Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is still pulling in the cash in theaters, but it’s generating even more in the way of extreme reactions. One of the few areas audiences seem to agree on is that Ben Affleck gives a solid performance as the more mature but far angrier Batman/Bruce Wayne. That’s a good thing too as he’s scheduled to reprise the role in at least four more films.
Affleck is also set to direct one of those features, the standalone Batman reboot, and we can all probably agree that that’s good news as well. He’s only directed three previous films — a fourth, Live By Night, is due in 2017 — but all three have been varying degrees of fantastic. His first film, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, remains his best and delivers a rare mix of thrills and affecting character drama. That ending — even on repeat viewings it hits with a painful beauty.
Keep reading to see what I heard on the Gone Baby Gone commentary.
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
Commentators: Ben Affleck (director/co-writer), Aaron Stockard (co-writer)
1. The opening montage is just a collection of images they picked up featuring real people around Dorcester. Affleck loves the one of the woman standing there as smoke rises from the bottom of the screen. The goal was to “ground the audience in the setting” but also to refute stereotypes about Boston’s racial make-up.
2. The first scene with Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) was part of a re-shoot as they played around with ideas on how the film should begin. “This is the fourth book in a series,” says Affleck, referring to author Dennis Lehane‘s “Kenzie & Gennaro” series currently sitting at six titles, “and the book really starts off with you understanding a lot about the characters and the world because you’ve read the other books.”
3. One of the changes they made from the novel was adjusting the private eyes’ ages from being in their 40s to being in their 30s, “but that presented its own challenges,” says Stockard.
4. The b&w photo on Kenzie & Gennaro’s wall is of the couple that the ABC series Hart to Hart was based on. Stockard asks why it’s there, to which Affleck replies “We just did it.”
5. The close-up of Monaghan around ten minutes in is a re-shoot that required some special effects wizardry. She had moved on to her next movie (The Heartbreak Kid) and had cut her bangs, “so we had to put a little net in to match her bangs, and you could see the net, so we had to use special effects and paint in on her bangs.”
6. Lionel McCready (Titus Welliver) is sporting that mustache because Welliver had just come off Deadwood, so they trimmed it slightly to make it look like a middle-aged biker.
Miramax
7. Affleck worried about a shot of Jerry Springer on Helene McCready’s (Amy Ryan) TV thinking it might be too cliched, but “literally one in every two houses that I went into had Springer on while we were scouting in the afternoon.”
8. The extra with the hole in his throat was in the bar when they arrived for shooting so Affleck just asked him to stay. The man moving quickly behind him is actually Affleck who was passing by unaware they were grabbng the shot. Stockard wonders if this is Affleck’s stab at a Hitchcock cameo, but the director denies it.
9. “That Skippy jar line was an improvisation courtesy of Big Dave (William Lee),” says Affleck.
10. Corwin Earle is played by Matthew Maher who went to high school with both Afflecks, Stockard, and Matt Damon.
11. Both men love John Ashton, but while Stockard remembers him best from the Beverly Hills Cop films Affleck leans more Midnight Run with his affection.
12. They received some notes on Patrick, the film’s lead protagonist, and how maybe he shouldn’t be using questionable language and terminology, but “I just thought those kinds of rules versus the reality of the characters, you have to let the reality win out.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment