like, it's the most exciting thing that happened.
00:06:36.880And of course, when it comes to flops, Ben Affleck knows what he's talking about.
00:06:40.740And talking about Tom Cruise, GQ and the same reporter actually interviewed Ben Affleck.
00:06:45.620And that's a very different interview than what he did with Tom Cruise.
00:06:49.060In this interview, he talks about something that I find very fascinating as well.
00:06:52.760How a middle-aged man like Ben, who's 54, I think, still makes so many headlines.
00:06:59.780Ben's personal life is still like a favorite amongst the tabloids.
00:07:04.340I have them much less frequently now, which is nice.
00:07:07.900But still occasionally these strange flare-ups of like, yeah, at the time there were both rumors that the FBI had raided my home and that my house had burned out.
00:07:18.420Like they can't both be true, you know.
00:07:40.140Yeah, I think one of the reasons why people are invested in Ben's personal life so much
00:07:45.560is because he feels like an unfinished story.
00:07:48.940We still wonder if he's going to be okay, if he's going to find love in his life.
00:07:54.060will he find peace and what is he gonna say next that's gonna backfire on him i think there's
00:07:59.600something similar going on with jennifer anderson how so many people are rooting for her so many
00:08:05.920people want jennifer anderson to be happy and to find love in her life and i think people feel a
00:08:11.900bit the same way about ben affleck and every time we see him make another bad choice we're just like
00:08:18.220oh Ben don't go there we know how it's going to end like when he got back together with Jennifer
00:08:24.180Lopez everyone's like I don't think that's going to be a happy ending and of course it wasn't and
00:08:30.460then we were like Ben we told you so why are you doing this to yourself again and although I think
00:08:36.920we want Ben to find love and be happy we also enjoy watching him being a bit miserable because
00:08:44.480I think when we look at a miserable Ben Affleck we feel like okay my life isn't that bad. Ben
00:08:50.200Affleck is suffering more. Look at how miserable you can be even though when you have so much money
00:08:56.880and fame and success you can still feel like that. I have to admit that back when Good Will
00:09:04.320Hunting came out and everything that followed that I was one of the people who thought okay
00:09:09.600Matt Damon is the clever the smart one here and Ben Affleck is just like lucky to tag along
00:09:16.620because that was the public image that we were kind of sold back then and now we realize that
00:09:22.600when you listen to him talk in interviews I listen to him talk about his AI company the one
00:09:28.080he sold recently for over 500 million dollars in the GQ interview and I was like this guy
00:09:34.380is really smart and he is a very good businessman and i think one of ben affleck's best traits is
00:09:40.680his vulnerability he is not afraid to talk about his feelings he's not afraid to talk about all
00:09:48.720his failures all the bad decisions that he made he seemed very humble about his success another
00:09:56.320thing that i find so likable with ben affleck is his sense of humor and the way that he doesn't
00:10:03.040take himself seriously he can laugh about all his mistakes he doesn't just own them but he laughs
00:10:09.840about them and this interview that he did with subway takes i don't know if you've seen that
00:10:16.180series on youtube this comedian kareem rama is bringing celebrities onto the subway in new york
00:10:22.100and then he has like these fun conversations with them and for some reason he just brings out the
00:10:27.200humanity and the realness in people and this conversation that he had with ben affleck was
00:10:32.340just so refreshing they start talking about how he actually feels about doing interviews like doing
00:10:39.540promotional stuff for movies and i know a lot of celebrities most of them actually find it really
00:10:47.340awkward and they know that as soon as they're out there selling a movie they have to say something
00:10:54.580fun or something interesting something that will grab people's attention if there's a viral moment
00:11:01.120that's amazing if not at least try and make some headlines from something you're saying but there's
00:11:08.400also a fine line there because if you say something very controversial or politically incorrect it
00:11:16.080could really harm the movie and that won't make the studio very happy with you i'm aversive to
00:11:21.680this process but mostly just because i feel self-conscious and a little bit shy and not like
00:11:26.120Like, you know, you sort of, when I started doing this kind of thing, it felt like more fun and exciting.
00:11:31.820And now it just feels like, you know, what's the risk of cancellation?
00:11:36.300You know, it's like a little bit anxiety provoking because you sort of feel like, oh, all right, you know, am I going to be funny or amusing or interesting?0.90
00:11:43.820Like, why the fuck do you want to listen to this?
00:11:45.140I'm a lot more comfortable, like, trying to do something that's fictional than just thinking, like, oh, who I am is just going to be so endlessly interesting and entertaining.0.98
00:11:53.140Because, like everybody, I know that I'm mostly boring.
00:11:56.120Yeah, I would never think of someone like Ben Affleck to be shy,