Ben Affleck has a new interview with NPR promoting his new movie ‘Argo’, which releases in theaters this Friday. In the interview, Affleck talked about what drew him to Argo, what it takes to be a good director (to him, at least), and his aspirations regarding directing in the future.
Talking about what drew him to the story of Argo, he says, “It’s sort of too incredible to be believed, you know. You have this thriller, you have a comedy, you have a story about how the CIA used a cover of, you know, basically being a movie crew to get these hostages out of Iran. It would be a terrible movie if it weren’t true.”
When he’s asked what it takes to be a good director, and how he’s established himself that way, he says, “I wish I knew. I think for me it takes just hard work. I wouldn’t have been able to be a director at a really young, at a younger point in my life because I didn’t know how to work this hard. And it eats up the rest of your life, but I truly feel that that’s what’s necessary, for me anyway, and I marvel at guys who can do it more deftly and who can work eight hours a day. And also it just, it comes down, I guess, to taste. I learned to be really, really, really critical and that’s served me well. Frankly, I had something to prove when I got older. Down the road in my life. So I had something fueling that desire to work twice as hard, and I also had a little bit more maturity and perspective on it.”
He also adds that the movies he directs won’t go into the hundred million blockbuster range, saying, “My movies still exist within a sort of a limited range. … I kind of exist in a certain — a certain zone. And that’s fine. I don’t have any great ambitions to do $300 million movies.”
Affleck also recently spoke about why he has 'complicated' thoughts about Obama.
