Ben Affleck not only knows how to win an audience with his stellar acting talent, but also with his filmmaking skills. He made his behind-the-scenes debut screenwriting with good buddy Matt Damon for Good Will Hunting (which is streaming on your Paramount+ subscription) and then crushed his directorial debut with 2007’s Gone Baby Gone. When it comes to the Oscar-winning filmmaker making his own movies, Affleck doesn’t hold back the challenges, such as what he feels when seeing the first cut.
Back in 2014, statistics said that Ben Affleck was the best director of the decade. That’s no surprise considering, with the exception of the box office bomb Live By Night, all movies directed by Affleck are in the Fresh ‘90s range on Rotten Tomatoes. With the Gone Girl actor’s superb ability to mix suspense with emotional depth as well as creating characters that feel human, Affleck is clearly gifted with a director’s vision. But making movies is no cakewalk. He explained on an episode of the Screen Off Script podcast what it’s felt like seeing the first cut of his films, and it sounds gruesome:
great actor/director is coming from. It’s almost like when you write the first draft of an essay or a story. You read through it and know it can be better than what was originally created. This proves how important post-production is for any movie. Directing is more than just shooting footage, but creating something beautiful from all of the raw material.
Dazed and Confused actor continued to talk about what’s really bothered him about his first takes when they contain humorous moments:
It’s true how awkward that may be to shoot a scene that has comedic elements and the people around you watching aren’t laughing. Ben Affleck continued to explain the realism of how a joke may seem funny to the director, but not to everyone around you. When that happens, the Golden Globe winner said that making comedy stand out could mean going back to the dailies and using a different shot or closeup of a joke to make it obvious to the audience that they should be laughing.
Even though Ben Affleck brings his vision to his movies, it doesn’t mean he never gets help bringing his stories to life. The Argo director described how important it was to collaborate in order for a movie to become a success:
The filmmaking process can certainly be a struggle when you collaborate with people who have different perspectives. But at the end of the day, I’m sure a compromise can be achieved on how to make a scene work. Otherwise, it’s what Ben Affleck said about the audience not being afraid to express what isn’t working, compared to the professionals being the ones to notice first.
Ben Affleck is certainly capable of directing successful movies, but putting them together isn’t easy when the first cut feels like a failure. Fortunately, the Pearl Harbor actor has a collaborative team by his side that transforms his rough cuts into award-winning movies.
Make sure to catch Ben Affleck’s 2025 movie release, The Accountant 2, which is still playing in theaters. His next directorial project, Animals, is currently filming and plans to eventually hit your Netflix subscription.