{"id":958,"date":"2010-06-19T17:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-20T00:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/06\/the-killer-inside-casey-affleck.html"},"modified":"2010-06-19T17:31:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-20T00:31:00","slug":"the-killer-inside-casey-affleck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/06\/the-killer-inside-casey-affleck.html","title":{"rendered":"The Killer Inside Casey Affleck"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>RECENTLY I spent some time with Casey Affleck, who appears in Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of the Jim Thompson noir novel, The Killer Inside Me<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t often write about actors \u2013 I\u2019m not usually that curious about their inner worlds the way I am with novelists, musicians, or directors \u2013 but Casey Affleck is so strong, and so elusive, in his films that I welcomed the chance to sit down with him.<\/span><\/span><\/h1>\n

Here<\/a> is my story. Found him quite a smart, if reticent, cat — very interested in science-fiction and early Vonnegut. Winterbottom calls him “the reluctant actor.” I’d call the film\u00a0a stylish, often gripping and in some ways misfired.<\/p>\n

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Casey and I spoke about a lot of things I didn\u2019t have room\u00a0for, including his love for Vonnegut’s early novel The\u00a0Sirens of Titan, which he has wondered about adapting for years. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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We did the interview at a coffee place in Pasadena called Jones, where the\u00a0air conditioner directly above where Casey was sitting began to rumble and shake like something out of Naked Lunch<\/i>, dripping green liquid on his newspaper and dangerously close to the actor’s cup of tea. I thought it was something out of Candid Camera<\/i>.<\/div>\n
I really enjoyed meeting Winterbottom, who has directed at least one of my favorite films — the Manchester UK chronicle “24 Hour Party People.” Winterbottom is as revved up and enaged — and promiscuous in his filmmaking — as Casey is reserved and choosy. When I asked the director if he was frustrated that after a decade and a half in the business he had not worked his way up to a recognizable style or a big-budget movie: “Because those films,” he responded, “are boring<\/i>.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
At the end of the interview I asked Casey what kind of body of work he wanted to look back on in 10 years.\u00a0\u201cNumber one, time with my family. Number two, 10 science-fiction movies,\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cNumber two, a variety of work with people I respect, doing things different from each other \u2013 a movie set during the Hundred Years War, then go and do a movie about a guy who works at Jones. Really mix it up. I don\u2019t know, it sounds almost impossible.\u201d<\/div>\n

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<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RECENTLY I spent some time with Casey Affleck, who appears in Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of the Jim Thompson noir novel, The Killer Inside Me. I don\u2019t often write about actors \u2013 I\u2019m not usually that curious about their inner worlds the way I am with novelists, musicians, or directors \u2013 but Casey Affleck is so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,230,76,243,134],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-casey-affleck","8":"category-film","9":"category-jim-thompson","10":"category-noir","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}