No career in this era has been more dramatically up-and-down, yet still enduring as that of Ben Affleck. Affleck famously made his mark both acting and co-writing in the drama Good Will Hunting, which gave Affleck a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Ever since, Affleck has been in every kind of quality film imaginable, from the successful (Armageddon, Bounce, Daredevil, Smokin’ Aces, He’s Just Not That Into You) to the downright abysmal (Pearl Harbor, Gigli, Surviving Christmas). He even managed to prove himself quite skilled as a filmmaker in his directorial debut Gone Baby Gone. Through it all, Affleck has endured as one of Hollywood’s most high-profile actors. His latest role is in the political thriller State Of Play. We asked the now 36 year-old, who is a longtime liberal activist, how it felt to actually play a Congressman in this film. “It felt good for a moment to feel the power in my hand,” Ben says, “I have to say though that I think the power of an individual member of Congress is limited in general, but it was definitely fun to play a politician.” In State Of Play, Ben plays Stephen Collins, a Congressman implicated in the suspicious murder of a woman who happens to be his mistress. Affleck explained for us why he feels extramarital affairs have become so commonplace now in politics. “We internalize, almost, these scandals,” he says, “We know them like they’re almost wrote. They’ve become clichés. The story breaks, they stand next to the spouse, they say God has forgiven them or they’re asking God to forgive them, and they want their constituents to forgive them.” “Then, they go out and spear trash in the park or something and try to reconstitute their political career and eventually, people do forget,” Affleck adds, “It’s this cycle now that’s almost lost its meaning of begging for forgiveness and receiving it. Those things I’m kind of so familiar with them and what was more interesting to me was to think about what’s the real experience like that you wouldn’t think of from the outside.” Affleck says that a particular thing he learned from doing State Of Play is the common question of why wives of politicians almost always tend to stand by their man. “One of the things I thought of was probably true from Gary Condit to Eliot Spitzer to John Edwards is that the notion of how could she forgive him, how could she stand there with him?” Ben explains, “And thinking about it from the point of view of the politician, when that media glare gets put on you and your family and it’s blasting on them, I think it seemed to me that their instinct would probably be to much more protect themselves, to come together, so that, for me, forgiving someone publicly seemed to be obvious.” “When you’re in the situation of that wife, it’s probably not even a thought,” he continues, “Like I may give you a hard time about this privately and rail against you, when we go out there, I’m going to forgive you. To me, I was less surprised by it when I did the movie and thought about it.” Affleck also feels he doesn’t believe a politician’s personal life is fair game for the media and there should be more of an emphasis on policy. “I don’t think we need to know anything about people’s sex lives or personal lives,” he says, “It gets totally irrelevant. I don’t think we need to know about John Edwards, but there were no blogs when Monica Lewinsky happened, although Matt Drudge did break that story. If you think that’s a story worth breaking.” “That was a story that just bogged down the wheels of government for two years,” Ben continues, “I don’t care personally. Some people do. Some people may say they believe that’s a fair reflection on the candidate’s character. I don’t. I don’t care who you want to sleep with. I’m not voting for your sexual predilection. I’m voting for your policy positions.” When asked about whether we still expect politicians to be held to a high standard in this country, Ben believes the nature of the media has lowered people’s expectations. “I don’t think we’ve held anybody to a particularly high standard anymore,” Affleck says, “I think we’ve become accustomed to the frailty of public figures because we do start to traffic in scandal so much and people’s shortcomings and the trainwreck has become such a popular exhibit.” “I think we know that we like to see the prurient side of politics for whatever reason, the underbelly,” he adds, “We chase these stories and, oftentimes, find them. But I think politicians should be held to a certain standard. They’re our elected officials, for God’s sake. If they’re not going to keep it together, who is.” Not surprisingly, with this mindset, Affleck is no less cautious in his faith in President Obama. “Well, it’s quite early in the administration,” he explains, “It’s only about 68-70 days and I think anybody can just open the window and know that a lot of folks are having a very hard time out there, so they’re faced with a steep uphill climb, two wars, an economy collapses on you, it’s going to be challenging.” “I think that the Obama administration will be defined ultimately in 3 ½ to 4 years when they are really running by how well they handle this economic crisis,” Ben continues, “But whether or not our economy is back on its feet in the next couple of years or whether it’s still sputtering, I think it’s too hard to answer on that. You can judge Obama as to Obama and you can be critical. You can judge Obama as to the previous administration and it’d be almost impossible for him to fail.” The focus on the media State Of Play often tries to hearken back to 1970’s films like All The President’s Men and Network. However, Ben says that State Of Play uncovers a current new wrinkle in the progression of media: traditional journalism versus blogging. “Part of what this movie looks at is the tension between Rachel’s character and Russell’s character in which side of us is going to win out in that, what’s the world going to look like with just bloggers gathering news,” he says, “I think there’s two models, right? One is this incredible global journalism, a full democratization of journalism where you have actual correspondents in every home everywhere.” “For example, there were people blogging from Mumbai where those incidents started happening,” Affleck adds, “And you get to the truth and you don’t have to worry about bias because there’s so many bloggers that, ultimately, it’s impossible to lie because there’s too much evidence from people to refute people who report with bias. So you have this like this incredible everyone’s a reporter model, right? The other model is everyone’s biased, no one sources anything, it’s just ugly noise, and everybody’s destroyed their journalistic standards.” Affleck also gave us his take on whether or not the media is still noble, in comparison to the 1970’s/ “I don’t know,” Ben replies, “The media is the experts on this stuff of whether there’s nobility in media and what goes on inside the newsroom. I think this is the last movie that will be set in a newspaper. I don’t know how this movie will be perceived, but I do believe people will look back and say, oh, that was the movie that came out right at the time that the Internet destroyed newspapers and that is happening.” “The New York Times laid off 200 people recently.” he continues, “They’re cutting salaries or something. It’s blogging and news sites are now superseding that, the traditional news –gathering, ink on dead trees organization. And I don’t think the verdict is in on what that means or what’s going to happen or what the integrity is of one news organization versus the other, it’s really interesting.” As an actor who has been a regular tabloid fixture, Ben shared some insight on what he believes is the difference between media treatment of entertainment figures versus politicians. “I’m not a total expert, I had some experience,” Affleck says, “They’re very similar in the pressures that exist, the pressures that are brought to bear on the media side to sell newspapers, sell magazines, get hits on the web site. The focus has to be on the thing that sells the most, which tends to be the most sensational, the most scandalous, the most headline-grabbing, so the temptation is to bend the truth. In the case of entertainers, they’ll flat make up stories, completely make up stories that don’t exist or stuff that’s very thinly sourced. On the political side, people are little bit more judicious about completely abandoning journalistic standards. But still, you have those same impulses to like push, to find, to dig up the sort of most scandalous aspect of it.” “But I think there’s the other side that’s at war, too, which is the side that wants to do good journalism, do good reporting that cares about the substantial stuff, and that’s saying to the powers-that-be, I don’t want to do this all the time,” he continues, “I want to do something that’s interesting. So that yin and yang is at play on both sides in entertainment and politics. The only difference is entertainers, frankly, people feel more comfortable saying, oh, it’s fine, just print it, just run it, because they know it’s not the President of the United States and no one’s going to come back, it’s not going to change the world, go figure, so just print it, you know.” We asked Affleck what it was like meeting with real Congressmen in the researching of his role. “I thought the Congressmen would be too busy to have the time to have me show up and kind of sniff around or stand in their office or do anything,” he replies, “And they were quite busy, but luckily, they felt like people don’t understand Congress very well, at least in terms of their opinion of them and that they hadn’t been portrayed fairly in the past. So a number of Congressmen said to me, yes, you can come here, I will talk to you, get it right, it’s this, it’s this, it’s that, We don’t do this. We do do this. Strongly opionated.” “Well, my character does some unflattering behavior so I want to tell you upfront, I don’t want to say I’m basing my character on you because that won’t be good for your political career,” Ben adds, “But people still, the overall sense that they want to get across is, I think, there are folks that are working hard, there are people that are intelligent. There’s this bias I think people have about Congress is that they’re this huge, lumbering body that just gives away money. It’s like those big sloppy Muppets from The Dark Crystal that march next to each other incredibly slowly and that’s not what I saw. It was much faster Muppets.” While Ben says he enjoyed the experience of playing a politician and following politics, he has little inclination to actually be a political figure himself. “I really like my job I have now,” Affleck says, “Plus, in politics, unlike Hollywood, you only have one director to hire you. In politics, you need a lot of people to vote for you. I think it’s a lot harder work. But, really, I’m happy with what I’m doing now. In fact, I’ve never been kind of in a better place right now about going to work everyday and more engaged, so I’m very, very happy. It’s hard to say why. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s family or place or just you learn.” “Every time, you learn, at least, I do, as I’ve gotten along to a point where I’ve really gotten comfortable with the things that are important to me and what I don’t need to do,” he adds, “I don’t worry as much about making choices that will appeal to certain…like extranalites, like this movie has got to work in this way and make x amount of money or help keep me at X place in my career, all this stuff that rather I think just gets in the way whether it’s like this is an interesting role and this has got some character in it that seems complicated and real and I get to work with talented people. That’s my criteria and it’s easy.” Having received critical acclaim for his directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, Affleck mentions that it won’t be long before he makes a return to the director’s chair. “I’m going to direct another movie and I might act in the movie as well, so that’s a slightly daunting process,” he says, “But I’m excited and nervous, but excited. It’s currently called The Town. It’s based on a book called Prince Of Thieves by a guy named Chuck Hogan and it’s about, sort of based on a true fact, that in this neighborhood, there’s this town called Charlestown, there’s more armed robbers per capita than anywhere in the world.” “It’s about these guys who rob a bank and an armored car,” Ben continues, “It’s sort of, rather than a heist movie, it’s a very realistic. You kind of see how those guys really operate and what they really do. It’s about their lives and their connection to one another and the way that they live is changing. I don’t know. It’s kind of unusual and kind of complicated for a movie that has at its root in a conventional genre thing like that.” We asked Ben whether it was a tough transition for him from being a director back to acting again. “For one thing, it was a relief to not have to worry about everything all the time,” he says, “Something could go wrong, things could take a long time, there could be confusion about the scene, and I was just able to remind myself that it wasn’t my responsibility. I could just go the trailer and listen to music, call people.” “I didn’t have to have that full-time anxiety of the feeling and responsibility for the movie,” Affleck adds, “But directing the movie was really instructive for me. I think I learned a lot about writing and a lot about acting. I just learned how all the pieces fit together from the inside which was really valuable, so it was a good thing.” Also asked was whether Affleck had any plans to work again with his longtime friend and Good Will Hunting writing partner Matt Damon. “Yeah, we were trying to do something together the end of this year and I took this other thing to direct, there’s The Town, and that kind of supposedly pushed it off to next year,” Ben replies, “So, we’ll still do this thing, which we will. Matt is always pretty busy, but claiming that he’ll try to slow it down a little bit and we’ll try to figure out sometime next year.” “He’s going to do the Bourne movie and he’s got this really cool [Nelson] Mandela movie that he’s doing now,” he adds, “And he’s going to do the movie George Nolfi’s directing inbetween that, so he doesn’t mind taking the year to wait. But, yeah, I would love to and it’s great and both of us are busy and Matt lives in Miami and it’s hard to get a chance to see him. So, for us to work together is a good excuse to hang out.” Until both The Town and his pending ollaboration with Damon comes to fruition, Ben says the public will have Mike Judge’s upcoming film Extract to look forward to from him, which is set for release September 4 and will star him alongside Smokin’ Aces and Hancock star Jason Bateman. “I love Mike and Bateman,” Affleck enthuses, “Bateman is the lead movie. He’s spectacular, spectacular, in the movie, I think. If you are a Bateman fan and of his gay rage, his gay rage is on fire in the movie. This is the third time I’ve worked with Bateman. My wife has done three bids in Bateman, so we’re a six-time Bateman household, so we’re fans. But this movie is very, I think, oh, it’s just really funny. Mike’s got a particular sensibility, so it’s not just like straight down the middle. That’s one of the things I like about it. I think it’s really funny. I haven’t seen the whole thing. I’ve only seen some pieces of it.” “But, like I said, Jason’s great,” he continues, “I play a guy who’s kind of the worst friend in the world. I’m like Jason’s friend, but it turns out I’m kind of really into drugs and I like to give him drugs. I keep trying to get him high. He tells me he’s attracted to this other woman, but he’s married, so he’s conflicted about it. Meanwhile, I give him some Zantacs and I’m telling him like, man, what you should do is to like hire a gigolo to hit on your wife and if he says, yes, you won’t feel guilty about it. She’s kind of high and it’s like it kind of makes sense and they hire the wife and she immediately fucks the gigolo. You know what I mean? I don’t know. It’s immediately like in the very beginning. He owns a vanilla extract factory. Mike’s really gifted and a really smart guy and Jason was terrific and I was just really happy to be in the movie.” All in all, through the many ups and downs in his career, Ben Affleck says that he is fortunate to be in a good place in his career. “I’m very lucky,” Ben believes, “I definitely feel very blessed when I look around to see that I got a healthy family and a job. Especially nowadays, you really feel very, very good. I’m in a pretty good zone right now. Although, if I say that, I’ll go home and everything will be exploded, but so far, so good.”