“He’s got a potty mouth”: the role Ben Affleck’s foul mouth almost cost him
How do people feel about Ben Affleck these days, whose career has died and been resurrected more times than Loki in the MCU?
Just when you think he’s down for the count, he roars back into life with an Argo or an Air, or just when you think he’s getting his act together, he’ll do something questionable in his personal life that brings him right back down to square one.
He’s easily one of Hollywood’s most problematic megastars, and one figure who was key in getting Affleck to megastar status was Kevin Smith, who wrote the lead role in his 1997 Chasing Amy specifically for the future Oscar winner, offering him one of the earliest instances of him helming a project.
The pair would continue to collaborate over the next few years, including on the cult classic Dogma, and Jersey Girl, an utterly hideous movie that Affleck still defends, perhaps out of loyalty to his friend.
However, it turns out that this partnership almost ended before it ever got the chance to begin. In an interview with People, Smith cast his mind back to the very first project he and Affleck worked on together, 1995’s Mallrats, a teen comedy in which the young star had a relatively small role as a minor antagonist, but he was also prevented from auditioning by producer James Jacks, who freaked out when he saw his name on the list of hopefuls. When Smith followed up on this, Jacks had one simple response.
“He’s got a potty mouth,” the producer said, “He’s always cursing. We had him in Dazed and Confused. There were only a few uses of the word ‘fuck’ in Dazed and Confused, but when Affleck got there, he increased it. Every scene he’s throwing ‘fuck’ around like crazy… We don’t want him in this movie. You’ve got enough bad language in the movie.”
Anyone who knows the history of Richard Linklater’s seminal slacker comedy Dazed and Confused won’t be surprised to hear how loose things were on set. Affleck himself has spoken about the party-like atmosphere the director encouraged; basically, whenever the characters were hanging out, shooting the breeze, and getting drunk, the actors were doing the same thing. This relaxed working environment might have offended Jacks’ delicate ears, but it worked wonders for the cast, with Affleck even saying that his experiences on the movie inspired him to get behind the camera himself.
According to Smith, Affleck’s audition took place on the same day news broke that he and Matt Damon had made $800,000 for their script for Good Will Hunting. Perhaps Jacks was hoping that this astronomical sum would mean his rowdy nemesis wouldn’t need this gig anymore, but he was wrong, as not only did Affleck turn up for the addition, he smashed it, and Jacks was forced to concede defeat.
While he would have the Good Will Hunting success to fall back on, Affleck’s relationship with Smith is what pushed him to become a leading man, and to think it might have gone very differently had one prudish producer gotten his way.
