Ben Affleck Married “What’s in your wallet” Girl And Lost His Way?

The Rocky Mountains are indeed rocky on an unreal scale. Literally rocks all over the place.

In the ever changing landscape of our lives, we notice when a big rock makes a dangerous move.

Ben Affleck is a big rock and he’s on a roll, from celebration to medication, which is what I call it when I get hammered.

This is Batman Ben Aflleck, Argo Ben Affleck. This is The Accountant Ben Affleck, the only movie to ever make my shins hurt.

Without going into any big man-crushy sounding drama, I will tell you we follow each other on Twitter. I wrote a boomerpdx post asking which direction his career was headed.

I followed back after seeing this, so we’re basically best friends, right? Which is why I’m giving the guy a few tips on attitude and marriage and fatherhood.

II

Ben, I get that famous people like you and Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain carry a lot of hopes and dreams as well as the hopes and dreams of people like me who live through you vicariously. It must feel too close for high profile people when one of their own ends their life.

I’ll speak for the entire world here: It feels too close to us, too. Probably closer because we pin so much on people we know so little about. But you’ve shown us more than most.

You found someone interested in family ties, in raising kids together, in helping an expanding circle of new people from school know the Affleck’s aren’t parents who hire others to do the parenting stuff.

I like to think you’ve sat through the same brain-fogging parent teacher meetings as the rest of us instead of organizing a card game, or meeting important movie money people for drinks.

I like to think you stepped up for your kids and their friends a few times like the rest of the dads on hand because you were the best dad for the job, and not some shades wearing little bitch in the parking lot checking his watch for the second the game ends, practice ends, or class ends.

Don’t think I keep up with celebrity kids, or celebrity families, but your wife is in the ‘What’s in your wallet’ commercial and bumping Samuel L. Jackson off the screen, not an easy job. And that’s where the experienced husband sees what you see, hears what you here: Your wife wants to know what’s in our wallet.

And she means it, but then again, she’s an actortress. We know what you’ve heard off camera, Ben.

“What’s in the bag? Who was at the door? Where have you been? What have you been doing? Do I need to call someone? You want more dessert? What will the kids say now? Have you ever thought of the neighbors? Who was on the phone? How can you call those people your friends?” all said in Jennifer Garner’s voice.

If not the exact wording, these questions all ask things we don’t want to answer. We could answer without repercussion, but we don’t want to. Answering one inane question leads to another and another and another and suddenly you’re ten years down the road.

We get it, Ben. Then another ten, another ten, and it’s thirty years of keeping up your end of the husband/partner/parent deal. Look, if you’ve got normal kids, don’t they deserve a chance to grow up normal, the sort of normal two parents go to battle for?

Cafemom.com rolls out the unlikelihood of ‘normal life’ in the celebrity couple neighborhood. The newshounds and photosharks and general pains in the ass people writing about stuff add their own hopes and dreams onto yours. It’s an invisible burden, but still a burden.

While you sit out some down time, find a way to improve the mind numbing routine of family life. Do it like it means the most to you every day, that and planning movies for the rest of us who stay in our lane.

III

Like all good movie fans who watch Quentin Tarantino for scenes he steals from other movies, pays homage to, references, whatever he does to make his hits, we also know the main Hollywood Fear, and who embodies it best.

I present Orson Welles.

Ben, you and Orson share similar history but that doesn’t mean you need to follow him. Both of you have had bright lights shined on you from your early twenties.

He turned into a man some call the greatest film director of all time. That’s a good goal to aim for, and you’ve shown you’re up to it. We in the fan world have no idea what that means, but we like the results.

You see other dads your age, with your sort of tribe you lead, and you’ve got to wonder how they do it without spending more time tanked than you do. They do it with projects, Ben. They buy a table saw and start making shit, then a sander, and stains, and finishes, and the kids can’t come in the room because it’s dangerous to their health.

Or dad’s have jobs that require travel, lots of travel, lots of ‘away time.’ Isn’t ‘Away Time’ a big part of the movie business? What used to work in the past doesn’t always move forward with the times. Kids want their time; you’ve got to want to give it to them.

Have your heard of the violence in youth sports? It comes from dads so pent up, so overcharged, with spending ‘quality time’ that anything beyond their own definitions and expectations pushes them over the edge. When their kids strikes out in the bottom of the ninth they go for the coach. Or the ump.

Or to the bottle, the line on the mirror, the needle and the damage done.

Many, many dads with more time in service than you understand what happens in the mid-forties, Ben. You hate getting fat and turning into the sort of schlub you used to make fun of, who you promised anyone who gave the slightest damn you’d never become. You put in a good decade of family time answering Jennifer’s goofy wife/mother questions asked in her ‘what’s in your wallet’ annoying voice and you wonder if that’s all there is?

Is that all there is?

A couple of years ago Newsweek said this:

Orson Welles fancied himself a well-meaning cinema giant whose great insecurity stemmed from feeling betrayed by the business. After briefly rubbing elbows with Hollywood’s finest, he was just as quickly painted as a bloated has-been in the time that followed the glory days of Touch of Evil and The Magnificent Ambersons.

The good news about Orson Welles being betrayed by the business? What it would mean to you if you went down the same path? No more harassing traffic jam every time you show your face.

Grow an Orson-worthy beard and start filling out Orson-sized clothes. This is the start of the how your kids will remember you, how they will reflect your fatherhood, them and not past babes, current babes, or future babes.

Maybe give Warren Beatty a call for some Hollywood mentoring on how to move out of the spotlight.