In the journalism business, it takes three examples to constitute a trend. Any less than three, and you could chalk it up to fluke or coincidence.
And so it goes with the reinvention of Ben Affleck, easily one of the most improbable Hollywood stories in a long while this side of Honey Boo Boo.
Sure, his feature directorial debut, 2007’s “Gone Baby Gone,” was a wonderfully atmospheric, gritty crime thriller that was almost unanimously praised by critics. The Post awarded it three stars. But maybe that movie was just an accident. Beginner’s luck.
Yes, his 2010 follow-up “The Town” was equally lauded and earned a heap of awards, including an Oscar nomination for Jeremy Renner, but maybe that was just sophomore good fortune. Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Now Affleck is back with his third feature, Friday’s “Argo,” and with it, he’s out to cement his credentials as an A-list director once and for all — as well as to banish the pesky ghosts of Bennifer and “Gigli” and all of that forever.
“Argo” is Affleck’s most ambitious movie so far. While his previous two films took place in a world he knew well — Boston, where he grew up — and were both adapted from hard-boiled crime novels, “Argo” is a world-spanning espionage story about the successful rescue of six Americans from Iran.
“The truth is that Warner Brothers took a chance on me to make a movie that was very unconventional, that had a lot of elements that could trip you up, that would be a challenge to sell,” Affleck says. “They showed this faith in me and I’m really grateful because I got to make a movie that I’m really proud of, that has themes in it that I’m really interested in. I’ve worked on movies before where I didn’t feel that way and I know the difference.”
“Argo” certainly requires the director to cover new ground in his storytelling, including politics, unfamiliar locations and perhaps most challenging of all, period details. He also had to juggle a budget more than double that of “Gone Baby Gone.”
The film, loosely based on real events, is set in 1979 Iran after armed revolutionaries have overrun the US embassy and taken its personnel hostage. Six employees manage to escape out a back door and take refuge in the Canadian ambassador’s residence, where they remain shut in for fear of discovery by the vicious Revolutionary Guards, who patrol the streets in search of Americans.
Back in Washington, CIA operative Tony Mendez (played by Affleck) concocts an incredible plan to get them out. They will pose as a Canadian crew scouting locations for a fake science-fiction film called “Argo.” To make the cover more plausible, Mendez creates all the trappings of filmmaking, including renting a Hollywood office, hiring a producer (Alan Arkin) and having ads placed in trade journals.
The actual Mendez, whose mission was declassified in 1997, consulted on the film.
“We were going to the screening and it’s the big, red carpet thing,” Affleck says. “I said, ‘Tony, all these people are here to watch the story of your life and see all the things that you did. What’s that like?’ He goes, ‘It’s good.’
“I was, like, ‘All right.’ I guess once a spy always a spy.”
Mendez may act nonchalant, but early word on “Argo” has been good. Many reviews out of last month’s Toronto Film Festival were rapturous, and several Oscar pundits (is that a full-time gig?) have tipped the film as a strong Best Picture candidate and Affleck for Best Director. The guy who eight years ago starred in the awful “Surviving Christmas” could be taking home Oscar’s biggest awards.
“It’s such an overwhelmingly weird thing to see happen,” says Steven Schneider, executive producer of “Paranormal Activity 4” and author of”501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers.”
“In an industry where trust and relationships are essential to the nature of a product, it becomes really difficult to take a left turn on an identity that’s been established,” Schneider says. “People in Hollywood are more skeptical when it comes to rebranding.”
Affleck’s own rebranding began about 10 years ago when he says he grew weary of the relentless tabloid coverage of his relationship with Jennifer Lopez and how he was portrayed in the media.
“Because that was so discordant, it made me think, ‘Let me make who I am line up with the work I do,’ ” Affleck told Time.
The climb back would still be slow. Affleck began by sidelining acting and heading behind the camera, something he seemingly always planned to do. In 1993, he made a 13-minute short film called “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney.” (Watch it on YouTube, and you will see why it did not, surprisingly, result in a three-picture deal with Disney.)
“He has been working in the business in some way since he was around 13 years old, and he was inquisitive,” says Jay Lacopo, who co-wrote and appeared in the short film. “I remember him spending a lot of time talking to DPs about lenses and talking about photography. He’s always been aware of the bigger picture.”
Affleck has since said he’s embarrassed by this early effort, telling Entertainment Weekly, “It’s horrible. It looks like it was made by someone who has no prospects, no promise.”
But he did have prospects. In the early 2000s, when his personal life was tabloid fodder and his professional life had been knee-capped by bombs such as “Daredevil,” Affleck co-wrote the script for “Gone Baby Gone,” based on the book by Dennis Lehane. The script came to producer Alan Ladd Jr.
“He wasn’t known as a director, but he was a good writer, and I respected that,” Ladd says. “I think writing is a terrific talent to have, and it’s not that far from directing. He said, ‘What about me directing?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure, why not?’”
Not everyone was as trusting, however.
“There was certainly skepticism on Paramount’s part, because they put it in turnaround,” Ladd says. “He hadn’t directed anything yet. This was his first movie.”
Affleck then took the movie to Miramax, owned by Disney, where the project was greenlit. Affleck, who says he often spent more time picking the crews’ brains on his various projects than thinking about his character, was prepared for the logistics of making a movie.
“He seemed to have everything under total control,” Ladd says. “He never asked me or anybody else about how to do a shot.”
“He’s as meticulous as any director I’ve ever worked with,” Arkin says. “His first film looks like he’d done 15 movies already.”
“He has great instincts about what’s good and what’s bad,” Ladd says. “There would be things he’d shoot where I’d go, ‘What’s he doing that for?’ But then I saw the final cut and I said, ‘Oh, of course. That’s a smart thing he was doing.’”
For Affleck, making a movie mostly boils down to the people around him.
“John Ford said that directing was 90 percent casting,” he says.
“Gone Baby Gone” became a modest hit, certainly not because — almost in spite of — Affleck’s involvement. His name was buried on the film’s marketing materials; the poster gives top billing to “the acclaimed author of ‘Mystic River.’”
For “The Town,” Affleck was confident enough to appear in front of the camera again. Audiences did not revolt, clearing yet another hurdle for the one-time punchline.
Now with “Argo,” Affleck is enjoying something he hasn’t for a long, long time, if ever: Audiences are eagerly anticipating one of his films. His rebranding project is seemingly almost complete, and if “Argo” hits at the box office and gets some love come awards season, Affleck will go into 2013 a completely different commodity than he was a decade ago.
“It’s not that he’s operating at a level that there was no precedent for,” Schneider says of Affleck, who we’ve long since forgotten won a writing Oscar for 1997’s “Good Will Hunting.” “So maybe the acting stuff was the interim rung. That wasn’t him.”
In Hollywood’s eyes, Affleck is now among the top directors. The head of Warner Bros., Jeff Robinov, has said that he offers every script he has to Ben, including the planned superhero franchise “Justice League,” which Affleck turned down.
Instead, he’s slated to direct an adaptation of Stephen King’s “The Stand.” And in perhaps the ultimate sign that he’s back, Affleck may helm a movie about Boston gangster Whitey Bulger starring Matt Damon, the director’s old buddy whose soaring career contrasted sharply with Affleck’s floundering.
Now it will be Ben who is calling the shots.