Ben Affleck’s career was pronounced dead at 10:45 p.m. last Saturday night in a local La Jolla theater after the viewing of the trailer for his new film, “”Jersey Girl.””
I’m not quite sure what happened to Ben Affleck’s career, but as a once-huge fan, I can honestly say I no longer care. It was the moment I realized this that I knew Ben’s career was dead. After bursting onto the scene in 1997 with a notable performance in the Kevin Smith film, “”Chasing Amy,”” and an Academy Award for his collaboration with Matt Damon in writing the screenplay for “”Good Will Hunting,”” Affleck has systematically patented a system for torturing audiences in and out of theaters by combining a string of waste-of-time film projects with an even larger string of waste-of-time personal choices. One can’t help but wonder if he has been calling Britney Spears over the past year and asking for career advice.
Most film actors have the luxury of being able to escape the ruin of bad projects by staying out of the public sphere for a while in between disasters. Affleck, however, has been in a total of 19 films since the release of “”Good Will Hunting,”” or about one every three months. While early projects like “”Shakespeare in Love”” seemed to have shown some promise, his most recent choices have turned into disaster after disaster.
Most recently, this problem has been compounded by the public’s initial interest, and later disinterest, in his off-screen affairs with Jennifer Lopez.
Having followed this agonizing affair only very distantly, I can only ask myself if these two people even knew each other. On Jan. 13, Ben vowed he would marry Jennifer, and 10 days later Jennifer’s people announced that the wedding was officially off. This is typical of the type of activity that surrounded the couple’s engagement that began capturing headlines all the way back in October 2002. For 14 months the public has been taken back and forth on the issue. Maybe it is the public’s fault for caring, but certainly some of the blame has to lie with, and I am ashamed to use this term, Bennifer.
I guess the fascination with the wedding can in some way be likened to the media’s former fascination with Oprah’s weight. When she is fat one day and skinny a week later, and then fat again, I am not sure whether the media attention that the issue gets is a matter of fascination or confusion. I can’t blame America for wanting to have the facts straight; I can only blame Bennifer for changing the facts so many times in a 14-month period.
I think the proof that America wasn’t really so fascinated with the Bennifer machine was that “”Gigli”” grossed $5.6 million at the box office. That is roughly one-fifth of what Ben and Jen made combined for shooting the film. In comparison, another bad Affleck film, “”Daredevil,”” pulled in $45 million. This says to me that people in Hollywood seem to think that America cares about Ben and Jennifer at least five times more than America actually does. The makers of Bennifer’s latest collaboration got the hint from “”Gigli.”” J-Lo was removed from posters of “”Jersey Girl”” and promoters are playing down her 15-minute role in hopes of not repeating a “”Gigli””-like disaster.
Sadly, it seems “”Jersey Girl”” was Affleck’s attempt to go back to the well. Directed by Kevin Smith, Affleck knew that he couldn’t afford to fail in this latest attempt. But after seeing the trailer for this abomination, I can promise that he will. This time, it won’t even be J-Lo’s fault. The simple fact is that Affleck has become box-office poison.
Affleck’s overnight success came by virtue of the fact that he displayed a flash of genius in his participation in “”Good Will Hunting.”” In the past five years, Ben has used that flash of success to rake in a fortune by playing a long list of roles that could have been played by Freddy Prinze, Jr. Unfortunately, the residuals of the brilliance that was “”Good Will Hunting”” are all but gone and no one has seen even a modicum of anything luminous from him since then.
All of the benefit of Ben’s early success is now overwhelmed by doubt of ever seeing any again. While America once thought Affleck an artist, they now know him to be a playboy and nothing more than a pretty face. The problem with this is that there is always a younger one around the corner. It won’t be long before Affleck will be an afterthought to Ashton Kutcher.
Affleck’s career is survived by his brother Casey Affleck’s career. The memorial services will show in a theater near you less and less frequently for the next few years.
