It's another ride for Ben Affleck
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In the glory days of the 1990s, Ben Affleck and his friend Matt Damon, a couple of struggling actors, startled Hollywood by writing brilliantly conceived roles for themselves into a screenplay called Good Will Hunting, and picking up an Oscar for their effort.
The coming weeks will tell whether Affleck has rung the bell again, by working for the first time since then as both actor and filmmaker in a project specifically meant to show what he can do.
At the Venice Film Festival, then three days later at a Toronto Film Festival gala, Affleck will introduce The Town. Set for commercial release by Warner Brothers on Sept 17, it is an ambitious heist film with Affleck as director, star and a co-writer, with Peter Craig and Aaron Stockard.
And it is clearly meant to refocus a career that has bounced from roles in action thrillers like Armageddon, to bit parts in indie romps like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, through the on-screen embarrassment of Gigli, to acclaim for directing Gone Baby Gone. All without delivering what Good Will Hunting seemed to promise: That rare actor with skills enough to create his own showcase.
"It's hard to disavow a movie when you've written, directed and acted in it," Affleck said, while describing The Town as a bid to find his place in an industry that hasn't quite known what to do with him. He added, "This is an emblem of the person I want to be going forward."
Affleck began hearing that Warner executives wanted him to become involved with The Town after the release of Gone Baby Gone, a critical success for which he was the director and a writer, and in which his younger brother, Casey, starred. It took in about $20 million at the box office for Miramax Films in 2007.
The Town, based on Chuck Hogan's novel Prince of Thieves, tells a story about crime and family in Charlestown, a Boston neighborhood that has spawned an extraordinary number of bank robberies and armored-car holdups.
Affleck said he was initially wary, partly because another director, Adrian Lyne, had been trying to make the film and partly because he feared becoming too closely identified with stories rooted in the blue-collar environs of Boston, where both Gone Baby Gone and Good Will Hunting are set.
But Warner remained cool to Lyne's version and he dropped out. Affleck said he was not only entranced by the possibilities in a story that would take him back to Boston, near where he grew up, but he also saw a rare chance to reboot himself as both actor and filmmaker. "They were the only ones out there saying, 'We'd love to find a movie for you to direct,'" Affleck recalled.
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