Raw capture — raw/ben-affleck-s-turbulent-year-navigating-grief-the-art-of-not-caring.md
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzraLR2VkNM date_fetched: 2026-10-09
Speaker A: I mean, once you've been the like, however briefly, like the world's, you know, leading example of the beleaguered man having a cigarette, like behind his house, you know, and people look at a picture of you and go, yeah, I felt that way too. I don't have to say what it is. We try to pretend that, like everything I do has always been happy and cheerful and perfect. It hasn't.
Speaker B: Ben Affleck, you are a director. Actor, Oscar winning screenwriter. You're a new movie which you direct and star in. It's called Animals. Welcome to one more question. Thanks for doing this.
Speaker A: Thank you very much.
Speaker B: The last time I saw you was in this building. The Artist Equity offices are, I think, down, upstairs, downstairs.
Speaker A: There's no upstairs. We're on the top floor.
Speaker B: Okay. We're on the penthouse. It was like, I think two weeks after the LA fires and you were in a very intense tabloid moment. Maybe your house had burned down or maybe it hadn't.
Speaker A: Oh, right.
Speaker B: Maybe the FBI had raided your home, maybe it hadn't. Maybe I'm paying less attention this time around, but it feels like a quieter moment for you.
Speaker A: Yeah, that was just like a. I have them much less frequently now, which is nice, but still occasionally these strange flare ups of like, yeah, at the time they were both rumors that the FBI had raided my home and that my house had burned down. Like, they can't both be true, you know, or maybe they burned the shots. Yeah, I don't know. It's like all these things and then none of it turns out to be true and nobody remembers it. There is a kind of cultural amnesia or something where just there's maybe so much like flotsam and jetsam that stuff comes up and we all kind of hear about it or read about it and then there's not really a follow up. It's like, oh, yeah, I guess. Did that turn out to be real or not? You know, there's.
Speaker B: I don't know even. You had a moment where I brought that up where you had no idea what I was talking about. You're like, FBI.
Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, like, it's true. I've forgotten more things, like sentences that make you sound old, but sometimes people will talk to me, can you believe? Or they're saying this about me or that. And I sometimes think, like, I want to say, like, this is so ephemeral. Like, I literally have forgotten many moments of, you know, outrage or, you know, lunacy. And I kind of remember right when they said that I was running down the street Naked or something, I don't know. And that just turns out not to be true. And then nobody cares and it doesn't matter. But it does help you kind of maintain an even keel. We were talking about a younger generation and the difference of sort of this business now and decades ago. I bet it feels even more kind of overwhelming and intense, the sort of amount of exposure or scrutiny that you can get. But also, I think there's some comfort in the fact that, I mean, listen, personally there's comfort. I don't know if societally it's a good thing, but that's sort of nothing matters. You know, it doesn't matter. Like you can read the most outrageous headlines and you know, the world's gonna end and we're gonna. And then it's just on to the next because we've gotten a culture age this idea that maybe for you it's
Speaker B: a relief, but for.
Speaker A: Well, it's just a relief to know when you're in the unusual position of, oh, people are saying all this stuff about me and it's not true. Well, tomorrow there'll be somebody else.
Speaker B: You know, I had this thought, is it possible, this isn't me calling you old, but is it possible that you finally become sort of like middle aged dad enough that you have aged out of this?
Speaker A: I mean, I've been hoping that'll be the case for like 20 years. I certainly. It's bound to be the case. You know, we're all, you know, moving inevitably toward irrelevance and death. The former doesn't seem all that unappealing to me. The latter, I'd like to forest the
Speaker B: latter irrelevancy you're seeking.
Speaker A: Yeah, I don't like the notion of relevance as an abstract thing to be desired. Strikes me as, I don't know, be careful what you wish for. You know what I mean? Because what is it relevant to what and in what way? And what happens to things that are relevant is that they're like dissected and hotly debated. And unless you have something that you really care about, that you want to bring forward, that you really want to engage in that particular kind of debate around. I don't think like personally to your character or soul, there's value to it, obviously. You know, we live in a world where there's a lot of commercial value to commoditize. And for people like, hey, look, this is. I want to pay the rent. Like, I get it, I understand it.
Speaker B: You live the rough edges of that though, you know, like the. Yeah, it's commoditized. But also I go through hell like every, you know.
Speaker A: But like, listen, I'm not some great like victim. I mean, I'm in a unique position. I've seen or a rare position and have seen some unusual and weird things in my life. The benefit of that is that eventually you sort of get sanguine about it, you know, and try and I think develop the. I'm middle aged, dad enough to have. Is this true? I'm 54 years old. Like I have three kids, a kid in college, senior in high school. Like I did not ever expect to be in the like tabloid equivalents anywhere close to this time. Certainly when I was that age, I. I'm not. I don't think I was all that I thought, like, oh, if you're 50, you clearly don't have sex anymore and your life's about to end. They were irrelevant to me when I was 20, so I assumed that would be the case. There's a little bit of a weird. We talked about the phenomenon of the sort of gatekeeping and the relatively few channels that existed to publicize things and people when I was in my, you know, teens and 20s and even 30s maybe have proliferated so much that they're, you know, it's harder actually to get to that place. Cause we live in this kind of
Speaker B: the way that you were a monocultural object of interest is no longer the case for people below your generation. We are on the top floor of Soho House. I've now learned where we are located. Artist Equity, your production company's a few floors below. Are you still 9 to 5 in here?
Speaker A: I am, yeah, I am. I come to work.
Speaker B: I think people will be very surprised to know that you like, come to work every day.
Speaker A: I know. What does that say about you that people are shocked to know you come to work? Yeah, I mean, look, it's a really. It's meaningful to me. It's important and it's something that I want to do and is important to me to do, which is to follow through with like building something, an entity that's also trying to do things. Building any kind of entity of any sort is difficult. Right. And to try to change some existing structures and modalities is even more so. So, you know, it definitely requires me to be present.
Speaker B: And to be clear, I wasn't like, isn't it a shock that this playboy comes to work every day? It was more just like when you are an actor and you have lots of opportunities in life, not everyone chooses to like, do the same commute every day, definitely.
Speaker A: I mean, that was a self conscious thing because, you know, six, seven years ago as an actor I was also like, and more importantly, a divorced dad with shared custody of his children. And I just no longer had any interest in, you know, going to wherever, New Mexico, Shreveport, you know, Massachusetts, wherever they're. London, wherever they're making a movie and missing out on this period of time in the life of my children where both, like, I get the most benefit of my life from being present and where, you know, there's reasonable evidence exists that suggests that like you want to be present during your children's development and life, you know, and being absent to me just, you know, for long periods of time, it just was no longer something I wanted to do. And so I wanted to self consciously construct a life, a daily routine and a life that was where I was here, where my kids go to school and get picked up from school and go see their friends and go to the things they do after school and all that stuff, you know, and just be around.
Speaker B: There's a specific model to artist equity which I will butcher, but is effectively, you guys take on a little bit more risk. At least this was 1.0. I'm curious if the model has evolved, but in success, sort of more people are rewarded, it's more horizontal, it's like the crew would be rewarded, so on and so forth. Is that still the model? Has it changed? Has it evolved?
Speaker A: Look, part of it, we're evolving it as we don't get to dictate terms entirely. This is all working in concert with this existing economy and ecosystem. But the model is basically what you described. And if you could distill the sort of philosophy down to one word, it would just be fairness, right? Equity in the fairness and in the kind of investment sense that for example, the films we finance, like actors, directors, right? People that show up and really are passionate about some movie and that's maybe a riskier movie or more unusual movie or a movie that's more provocative in one way or another. The idea is, okay, great, we want to help get this movie made. You're gonna treat you like an investor rather than the sort of classic Hollywood sense, which is like, well, just pay me a bunch of money up front and then I'll kind of walk away at the end. And if it's successful, you kind of feel taken advantage of because it's hugely profitable and you feel like, oh, I didn't particip participate in that. And if it's not the flip side is if people are like, well, you invested in this, this person's not promoting
Speaker B: it, whatever it is, and he's walking away with all this money.
Speaker A: Yeah. Just aligning those incentives and clarifying that and you know, and then, yeah, giving that kind of more expanded sense of authorship and authority over the, both financial and creative, over the project that they're doing, I think actually is going to lead to a better outcome both for, you know, investors and the people building it, and also for the quality of what you're doing. Because you're putting people, you know, you're making them care about the same thing, which is the same model that we built in the Netflix performance based incentive compensations that we did and that were successful. Right. Because it's not just the actors and the writer and the director or the producers. It's what they call the below the line, which really is the crew, the artists and craftsmen who are all working on a movie with you. This business has had a history of promising things that didn't get delivered on. So it's really important for me, Talking about version 1.0, to show that in success, people actually will be compensated because otherwise it just sounds like you're some other producer going, yeah, we'll get you on the next one, don't worry.
Speaker B: Before we start rolling, you and I were talking about obsession and the Odyssey feels like a big story of this year is this kind of return to theaters that audiences are like for once going back to see movies. You produce movies, you make movies. You guys have this company. Do you think this theatrical thing is real? Do you trust it? Do you believe in it?
Speaker A: I think it's definitely real. I think people want to go out of the home, as they say, and like, be entertained and have experiences together. I don't think human beings are going to just become sort of insular and live in little caves and stare at screens. Because I think that's counter to what people want to do. But I think that the bar has been raised sort of collectively, societally, culturally, for what's required to get people to want to make your movie or event, that thing that they go to. Right, right, right, right, right. And so there's like this shifting balance between, like, what is a theatrical movie? What is a movie that's better served in streaming? And I don't like associate any value judgments with that. I think it's an interesting question, like, or what do people want to watch, like on their phones or on their computers? Right. Like, you know, people go to Instagram for one thing. They go to YouTube for another thing. Then they think of their streaming services in a different way. And theatricals is also something different. And part of what you've seen with the Odyssey, you know, is like that a just great filmmaking and great spectacle and practical photography. It's a kind of, in a way, like a throwback, analog David Lean, you know, amazing thing. And, and also it's. It's like kind of meeting the audience where they are. Like, Backroom's a good example of like something that was really percolated on YouTube and was there for a long time. And that audience really showed up for their movies. Obsession is just an indicator of like, somebody comes along and does something that's really good and interesting and funny, which if I. I don't even like, I'm not a big horror fan of that genre. Like, and I love the movie. I could identify with, understand, like somebody that, you know, did it well and. And people still want to go see those things in the theaters if they're want to see it urgently enough. It used to be you had to wait nine months.
Speaker B: I was gonna ask both of the. You star in a movie earlier this year, the rip on Netflix streaming film and then Animals. I think it's getting theatrical, but it's.
Speaker A: It's day date in theaters and streaming.
Speaker B: And given how this year has played out, I wonder, like, do you feel ambivalence about that?
Speaker A: I actually feel really. I feel great about the release strategy for Animals. And I do feel the audience has a sense of authorship around what has been created. Like, who's behind this and who's doing it. And now I think it's like, and how are they doing it and how are they reaching me? It takes a kind of an intelligence now to try to figure out how to do that in a way that's aligned with what it is. I think Animals is like, I'm really proud of it. I love the movie. I think it's really interesting. And what I tried to do with that movie was sort of like what I wanted to do with like the Town or Argo, which is sort of understand the genre components that exist in this movie. And in this case, I feel like within that genre, it fits really well in what Netflix does and with the kinds of things that people tend to want to watch on Netflix. You gotta remember they have 330 million subscribers. Like, it's this massive audience, right? And the great advantage is that you're getting to reach people, you know, hundreds of millions of people, some of whom then have access to a theater Many of whom just don't have the kind of life now where they are going to four movies a week or whatever to reach them and kind of do so within the construct of something, they go, oh, yeah, I like this kind of thing. I'll watch that. Then when you get some, like, buy in and they're watching one thing unfold after another, you actually like. I think with this movie, I had the chance to explore stuff that I. That would have been a little scarier and riskier, maybe with theatrical, which is like, you know, what happens when we encounter something that's so scary or difficult, that kind of the mask of who we want to be or think we are has to come off.
Speaker B: I think the rip benefited from this too, and people just watching it at home and being. I was recently made aware of Quentin Tarantino's review of the rip. Are you?
Speaker A: Yeah, I have.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker A: That's great. I thought that was really sweet and generous of him to go out of his way to write that and do that.
Speaker B: There's a section of it that I wanted to get your reaction to. As you now know you're familiar with it. It's very positive. Also at its center, the rip has Damon and Affleck, who, after more than 20 years in the public eye, this is Quentin Tarantino writing. And so many movies I think audiences have taken for granted. Parentheses. I know I have, but not anymore. They're truly sensational in this movie, and as good as they can be on their own, they're fantastic when they act together. Not to mention they've aged into really dynamic camera subjects. Do you think you have been taken for granted by audiences?
Speaker A: Oh, man, it's, like, hard to know. I mean, even what that really means. Like, to say that you've been taken for granted is to say, like, you know, people haven't seen the mightiness that is me, who's been right in front of the. You know, And I would say it sounds to me like kind of what he's getting at there is a basic truth, which is that, like, familiarity. Well, for one thing, creates the sense of, like, something is not special or new or so, like, that's just part and parcel of trying to continue to have a career over a period of years. And also, like, not every movie works. You know what I mean? So, I mean, the great. Like, when I was a kid, like, looking at Harrison Ford, like, who was this great, iconic, biggest movie star you could possibly be, you know, it'd be hard for me to say what part of that I think just had to do with. Every time Harrison was in a movie, it was good. And that's an extremely difficult thing in a high risk occupation to keep a streak like that alive. Also, he's great also, you know, there's all the stuff about it. But eventually, if you're trying to do something interesting and if you're not, well, eventually, no matter what, if you're super conservative and you try to do the same thing over and over again, that becomes familiar and tired. In order to not do that, you got to take big risks. You got to try stuff and risks mean that some of them aren't going to work. And you got to get comfortable with that. And so suddenly audience has seen some stuff that didn't work and some stuff that did. You know, from the inside of this world. I look at it kind of as more of a batting average thing. Not. Is somebody capable of making a movie that doesn't work? Everyone's capable of that. Like no one, you know, it's. Are they capable of doing something really interesting and really special? But I think, look, in general, overall, I thought it was lovely and really nice. It's a rare thing that somebody kind of decides to go out and say something nice about someone else's work. So I thought that was very cool.
Speaker B: The other thing he says in there is that you're especially good with Matt. Do you agree or disagree?
Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, like when I was making air, you know, I wanted like Viola and Julius just as much. Because part of it is like when you can take advantage of people who are comfortable with one another and have a pre existing relationship, you know, there's just so much more that you can kind of tap into. And one of the things having been the sort of victim of, oh, I see, you can't fly, you know, entirely against the sort of, if there's some headwind from the audience or some baggage or whatever. Like you can't try to just fly directly in the face of that because people will reject it. It's like, no, no, no. I just know that's not true about this person because, you know, I've been told something contrary over and over and over again. What occurred to me was, well, like then really the trick is to try to actually use and be aware of that and use it to your advantage. So like in the case of Rip, one of the things that we self consciously thought would be interesting was like, oh, yeah, people who, you know, part of the audience experience of watching this is, oh, are they gonna make Matt? Is Matt the bad guy in this movie. And, you know, watching two guys who. One of whom feels really betrayed and let down by the other, who have a long friendship, like, there's just something interesting about knowing these people actually have a real friendship. I wonder how much of what I'm seeing is part of some reality. It's like why I think Brando is the greatest actor ever. Because every time you watch a Brando performance, you think, oh, that's the real Marlon Brando. And you get to use that currency a little bit when you have like an existing relationship with somebody in particular, one that the audience is aware of. It's both good for you as an actor and it's in the. In a case like this, it's. It's. Can be helpful to the story.
Speaker B: Last question that Quentin Tarantino gifted me here. He says that you've aged into a really interesting camera subject.
Speaker A: I mean, that's very flattering. And I think that's. I think the, like, when I think about it from someone else's point of view, like, what he's really saying is that I think as sort of men particularly are. Tend to get more interesting when they way they look is kind of less youthful because you can think it's like. Can suggest a kind of a callowness or an insouciance. There's this sort of young man look thing that, you know, the. That can always border on sort of pinup, you know, thing. And that. That's unserious. And so you have these boy bands who sort of come and go, right. Because that serves like a certain audience, but particularly, I think, for other men, tend to be more interested in men who this seemed to have lived more, have more experience. And the truth is, I'm amazed by young actors who can bring like real, like the perception of like real depth of life. Experience is the hardest thing to conjure without having experienced it. One of the nice things about living for a while is that you go through enough stuff that your own life becomes interesting enough that you can sort of mine from that. I mean, I think that's just the phenomenon of like, we take people a little more seriously as they get older.
Speaker B: I can't know anything. I'm about to ask for certain. And you and I don't know each other like this, but it seems like you're having a very complicated year. You have this movie coming out now. You sold this AI Company, and then I believe you lost both parents this year. That is an awful lot. That's really intense. How are you doing? How are you feeling?
Speaker A: It's Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. It is. It's a big year of life, right? Like to have both your. My parents, my brother and our parents died like just two months apart. April, beginning of April and beginning of June. That's a lot, man. You know, it's a lot to. And it just brings up all these. I mean, your childhood, how you were raised, you see things differently, you appreciate your parents in different ways. And you think about your own mortality and your own life and your own children and what you want to do with it. And the bare fact of the very fleeting nature of all of our lives kind of stares you back in the face, you know, and you realize like, yeah, we only get so much time. The kind of youthful illusions that at least I had around, like, well, when you get older there are these answers or the things to sort of resolve. Maybe I'm so acculturated to the three act structure that I kind of impose that on the human experience. It doesn't really conform to it. Like often the end of life isn't full of wisdom and resolve. You know, stuff you haven't fixed in life stays unfixed. Like in the case of my mom, she had pretty extraordinary and brave. I mean, she's an amazing woman and her death really did cause me to even more deeply and fully appreciate her in her life. But it's, you know. Yeah, you face that stuff and it makes you think, okay, how do I want to spend the rest of this time? Because you realize there's not all that much of it. I mean, my parents are lucky, right? They lived, you know, long lives longer than the, you know, one's expectation is whatever. That's kind of what you get. Like, that's it. I mean, my mom said to me at one point, yeah, she said, I had a great life and I have no regrets. She said, but I, I thought 83 years would feel like longer, man. And I thought, shit. Like, I get it. I bet. I thought, you know, it's that weird thing of whatever age you are, you think, I can't believe those. That many years have gone by, you know, when I was 30, I thought, well, that was quick, you know, and 40 and 50 and you go, wait a minute, like all of a sudden we're into the third quarter here. Like, how did this happen? I look in the mirror and I still kind of expect to see some 30 year old guy staring back at me. Yeah, yeah. And the real thing for me is a couple of lessons. One was at the end of life, like, no, what Isn't remembered or valued or it just doesn't matter. Is all the stupid little, you know, whatever it is, the internecine thing, the work conflict, the pity dispute, like the shit we get involved in with ourselves, the little resentments, like the time you spent, you know, being offended or, you know, like that shit is just a waste of time. And so as much as you can sort of let it go, I just think that's so clearly the way to try to live. If you don't do it, you don't fix it. If you don't sort of resolve it, it does going to happen with time. You know, it's the estranged family member
Speaker B: talking about your dad a little bit. I mean, because I know, first of all, I'm sorry, like what? Like a truly intense and kind of horrible thing to have to live through.
Speaker A: It's like it is horrible, but it's not tragic. You think could be really sad and not a tragedy. That was an interesting thing. Like this is normal. This is actually. I certainly don't want to outlive my children. That would be the worst thing I can imagine. Like, so this is the way it's supposed to go, but it's still really sad for me. And yeah, sure, like what you're alluding to about my dad, like we didn't have, you know, we had a complicated relationship and not a very close one for the last, you know, a few years of his life for lots of reasons that are not like that. I just don't want to talk about frankly to people. But you know, but it, it's definitely showed me that you gotta, if you don't deal with it, you don't fix, like it's just not gonna happen. I remember when my grandmother died, I was young, she was an alcoholic and I always thought when I was young, oh, eventually she'll kind of quit drinking. Eventually the happy ending will happen. The she'll reconcile with the kids that are. And then she kind of just didn't, you know, she kind of had a stroke and then she sort of couldn't talk. And then just eventually she died. And I thought it was jarring to me as like I was my early 20s and maybe mid-20s. And that idea that, oh, you mean the story can just end and that's that. And like you never. There was never that redemption or that wisdom or that moment or that resolve. And I feel that more acutely now. And it just. You've got to, I think, try to view this stuff from the point of view of like, what can it Teach me now about my life and how can I approach this. And it just makes us, like, talking Matt, about this actually about, like, you know, the value and just being present and available to people and actually experiencing what's going on. Because you realize, like, raising kids, like, then they move out and they're out of the house and that whole phase of life where you live with them and you're their parent and you have that kind of relationship is over and it ever comes back. I look back at my own child. I mean, as soon as I was like, you know, 17, I was like, out the door, gone. Hopefully my. This, you know, not going to trend with my kids. My daughter's at college. I'm like, hey, it's me. You know, I see people that have, you know, closer relationships and maintain that and that. I think that's great. But also it's different. No matter what. No matter what kind of relationship you have. It's a different one when you see something that's so meaningful to you and you realize the finite nature of it. It just. It's caused me to make different decisions, appreciate things differently. It's really easy for me to just like, oh, my son wants to, like, you know, play basketball or, hey, dad, what's going on? It's like, put the phone down. Get off the thing. Like this shit, I won't even fucking remember. You can keep it. And that person, I didn't get back to them that night. Like, I'm willing to have that if I have to choose rather than to think back of, like, moments where I wasn't, you know, wasn't available, too busy and, you know, fuck that. Like, I just don't. I just don't want to live that way.
Speaker B: Did you take time off or do you work straight there?
Speaker A: It took, yeah, time off of the summer. Like, you know, it's kind of one of those things where when I'm, you know, I'm able to obviously, like, you know, take some time. And we took a trip with my family, which was really great with the kids after my mom died. But the thing about it is, like, life doesn't go away. You still have your kids and that I can. I'm able to forestall and not, you know, I was going to direct something this year, and I was like, oh, you know, my middle child's in. In. In high. Senior in high school. Like, that requires going to New Jersey, so I'm just not going to do that. And I'm really lucky, man. Like, there's other people I have to Deploy overseas. Well, I got no fucking choice. Or I got to make a living. I got to pay the rent. Those are. It's a really hard place to be put in. And I really empathize with it. And I get it. If you're lucky enough to actually be able to choose, I mean, there's just no excuse, you know, because you can. You can dictate that and go like. Like, yeah, maybe. Maybe something from work falls down. Maybe something that you've been trying to work. Like, the other shit's got to be just as important. You know, whatever you make, the most important is going to be the thing you spend most of your time on. And then that's your life. You look back on your life, it's like, where did you spend your days? And who were you around? That's principally defines your experience on Earth. And kind of. That's kind of what drove like us to actually do. Matt and I do this company and work together more. It's like, okay, so maybe people get sick of us. Fuck it. You know what I mean? Like, at least until that point, you know, it's more important to be around and work with people that you love and. And make that experience great.
Speaker B: And I think I was asking in part because I wondered if some of these kind of feelings have made their way into. I assume you had shot the film already. Maybe. I don't know if you had finished post or not, but I want, you know, I always wonder if. If stuff that's happening, people's lives or make their. What makes its way into the.
Speaker A: Can't help it. I mean, this. The movie, you know, it's an interesting movie. We were gonna do it. Realized there was another movie sort of at the last minute that had like a very sort of similar plot design.
Speaker B: Highest to lowest. Spike Lee movie.
Speaker A: Yes. And I was like, it wasn't out. They were. Heard they were making it. And then I was like, oh. And then I heard that was based on another movie. And I was like, oh, my God, high and low.
Speaker B: But Kurosawa, neither based on an epic bay book.
Speaker A: But I just thought like, okay, well, I've been in, you know, like the other asteroid movie. You know, it happens sometimes. There's like people thinking about the same sort of stuff or whatever. It was a script that we got submitted to us, original script. I had rewritten some of it. And then I thought, okay, well, I just, like, it's smart to. To kind of head this off at the pass and like, I don't want to have to be the the other also, like Spike and Denzel, both guys that I like, I revere, I certainly don't want to compete with. I mean, I saw Malcolm X. I still remember this day. Changed my life. I was like, wow, I didn't know movies could do this and make you want to be a better human being. And so I had no interest in meeting with or being, you know, and you're not served being likened to something else. And so we just thought, you know, we were able. Some of the nice things about also being able, you know, running the company. And Matt and I were like, let's just not do it. And then a few months later, you know, there were elements of the script that really didn't have to do with some of the stuff that was kind of that plotty stuff that was more similar that I stayed interested in and just started rewriting and rewriting myself. And then the movie got really interesting to me again because it started being about like, some things that I was thinking about looking at. Like, you know, one of them is, is sort of the nature of moral development in the world and how like this posing this question of are we moral people or are we principally people that are self seeking and seeking our self interest and then building a story.
Speaker B: The film is about a guy running for mayor played by you. Well, yeah, and I don't even know how much more I want to spoil, but it is about a bunch of moral calculus and compromises.
Speaker A: What you know, initially is that there. You do know from the trailer, whatever, like, and I always think of it that way, like making a movie. Like, what does the audience know when
Speaker B: coming into this, right?
Speaker A: They're gonna know that there's a kidnapping, there's kids kidnapped, and they've got this family. He's running for mayor. They're well to do. He's kind of in the shadow of his dead father, who is this like, wealthy sort of businessman in Los Angeles. And he's sort of spent his inheritance on this campaign and stuff. And now, you know, their whole life is turned upside down. That just gets to the like, sort of what happens when the mask comes on. We can afford to advertise our morality, who we are, but if you're unlucky enough to run into the collision of where like, those beliefs don't, you know, are standing in the way between you and something that's incredibly important to you, like the life of your child or something, you know, which is the most powerful, you know, symbolic example of that. And the notion in the trailer, which is that there's A woman comes and says, okay, someone has obviously done this, so all the secrets that you have need to come out.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: You and your wife need to actually look at each other and tell each other everything that you've never told each other.
Speaker B: One of the things I like about it is it's a movie about marriage, among other things. That really is what Kerry Washington plays that part.
Speaker A: And originally Carrie in.
Speaker B: Yeah. Played by Jennifer Garner.
Speaker A: I was going to do is Matt and Jen Garner.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: And when Matt made, you know, a decision that he surely regrets. Now, I don't want to rub it in because the movie was such a failure. Yeah.
Speaker B: It didn't work out.
Speaker A: But he went to do the Odyssey, and, I mean, it's a shame. I'm sure he'll regret that the rest of his life. You know, he went and do that movie, and I was very. I mean, he was. That was amazing for him, and I got it. And at that time, I wasn't even thinking, we're gonna do the movie. And then when I got interested again, I was like, hey, I think I'm gonna do the movie. And he wasn't like, oh, wait another year and a half.
Speaker B: You know, he's like, yeah, you do that.
Speaker A: Yeah. He's like, great, great. No, I'm. I'm gonna. I'm doing this little movie over here. And at that point, I talked to Jen, and she was like, yeah, we can't. You know, speaking of, like, the headwinds in audience perception, like, history has shown that's a bad idea because the audience bring all this stuff to it in a negative way.
Speaker B: I've said to you more than once, I don't think you're thought of as a personal filmmaker, personal actor, but I think you're a very personal filmmaker, very personal actor.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: I think there's a lot of you in all this stuff.
Speaker A: I don't know how else you'd do it, you know? And once we got that, you know, once we had brought in Carrie, who I knew and got to know a little bit better during strike negotiations and stuff, like, she's so good at being a person that the person she's talking to feels comfortable with. And to see that change in different circumstances. Not that she's inauthentic, it's just like an empathy that understands the way the person she's talking to is comfortable communicating, but she's comfortable in a lot of different ways. I thought, like, wow, that's interesting and powerful. And you also don't have the sense that, like, you're never quite sure, like, is this really you? Like, who's the real you in here? You earn that, like, armor and guardedness, you know, in a real way. But I thought, okay, in some ways, the most interesting thing about this movie is that it's about people who are in a marriage that is a partnership that has really kind of fallen apart, that they're not connected and without any one, you know, good or bad person, they've both done stupid things that they kind of regret that they don't feel good about, but. But they don't. It's like, until the point where they realize that marriage is where they think it's over and they have nothing left to lose. That's the point at which they actually can get honest with each other in a way that has nothing to do with. I have to color this so that you'll still like me or approve of me or be attracted to me or whatever it is. And that, like, the. In a way, like, we sort of are so aversive to doing that because the risk of whatever it is. You know what, I don't like going to museums. Like, call me shallow. You know, who knows? And it can be. Who knows? It may be a sexual thing, it may be whatever. They both actually get to a point where they say, don't give a fuck and tell the truth. And then you find out what kind of a marriage they're gonna have.
Speaker B: There's a lot of LA in the film. You kind of see Post Buyers, LA. It's about a mayoral election, which we literally putting this movie out a month before LA has a mayoral election. I mean, how deliberately were you tracking onto.
Speaker A: Not at all. It was like, in fact, the whole mayor thing, I mean, that's really a device, right? Like, because it's about, like, how do you. Who's in a position where this sort of thing could happen to them and where. Where the things that people can relate to, like about, you know, my curated social media, you know, image, right? Like, this is just writ large, right? It was sort of totally serendipitous that then there was this sort of mayor election, and then there was a sort of unlikely candidate who ran. And even the immigration stuff was not. It was happening as we were making the movie, which, like, we were shooting MacArthur park and I did this raid and they were like, you can't shoot tomorrow. So it was this very surreal sense of almost like, I don't know, Harold and the Magic Crayon or something, like, just having warping the. But it did feel sort of Surreal. But it's an LA story. You're right, because LA is an interesting place. It looks like one thing from the outside, it's another thing from the inside. There's a lot of projecting of this is who we are and this is what's interesting. And then there's the truth of it. And the reconciling of that stuff, you know, was really interesting to me.
Speaker B: Last time we spoke, I asked you if you had a theory about why you worked as a leading man. You said something really interesting. I don't know if you remember what you said.
Speaker A: I don't.
Speaker B: I don't know why you don't remember every detail of a conversation we had two years ago. This is what you said. I asked you to add a theory and you quoted a review that you had read recently. You said, affleck, of course, works successfully as a tarnished leading man. And you told me, like, yeah, okay, I guess this is my wheelhouse. I'm asking partially because, you know, once again, this is somewhat a tarnished leading man. When I read that back to you now, what is your feeling?
Speaker A: My feeling is that, yeah, like, those are the only interesting, really for me, like, characters to play. Like, I don't think any good actor is interested in playing somebody who's, you know, two dimensional or just like, particularly virtuous. And that's what I mean by movies. It's always become this guy and he's the best. He's the best there ever was at some. Whatever it is that they do, it's like, becomes predictable.
Speaker B: And I think last time there was some resignation in your voice when you were recording that you were like, yeah.
Speaker A: I mean, I think if you like a tarnished. Really what that means is this guy's life has not been perfect. Right. Like, and this guy is not showing the world the perfect outside. And I'm not. And I'm not pretending that. I mean, once you've been the, like, however briefly, like the world's, you know, leading example of the beleaguered man having a cigarette, like, behind his house, you know, and people look at a picture of you and go, yeah, I felt that way too. What it is, we try to pretend that, like, everything I do has always been happy and cheerful and perfect. It hasn't been Right. Like, but it's, It's. That's kind of who we all are. Right? Like, that's the point. And I think it's like, I guess I'm. Why I'm not resigned in a negative way. It's a tone of resignation is because I think that's much more interesting from a filmmaking point of view. I fucking don't want to be have my hands tied and be like, no, your character wouldn't say that, or can't say this. Yeah, it's just not interesting. And if my life and the events of it, or at least the perception of them, have contributed to allowing me to do that, well, then, great, that's a silver lining.
Speaker B: The other thing I alluded to before you sold AI company this year, Inter Positive to Netflix, I'm a moron. Could you briefly explain to me what this thing does and why Netflix wanted it?
Speaker A: Sure. I've always been kind of into computers since I was young. And then when film started to move from film, analog film to digital, I became more interested in that aspect of it. And the visual effects workflow for many years has included machine learning. So I can write, like, pretty shitty Python scripts and stuff like that. Because with convolutional neural networks, which were the sort of precursors to what the transformer can do, which is just much more computation simultaneously that you would do, things like look at what's called the tensor, which is just the numerical translation of a visual image in numbers, like the, the batch number, the frame number, the red, green and blue values of each pixel in each frame. It's just that simple, right? That numeric is called a tensor, and a tensor, you use a convolutional neural network to identify patterns in that that would reveal what's called edge detection or feature extraction, which is just identifying patterns enough to know, like, this is where the window ledge is, so we can more easily take the green screen image out and replace it with something. So that was sort of familiar to me early on because I, prior to Arse, Equity had a small visual effects company I'd worked with, GPUs a lot too. And the visual effects guys said, hey, you should see, there's a couple of. Google and its other company OpenAI, are doing really interesting stuff with like, Transformers and video. So I have learned to be able to sort of like, oh, I can actually just call up and go, hey, it's Ben Affleck. Can I come see what you're doing? And sometimes people say yes, to my astonishment. And so I did that. And then I had this moment I remember as I called Matt, and I was like, dude, we're fucked. Like, you can just, with a few keystrokes, like, generate very realistic looking video. You know, it was like a day or two where I really thought, like, oh, should we better do all the movies we can now because it's gonna run out. Then I went back and sat down with a bunch of people. Engineering teams looked, actually looked at the data, how it was captioned. But I started going, hold on, this doesn't work. You can't really control this. It's not really consistent. And if you say, move the camera, well, it just generates a camera in the image. And let's look at how the data is captioned. Because I understood that machine learning and generative AI just functions of back propagation, you have to have paired data. You have to have the question and the answer essentially, in order to teach it to reverse engineer how it arrived at that answer across every vector in the transformer. In looking at that, it became clear to me that this was a brilliant technology developed by people who are brilliant at these researchers and scientists who understood and developed, built something new, but that they had no understanding of the domain expertise of filmmaking to the point where they didn't understand that native filmmaking, unless you're scraping H265 clips from the Internet, which is how most of these were trained, actually comes with a very specific and ordered data set, like native. You don't even have to caption. It exists right in the raw format. So once I saw that and sort of argued with and badgered some of these folks, and I only know enough to, like, sort of think I know enough to get into these conversations, which is great.
Speaker B: I appreciate the way you're talking to me, like, I understand any of it, and I'm really flattered and honored by that. So thank you.
Speaker A: Very good job. But the point being, I said there's a different way to do. And those guys that, that, that relies on the understanding of, like, filmmaking and how an image is actually created in the world. And they said, no, it'll. It'll generalize. It'll just learn that with enough data. I had the experience, like, I started a company called live planet in 1999, where we did, you know, the Internet and movies and television, like Project Greenlight, and it was an algorithm for your screenplay contest and your director's video that you would upload. And going into ancient history, had some experience with that. And. And I realized when I got some offers, like, hey, well, why don't you work with us and show us what you're talking about and we'll do the AI for you. Well, then all the value. You'll just take all the value. And. And these are companies that aren't in Hollywood that don't care about rights and likeness or any of that stuff. And I thought like, well, I don't want this technology to develop somewhere else and not be available to anyone who's a filmmaker who wants to make their movie. Because then I realized it's never gonna. You're never gonna type your movie movie out of the sky. That's just never going to happen. This is the last thing that gets disintermediated by AI for reasons that are long, complicated and I'm happy to go into, but I firmly know that that's not the case. One thing's enormously expensive actually, which people don't talk about, but it is to generate video. The scale of compute is a lot more than language models. And language models now have gotten extremely large and very costly to train aim to read inference on. So I basically went, used some money that. And then so I had sort of access to capital, I had started my own business, I drew some capital down, I started a second company and I went and created a data set like. Cause they were like, can we buy your data? And I was like, you know, we build data. Like you don't have to just buy it, you can make it. And oh, that's not enough. And I said but it will be if it's. No it won't. But I went and did it anyway and made, you know, for months and months and months with a lot of cameras and some other equipment and some patents like using lidar and location specific devices and incorporating unreal and volume stages, built a very robust data set that was essentially a way of creating AI images that didn't rely on training on some work that one of my peers did that I'd have to tell them, oh yeah, well, part of the intelligence native to this is something that was learned in a tiny fraction, but nonetheless from something you did. I was not comfortable with that. And I also knew realized you don't have to do that. But there was this mad rush and people didn't want to pause and stop. So doing that for one specific use and thinking about what is that use going to be called? The applied side, right? Like which is how is it actually going to be used? Not just oh look, I can create a fire, right? But like, okay, but what do we want to do? Want to cook food, we want to heat our homes, we need our furnace, you know, that kind of stuff. Built out this data set, hired some really, really great engineers, inference specialists and data architects and visual effects folks, started this company. The entire goal of which was to say like to capture this Technology for filmmakers and for artists that they could control, feel comfortable with, and then socialize that and go, look, we're not making up movies and replacing everybody. That's all bullshit. There's no, that's just not.
Speaker B: I mean, I was going to ask you, I think you're surely aware that I think societally at this point, definitely in the creative community, a lot of ambivalence about AI as a technology.
Speaker A: Yeah, Ambivalence. A lot of like terror and rage.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: And I understand why. But on the one hand, the only real voices that you've heard, by and large are constantly sort of, whether they're puffing up their chest or advertising their product or whatever they're doing, they're doing it in a way by saying, and it's so powerful, it's going to be. Wipe everything out. Which is why we need to control it or which is why you need to download our model. Right. And there are dangers in AI to me, that have to do with. Yes, because, you know, you have to use it responsibly. And I wouldn't just give an unpredictable stochastic technology the controls over something that had a life or death impact on people. Is it going to turn into Skynet and take over the world and be the paper? No, that's not the case.
Speaker B: Oh, we're good.
Speaker A: Yes, that's not going to happen.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker A: But what might happen is somebody might say, oh, we want to let AI target all of the targets, you know, for our war machines, or do security. Right. Like, and, and if you come up like, it'll lock you in or shoot you or something. If you do that, you're going to have accidents. It's very different from deterministic computing. Like, that's what we're used to. We're used to computers that are like calculators. It gives you the right answer every single time. In order for it to do what it does, it has to work fundamentally different from that, which is what's called generative or stochastic, which is means, like to aim. It doesn't mean exact. Right. It means good at aiming inference, which is like running information through the attention layers and the, you know, the perceptron layers and getting and then the outputs and generating an output is called inference because you're inferring like. So not only can you not rely on it, only we all know that. So you'd be a fool to say, yes, I'm going to hand the keys over to this in this very important manner.
Speaker B: So those are societal concerns. Do you think the creative community is right to be as concerned as they are.
Speaker A: Anybody who's told, hey, this is going to replace you in your livelihood is fucking concerned. Like, the notion that that's somehow a surprise baffles me. Like going out and saying we're going to wipe out all half of white collar work does little to stir enthusiasm to adopt your product. However. Look, I think that I would evaluate a person's ability to predict the future in large part based on how well their past predictions have turned out. And in this case already you have people with a record of wildly off base predictions. And there's a lot of power in being the authority who can tell you whether you're going to live or die. And there's a lot of click value in being like, are we doomed? That's the first thing you want to click on. Because as human beings evolutionarily, we are tuned to pay attention the most and remember the most sharply things that could threaten our lives. Which is why you have ptsd, because your body is still, you know, having these flashbacks or associating a car backfiring with a weapon going off. Because it's, we have to know what a lion sounds like. We pay less attention to the good things or the safe things. What I would think is that you would want to take like a measured, thoughtful, responsible approach. And one of the best tools we have to ensure that is that, like, if you have a company that hurts people, you're liable for that. And it's one of the counterweights to the, I think the desire to accrue more money that's behind the sort of frenetic race to just improve regardless, that will be helpful in mitigating some of that.
Speaker B: You sold the company for a lot of money. The reported number, which who knows if it's right or not, is I think $587 million. Do you feel vindicated? Are you surprised that sort of your path to potentially generational wealth is through a tech company rather than this sort of day job?
Speaker A: Well, first of all, that number's not right. Second all, I didn't own the whole company. One of the things that's very important to me is that like, employees in the company all had equity and artist equity did as well, et cetera, et cetera. And I thought, like, that the way that we handled that, you know, it's technically a merger, but it's really an acquisition, in fact, was important to me to be, to do responsibly and fairly. Am I, am I surprised? I mean, I also Vindicated? Am I vindicated? I didn't feel like maybe a little bit with the engineers that I was constantly arguing with those dudes. I'm like, this motherfucker thought he was so much smarter than me. And, you know, I have a little bit of that, like, guy who didn't graduate from college and didn't go to fancy schools and who was always the character he played and go hunting and so on and so forth. So me. Yeah, I suppose that's just funny. I went on like, who Wants to be a millionaire and won a million dollars, right? And I got, like. I was telling somebody. The texts I got are all kind of like. Underlying tone is. Is one of slight bafflement. How the fuck does this guy do that? You know, I think that's funny.
Speaker B: We're just gonna play them the 20 minutes of you talking about AI and how it works, and then we're just gonna get rid of the.
Speaker A: Well, to me, that episode was really interesting because that actually was in terms of me riding a much smarter person's coattails to great success. I think what people assumed was the real story behind the writing of Google Hunting, you know, look, at the end of the day, like, it was a difficult thing to do to build. It certainly wasn't. Not all me. And I was really gratified that we were able to sell it in particular to Netflix, because the thing that I really cared about was not just, again, contributing to this sense of the extraction, but Netflix, they film studio, they make movies. They cannot make a movie with you in it without compensating you. They adhere to. They're a guild signatory. Like, it's a way of enshrining this technology inside a space that does exist for all of its failings, with a understanding that the student producers and the artists and the crafts, we're all in this together. And that one can't sort of survive without the other. First of all, people, oh, the AI is going to do this. AI is going to do that. Like, it's not only is it not now, people are kind of reckoning with token costs and all these things that were subsidized. Like last year, everyone was like, telling everyone to token max. Like, that as a business strategy is the equivalent of deciding that you're gonna heat your convenience store by lighting the cash in the register on fire. It's incredibly stupid.
Speaker B: This year, I got to spend a little time with Matt Damon.
Speaker A: I'm sorry.
Speaker B: I know it was tough for me. He said something very interesting about the Odyssey. I wonder if he ever said it to you? He said something to the effect of, I knew when I was doing this that this is the last one of these I was ever going to get to do. Did you guys ever have a conversation like this?
Speaker A: All the time.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: I mean, that was very evident. Like, I remember talking to him when you got the part and on an ongoing basis. That's why I wanted to come visit the set like this. The whole David Lean, you know, pack up 300 people and sail around the world and use all these extras and do everything in camera, you know, on film is. Is going away. Has been going away for decades. There's just very few movies like that because we move into visual effects and because the audience started expecting that kind of thing as a blockbuster rather than, oh, look at all the extras marching across the desert. And you also have Chris Nolan as the great filmmakers of this time or any other time making the movie. And everybody knows it. So you get all these amazing people there. It really is a once in a lifetime experience.
Speaker B: Well, I thought about you because I was like, you guys are similar age, obviously, similar career kind of moment. Do you feel like there's, like, one more out there, but not more than one out there for you?
Speaker A: I think what Matt's talking about is the kind and scope and level and all the stuff of movie. I don't think he was saying, I know this is going to be great and all that.
Speaker B: I think Boorman just, like, I might not be in the lead of a movie like this ever again. I might not be in a movie this big.
Speaker A: Oh, that's just false modesty. But it's okay. I think. No, I think what he's saying is, like, this kind of movie, the lead of this movie with the best, the most, you know, working director and all that stuff. Yeah, that just doesn't come along. As actors, we know the opportunities we get are fleeting and not everyone gets them. And if you get it, he knew it. I think it's kind of a twice in a lifetime experience for Matt, like with, you know, go hunting and this movie.
Speaker B: Really, you think you got two in you?
Speaker A: You know, I like. I don't think about it that way that much because like I said earlier, like, if they had offered me the Odyssey this year, I'd probably, you know, I mean, look, that would be a very difficult question because it's. Of all the movies in the world, like, you would think, okay, I'm gonna do a movie with Chris Nolan. But by and large, I'm very comfortable with the idea that that there's a movie could come along that, you know, I would think, like, this can be amazing, an amazing creative experience, a great movie and a massive hit, and I could be great and oh, my God, actually, I'm not going to do it because I don't want to leave. Like, that's why I've kind of created this life. Like, I'm okay with that. Somebody comes along like, oh, my God, Martin Scorsese, you know.
Speaker B: Really?
Speaker A: Yeah. Like, I'm okay. I get it. Like, I would be go, yeah, okay, well, I'm not going to be in that movie. And that movie's probably going to be really great.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker A: You know what I mean? If I had that opportunity, I wouldn't. Wouldn't thrill me, but I wouldn't have, like, lasting regret or anything like that. I would just, like, that's what I mean. I mean, movies are great. Making them is great. It's great to have that kind of purpose and drive in your life. But if you make that Paramount, it will be. There's a cost to doing that. That's not something that you're over the cost.
Speaker B: You're just like, I'm not going to,
Speaker A: like four or five years. I'll go to Bulgaria and run around. You know what I mean? It's this window of time right. Right now. But, like, Matt's aware, like, you know, four or five years, I'll be, you know, even older, even more interesting to look at than I am now in terms of, you know, an aging cinematic figure. But, you know, there will be interesting opportunities. Like, you can't get too obsessed with or hung up on whether there's going to come along or what you're going to do with it. Because, like, again, to that earlier point, then you kind of miss out on what's here and what's happening. And that is the stuff that, you know, believe it or not, I really believe at the end of the day, Matt will always be glad he. He did the Odyssey always be a great experience. I don't think that on his deathbed, that's going to be what he's thinking about. I. I can promise you he's going to be thinking about his children and his wife and his family and the people he loves and who he was as a person. That shit's great and it's nice. And he's been, you know, he's worked really hard. He's really talented and he's. He's great at that. And I don't think it's the most important thing to Matt either. Like. Because I've seen him walk away from lots of things that people would think, oh, my God, how can you not do that? Because, you know, it wasn't in line with, like, how he wanted to live the rest of his life. And you have to, I think, be okay with doing that. And.
Speaker B: And you are.
Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B: You know what's interesting? And this isn't, like, a shot at him. He was still. He, in our conversation, mentioned, like, many times, being very aware of where he was on that sort of mythical list of, like, can you greenlight a film? And is the phone ringing? And I was like, you're fucking Matt Damon. Like, this is actually insane that you still. But. But it was like he. I was. It was, like, remarkably present in his.
Speaker A: You got to understand, like, a person sees themself, he kind of gets shaped young. And when you're an actor, it's such a helpless with your sides and you're going in, literally, a dish. You're, like, trying to dance as fast as you can so someone will give you the part that you don't have any control over. And the idea that, like, it can go away is real and stays real to you, and no matter who you are, there's been some part that somebody else got that you wanted. All Matt's being is honest. He's just. This is the nature of the psychology of actors that gets formed very early. What happens in maturity is that I think certainly is the case with Matt, that he's able to be aware of it and also to go, and I'm okay, I know that's gonna stop ringing. And that's the difference is either that devastates you and you can't recover, and you spend time desperately clawing back some vestige of relevance or whatever it is, or you go, like, okay, there it was. You know? And I think the ideal is to be comfortable with that and be kind of equanimous about it and try to be sanguine and. And if you don't have anything else in your life other than that.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Well, then it's a lot harder, right, because. Well, I've sacrificed all this other shit, right, for this one fucking thing. And if I don't have that, I have nothing. But if you have a balanced life, I think what I would think is a healthier life, then I think you can.
Speaker B: To have that life, you have to kind of do what you were talking about before and, like, turn stuff down and. And walk away from stuff, like what you're doing right now, which is fascinating, which is like, yeah, I'm probably not leaving Los Angeles.
Speaker A: I'm not. And believe me, I have a great life. I'm really lucky. You know what I mean? So the notion that it's even a sacrifice. I frankly feel lucky to be at a place sort of emotionally where I'm good with that. I feel like I like that I'm here because I feel like I'm making the right decisions. You know what I mean? That actually feels the best. The scary thing is when you feel subject to instincts that you're worried you can't necessarily control or you're not sure or wise. I'm happy to, like, make a mistake based on something that it's kind of like you reach a point in life where sort of I'm this way on purpose. You know what I mean? Someone tried to change me. It's like, this isn't an accident. Like, I'm actually constructed. This. These are my values. This is what I want to do. I want to listen. I want to be open to feedback. But unless it's something that convinces me deeply otherwise, like, I'm pretty good, that this is the. These are the things I care about. That's the best place to be, you know, and for me, anyway. And this is a hard business. There's no, like, tenure. There's no gold watch. Like, it's. Forget it. Like, you're at the mercy of the audience. If people don't want to see you, there's nothing you can do to stop them. You know, as Yogi Berra might have said, it's like, you know, we're all in the privileged position of doing this job at the mercy of the audience and the expectation that, like, if. And I know directing animals, like, I'm aware every day on the set, every day in editorial downstairs. Like, you can't lose people's attention. You can't just be cavalier with what they're interested in, because, you know, otherwise you're just out there, like, walking on stage in an empty house, you know, lecturing the empty house about how shallow they are, that they don't understand your play. And really, you know, I don't want to be that figure, you know, so you have to balance that. You don't want to pander. You don't want to overdo it. You don't want to. Trying so desperately to sell the audience something. Because the first reaction you have to somebody who's doing that is like, why
Speaker B: is this guy trying to sell the car?
Speaker A: Exactly.
Speaker B: Ben Affleck, thank you for your time. Thanks.