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In the wake of his box-office disaster "Gigli" with then-fiancée Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck's "Jersey Girl" project (in which J. Lo also has a part) found itself under intense scrutiny. But as Affleck recently explained to MTV News' Vanessa White Wolf, "Jersey Girl" is a movie that deserves to be judged on its own merits, and not in the context of last year's mafia misfire. Directed by Kevin Smith ("Clerks," "Chasing Amy"), "Jersey Girl" revolves around a single dad who spends all his time working and caring for his daughter, but then he unexpectedly meets someone who forces him to make room in his life for love.
MTV: In "Jersey Girl," your character's daughter is a big fan of the musical "Sweeney Todd" and you do a little singing. But Kevin Smith also says that on the set of "Dogma" you were quite the crooner with R. Kelly's "Gotham City."
Ben Affleck: Listen, R. Kelly is a musical genius. People don't understand that. "Gotham City" is not his best song, but it's good. [Sings] "Gotham City ..." Come on, it's moving, it's peaceful, it builds. "A city of justice ..." You know what I'm saying? That's what we need — a city of justice, a city of love, Gotham City for every one of us. I still sing the R. Kelly now and again. The "I Wish" remix, I'll break it out, or I'll break out some of the newer stuff. That being said, I don't sing well, but I do sing. So it's kind of a bad combination, really. It's like a guy who thinks he's in his own shower all of the time, but luckily, in the way you folks at MTV are very familiar with, it turns out that even if you're a bad singer, when you're in the [recording] booth, they turn a few knobs and dials and they dial you right in. So I sound pretty good, actually. ... We should have done a "Sweeney Todd" video. Is it too late to cut a video for "Sweeney Todd"? We can call it "Sweeney Tizzle." "Sweeney Tizzle Televizzle."
MTV: A lot of critics are saying this movie shows Kevin Smith growing up. As someone who's been there from the beginning, do you agree?
Affleck: It's not that he's totally grown up. There's still that scene about talking about the woman getting carpal tunnel syndrome from excessive masturbation, so it's not like ... We're grading on the Kevin Smith scale of grown up, which means he's got the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old. I think he has grown up considerably from 8 to 12 — it's a long way. He's got a daughter now. When we did "Chasing Amy," me and Kevin were the same age, so we can identify. The central preoccupation of a man's life at, you know, 22, is sex and women and the mysteries of women. ... And now it's like a different mystery that he's dealing with. I'm not saying that he's become entirely nonsexual, but getting a little long in the tooth. I'm not sure he performs very frequently, but he's got to parlay that Panasonic commercial into a Levitra "stay in the game" [ad]. ... Anyway, Kevin's grown up, so now what he's interested in is being a father, being a man, trying to take more responsibility, an early 30s type of thing.
MTV: Given all the hype that was going on about "Gigli" and your relationship with J. Lo, was there ever a point when you thought, "I just don't think 'Jersey Girl' is ever gonna come out"?
Affleck: There was always an issue, before the movie was made, of having them be separate by a certain about of time because you can't have two movies with the same actors in it coming out right after each other. But I knew that Jen was only in the movie for like 10 minutes. So the fact that she's in it lets the media hook be like, "Oh, it's Ben and Jen again." It's actually very misleading, and one of the nice things about [what happened with] "Gigli" is that Miramax then marketed ["Jersey Girl"] honestly. 'Cause if "Gigli" had been a hit, it would be me and Jen on the poster. And everyone would be like, "This is bull. She's only in for 10 minutes." So I was glad in a way for that, and I also knew that I really loved this movie and I thought it was good and I was proud of it. One of the things that is nice is, I think with "Gigli" — car crash and not getting married — people had a hard time distinguishing between the movie and our relationship. It kind of got muddied by the press and stuff, and it's nice that that chapter can end on a positive note with this.
MTV: One effect that "Gigli" and Bennifer hype had on this movie, though, was that everyone was looking over Kevin's shoulder as he edited it. It was widely reported when a shot of you and J. Lo getting married was cut.
Affleck: You're absolutely right. Anything that gets done that isn't used [is seen] in the context of "Why did you cut this out?" They cut a lot of scenes. They cut one shot of me and Jen getting married, and I supported it: A, the movie was too long, it was done a long time ago, and B, because [it] distracts an audience. You're trying to get the audience to suspend their disbelief. It's the reason why you put on different clothes and you go to a set and you create a different world that's an imaginary world, and [for us to get married onscreen] is like holding up a sign that says "This is all fake! It's all hokum!" When you have something like that, it pulls the audience's mind out of the movie. So I think clearly that it was a good decision, and I think when people go see the movie, ultimately they'll sort of realize why it's not really appropriate to view it in the context of "Gigli" or anything else other than just being its own movie.
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Photo: Miramax
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