Ben Affleck has said he doesn’t mind his directorial career bombing a few times as long as he gets his share of big hits, too.
The actor-turned-director had great success with the Oscar-winning Argo and is now working on a period adaptation, Live By Night, as well as The Batman which he also stars in as the title character.
He told AP of the media coverage of him: “This business tends to exaggerate highs and lows. I’ve had legitimate lows, movies I didn’t like, and I’m very proud of the movies I directed and so on.
“But you become a cast member in a soap opera that you’re not writing. You get the script every day and you find out what your role is that day.”
Ben went on: “I do look at the careers of other directors, guys like John Huston, and see how they had big hits and big misses and lived big lives. That’s OK with me as a model.
“I don’t mind the high stakes gambling nature of this profession. If it’s a hit, you’re a hit, and if it’s a bomb, you’re a bomb. That’s just the way things go. There’s something uniquely American about that.”
Explaining that he was balancing out his involvement in a comic book adaptation with a completely different type of work, he said that he enjoyed the variety.
He said: “They’re saying you have to have x, y and z to make money in the movie business. You’ve got to have somebody wearing a cape, for example. While I have nothing against movies with people with capes on – I’m a big fan of capes – I don’t think we should be limited to that genre.”
Ben also admitted to being baffled as to why people were so interested in The Batman taking such a long time to make.
He said: “That generated 30 stories about ‘Ben Affleck’s taking his time with Batman.’ Of course I am!. You take your time with any movie.
“It’s no different than anything else but because it’s Batman and it has that level of attention on the Internet.
“What could be less newsworthy than a person saying they want to have a good script for their movie? We’re making the movie. We’re going ahead with it. We’re just working on the script to make it good. It’s like the most famous unmade movie in history.”
He added: “We also want good actors. We want good stages. It boggles the mind.”
