“Utter garbage”: how a movie Ben Affleck hating making became his most cherished memory
Things might have turned out differently for Ben Affleck had he followed the same path as Matt Damon following their Academy Award-winning breakthrough with Good Will Hunting, something he’s admitted he probably should have done in retrospect.
Whereas his lifelong best friend sought out the industry’s premier directors and made films with Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Anthony Minghella, and Robert Redford, Affleck decided that he fancied becoming a movie star, which left him teetering on the brink of irrelevancy by the early 2000s.
In his defence, the actor’s first credit after Good Will Hunting won the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’, but Shakespeare in Love is arguably the most undeserving winner in the ceremony’s history. Affleck also starred in the year’s highest-grossing release, but he isn’t exactly too fond of Armageddon.
Neither were critical darlings, but they looked like masterpieces compared to his third and final feature of 1998: Phantoms. Panned well beneath six feet under and tanking at the box office, the sci-fi horror revolving around a malevolent spirit attacking a Colorado town won’t be remembered as his finest hour.
It did spawn a meme via Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, though, which Affleck referenced when looking back at the woeful movie with GQ: “I was the bomb in Phantoms, everybody knows that.” He knew it was terrible and hated making it, but Phantoms did at least leave him with one cherished memory.
“I loved doing that movie,” he said before quickly correcting himself. “Well, no, I didn’t love doing the movie, but I liked those people. The movie was a sewer monster movie, let’s face it. And I was a sheriff in Colorado. I was, like, 20 years old. It was totally absurd. And the movie was utter garbage.”
Being paid $100,000 for his troubles helped soften the blow, but it was an illustrious co-star who provided the two-time Oscar winner with a moment he never thought he’d be able to beat. “I met Peter O’Toole, and got stoned with Peter O’Toole, and was like, ‘What else happens in my life that tops this? Nothing.'”
As much as the internet wants people to think that Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms, he wasn’t, and he knows it. However, the chance to get high with a living legend like O’Toole, who also signed his Lawrence of Arabia poster, took the edge off shooting a dire creature feature in more ways than one.
It’s not the worst thing he’s ever been in, an honour that will always belong to Gigli unless something goes terribly wrong, but it’s definitely up there. On the plus side, no matter how much he hates Phantoms, Affleck will never forget that it allowed him to get high with one of his all-time acting heroes.
