CraveOnline: What about you, have you seen anything good?
Casey Affleck: I have not had a chance to see any movies.
Really?
Yeah, it’s just been a crazy fall. You know, and they all come out in a rush. So I would like to see Gravity on the big screen. I’ve seen Inside Llewyn Davis. I thought it was excellent. That’s like the one movie I’ve seen that I’ve really liked. It’s basically a musical. I don’t know if it’s going to fall into that category. I don’t know. I did something really good. What the hell was it?
I don’t know.
Blue Ruin.
Really? I haven’t seen that yet.
I don’t think it’s out. Blue Ruin I watched, and a movie called The Silence on Netflix, which was so well done.
Is that a new film?
A couple years old, but that’s just what I saw. So this movie… Do you like it?
You know, there’s things I like it but there’s something about it overall… I’m still wrapping my head around it, but I liked the performances, I liked the way it was shot. I loved all the bare-knuckle stuff. I haven’t written about it yet and I’m not going to until I get a bead on how I really feel. There’s something about the revenge plot… I like how Cooper transformed Woody Harrelson at the end, how he became sort of pathetic…
Uh-huh…
You know, when you’re about to die, no matter what kind of monster you are, you’re a human being. But it’s an interesting film. But at the risk of sounding like I’m in a room with you, I thought you were very good in it. And I’ve never seen… I’m trying to think if I’ve seen you do any action stuff before. You took off your shirt and you’re all ripped. Like, “Casey, what happened, man? You look great!”
[Laughs] That’s funny.
Have you done any fighting or anything like that?
No, I hate… I’ve been in some pretty violent movies. But this was, watching these real fights, it’s so gruesome, it’s so brutal. I hated it. The training, I’m not a fighter, it took so long so that I could look like I could actually be in a fight and maybe actually hurt somebody. It’s not even interesting to talk about. It’s just grueling, out there boxing and fighting.
It’s more than that. You have to sell it physically, you have to look like you can do some damage, but I got the impression that you wanted to hurt somebody. That’s what made you more dangerous than anything else. You’re working through some issues and you’re working them out with your fists.
That’s exactly right. The research I did, actually I got really into it, definitely helped me. You always try to find one thing you can hold onto, to try to pull yourself into the part, and man, thinking about the fucking… doing four tours in combat, what they go through, what it’s like to feel…
If you’ve ever been through something where it’s just a couple weeks of constant anxiety, it leaves you with residual effects. But for years, it’s like if you go out in the open, you might get shot in the head. It’s so much anxiety that when you come home – and I’ve talked to a bunch of these dudes – they can’t go to the grocery store. They just are like, pure panic coursing through their veins, and it makes you incredibly aggressive. It makes it so you’re swinging between incredibly depressed and then really angry and aggressive, feeling misunderstood and also feeling betrayed.
Like, you go over there and put your life on the line! Even if you’re a tough, macho kid and you want to go to war… No matter what you think of the war, anything, they’re kids, they go over there, they put a gun in their hand, they’re screamed at, they’re told to fight for their country. Then they come back, and it’s like, “Fuck you, dude, you have to re-apply for your food stamps.”
I was reading this article once – and I don’t know how true it is, for all I know it’s been discredited since I read it – but it said that if you get in a position when your life is in mortal danger, and you get that fight or flight response, your brain chemistry is altered forever.
Yeah. Altered forever. However, I was just reading, and maybe it’s been discredited now [laughs], that now that there’s more funding, they’re researching it a little bit because there’s so much talk about it, so they’ve identified the genes responsible for it. And go like, “Oh, this is fear memory.” So it’s like our intrinsic memory of fear or some shit, and they can… Just in the way of the early days of Prozac, they go, “Here’s the deficiency in your whatever-it’s-called, and we have an uptake inhibitor, and we can stop a deficiency so you get more of your serotonin level back up, so you’re not depressed anymore.”
Now they’re just figuring out how to deal with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and of course it’s a chemical thing, but it’s also experiences that, as you say, alter your brain chemistry forever. So now they’re going like, “Well, it’s true, we haven’t treated these guys with therapy. We’ve denied them benefits to have daily therapy for mental health issues, and compensation. But, we are at least figuring out that maybe if we give them this pill, it will just stop these intense feelings.
Screw you, man! What the hell?!
[Laughs]
Now I’m wondering, if we got this pill that can take away our Post-Traumatic Stress, can they just stop you from feeling the fear at all in the first place? Now that sounds fucking dangerous.
It does.
That would be fucked up. There’s probably a movie like that already.
If not…
No, write that down! Take that. That’s yours.
[Laughs]
You enjoy that very, very much.
I’m sure that’s on the way. That pill is on the way. Boy, it would make some monsters.
I do not want to think about it. What are you working on right now? What’s in your headspace right now?
I’m trying to find a movie that I really love and can act in, and I’m basically… people don’t really give me those great scripts. The few that I’ve been a part of has basically been luck, or a combination of luck and just banging on people’s doors and going like, “You have to give me this role.” But they don’t just come. It’s not a steady stream. And you know, that’s okay, you know what I mean? I’m not like Christian Bale. But I would love a great part. Sometimes it takes a lot of waiting and reading a bunch of stuff, and trying not to be frustrated, and waiting for something that’s really good.
And in the meantime I’m writing a movie about this guy, Josh Hamilton? It sounds weird, because I don’t really ever imagine doing like a sports movie, or doing a redemption movie, and this movie is both of those things. It’s also not really, and it kept coming back to me, and the universe was just like you’ve got to do this. So I did that, and it’s finished, and they’re trying to figure out casting it, and I’m trying to decide… am I actually going to go and direct this movie now? Because what I really, really want to do is find something to act in that I love.
Could you do both?
I guess I could but it takes up two years of your time. Last time, I did Jesse James and that movie Gone Baby Gone that came out around the same time, and then I disappeared for two years and directed this move I’m Still Here that Joaquin [Phoenix] was in, my brother-in-law, and I just… it was like, two years in this town? You may as well be a stranger when you come back. They’re like, “Oh, you’re an actor? What’s your name?”
“You were nominated for an Oscar? Really?” It’s like they forget. It’s crazy.
So I would like to act a little bit more.
I hope you do, man. I love your movies.
Thanks, dude.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
