Falling Down and Being True
I tend not to be drawn to keeping up with celebrity lifestyles. Who is married or getting divorced to whom? What’s hot and what’s not? Who’s got a killer series on Netflix and is Netflix really the happening place for the real glitterati that are making their move to the A List? I find it all mildly interesting, but its very easy to get to feeling like a groupie with nothing better to do when you pay too much attention to it. It doesn’t seem serious enough to warrant that sort of focus. But wait a minute, I write a daily blog story like this and spend a considerable amount of time in what some might certainly be justified in calling a rather self-absorbed introspection or even nothing more than a creative outlet. Why is that so different than what I consider petty voyeurism into the lives of the rich and famous? Neither of them are striving for world peace or a cure for cancer (which, by the way should be changed as a metaphor about finding a cure for the likely never-ending endemic called COVID, since cancer now seems more beatable than COVID). People are allowed to divert themselves in whatever way they choose and far be it for me to say that tracking celebrity shenanigans and lifestyles is any less serious than ripping off a humorous (or serious) story for a blog that only a small audience ever reads.
I have online subscriptions to all the serious newspapers, both financial and domestic and global world news-oriented. I also have subscriptions to National Geographic, The New Yorker and Owner’s News (ON, which is the BMW motorcycle enthusiasts membership magazine), all of which I review pretty much cover-to-cover. There are some vestigial magazines like Forbes, Esquire and Vanity Fair (which I do not remember ever ordering, but which just comes for some reason) that I do no more than glance at and wonder when I will get up the gumption to terminate. We’ve stopped getting the home delivery of the New York Times weekend days, so no more NYT Magazine for me, though I used to like it. Apple News does a good job of giving me story snippets from all of these publications and more, and I am constantly being reminded that I can still initiate or re-initiate a subscription at any time once I click through to find myself blocked from reading more without such a subscription. I actually find that a very effective and inoffensive marketing tool. I have to really want to read something to subscribe, but it has happened. No harm, no foul if I am blocked and don’t care enough to go forward. In fact, I feel both in-control and somehow prudent when I don’t get drawn in. It feels like pushing away an appetizing dessert set in front of me gratis at a restaurant. The power is in saying no thank you.
But today, for some obscure reason, I got an email from the WSJ Magazine. The Wall Street Journal has been my daily grind for forty-six years and while I hate Dow Jones’ billing tactics (I always feel like I own three subscriptions simultaneously and they always stay very hush-hush about that), I still read the WSJ articles daily, not as religiously early as I used to, but sooner or later. I know that gang leans more right than I do, but I spent a life in banking and business and need to stay current for a few years longer anyway. Unlike my old buddy Bruce, I am not yet ready to become “irrelevant”. That WSJ Magazine touted an article about Ben Affleck. I’ve liked Ben Affleck ever since he and Matt Damon as 25-year-olds, co-wrote the Academy Award Winning script for Good Will Hunting. They had both been on screen in a minor way before that, but that clearly launched their careers. They then went their own ways and I think it’s fair to say that on many levels, Matt Damon (who was thought of as less the intellect that Ben Affleck, despite attending Harvard, and certainly not as outwardly handsome as Affleck) has garnered nothing but respect from both his industry and the general public. He is not quite the newest coming of Tom Hanks, but he’s pretty close. He has mixed it up with some popular Bourne series and Ocean’s Eleven action stuff and some more serious stuff like The Departed, The Good Shepard, Elysium, Green Zone, Promised Land and The Informant. His most recent roles in Stillwater and The Last Duel were both epic. Meanwhile he established his personal profile as a serious family man with four daughters and is known for his liberal outlook and eleemosynary bent in global relief. He never seemed to have any setbacks, but has just kept moving forward.
By contrast, Ben Affleck, who grew up in Cambridge with Matt Damon, has had a far more up and down career, both launching more successfully than Damon at the start, but crashing into mediocrity several times with movies (particularly lame comedies) that just fell flat. Despite winning two Academy Awards (Good Will Hunting and Argo) and excelling at acting, writing and directing, he is considered in the trade to be on the volatile side and its unclear that “respected” is an adjective often applied to him. Some would say that Ben Affleck has hit higher heights than Matt Damon, just like they would say he is smarter or quicker or more handsome, but he has clearly struggled with his life and career in a way that Damon has not. He is clearly his own man and neither actor leans entirely on the other though they do often get cast together and choose to work together as their friendship seems to have long-term sustainability. Neither is afraid to take supporting roles, but both naturally gravitate at this stage to leading man status. Again, where Tom Hanks can be both the Everyman of our culture and the Rakish Gentleman of our dreams, Damon leans more toward the Everyman and Affleck is clearly more the Rakish Gentleman. I have always liked them both and even like their movies that are considered mediocre, but I always figured Affleck was too big for his britches, which happens often with good looks and that Damon was a more solid guy.
The WSJ Magazine interview, an unlikely source by my estimation, but a damn fine piece of journalism, showed me a very different side to Affleck, one which has changed my mind quite a bit about him. The article was spawned by his most recent movie, which I have not seen yet, called The Tender Bar, which is directed by George Clooney. It opens selectively in theaters tomorrow (but not around here apparently). In it, Affleck stars as an older uncle character who is a bartender not unlike the man his father apparently was. The interviewer describes and reprises his role as though it will be a force in the next round of Oscar nominations. I have no idea if it is that good or if the writer is just that ebullient as a means of getting access to his bread-and-butter celebrities for such interviews.
What I liked about the interview was that it gave me a new take on the inner workings of Ben Affleck’s psyche and, like me, someone who has ridden the rollercoaster of success and failure. It is a story about falling down and still being true to yourself in the process and that strikes me as particularly noble. The quote that says it all for me was, “My life now reflects not just the person that I want to be, but the person that I really feel like I am—which is not perfect, but somebody who tries very hard and cares very much about being honest and authentic and accountable.” In Yiddish, that’s called being a mensch.