‘I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney’: Ben Affleck’s directorial debut
Irrespective of how you feel about Ben Affleck, it’s impossible to deny the fact that he is one of the biggest names in Hollywood. Ranging from Good Will Hunting to Gone Girl, Affleck has been involved in multiple iconic projects, but his filmography extends far beyond the popular films most people know about.
In addition to his acting abilities, Affleck’s directorial skills have also been the subject of much conversation in recent years. After the incredible critical and commercial success of his 2012 effort, Argo, many fans felt that Affleck’s transition to more prominent directorial projects would be smooth and simple.
While Affleck’s future as a director remains ambiguous, it’s his past that we are interested in. That’s right, the past of a Hollywood icon whose directorial debut was titled I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney.
A short satirical critique of the vapid, narcissistic and often psychopathic world of Hollywood, I Killed My Lesbian Wife… stars Jay Lacopo as an arrogant director whose hobby is violent misogyny. Having actually hung his wife on a metal hook for being a lesbian, he laments the rise of feminism and equal rights.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Affleck disowned his first project: “It’s horrible. It’s atrocious. I knew I wanted to be a director, and I did a couple of short films, and this is the only one that haunts me. I’m not proud of it. It looks like it was made by someone who has no prospects, no promise.”
Although the concept of the short is interesting – a Hollywood executive’s destructive ego taken to its logical conclusion, I Killed My Lesbian Wife… is just a terribly executed exercise in amateur filmmaking. It has almost no redeeming qualities except the uncomfortable casting scene, which is, sadly, reflective of many young artists’ experiences.
“The title is the best thing about it,” Affleck told The Guardian. “It’s about how we sometimes forgive the lunatic behaviour of artists and call it ‘eccentricity’. I was trying to make it as an actor and hearing stories of how ‘so and so was doing this’ or ‘that guy has this outrageous technique’. And I remember thinking, ‘What bulls–t.’ Just because this guy’s on some crazy diet doesn’t make him talented. The work itself is what matters.”
Watch the film below.
