Although his movie "Jersey Girl" doesn't come out until November, the writer and director Kevin Smith is already feeling anxious about its chances for success. Research audiences have responded positively to the story line about a music promoter whose life changes after he falls in love and has a child, and they call the love scenes "hot." Only a few people have said things like, "Oh god, enough of these two already." But Mr. Smith knows that he is at the mercy of a phenomenon that is beyond his control and could wreak havoc with his film. "Jersey Girl" stars the tabloid entity that he calls Bennifer: the betrothed, Bentley-riding, bussing, perpetually intertwined celebrity couple Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.
This was not what Mr. Smith, the New Jersey-based indie-auteur of "Clerks," "Chasing Amy" and "Dogma," bargained for when he cast his good buddy Ben in his romantic drama. At that time Mr. Affleck had just wrapped the gangster comedy "Gigli" opposite Ms. Lopez, and he recommended her to play his wife in "Jersey Girl." "Then all of a sudden it turned out they were a couple and I was, `Ah, no wonder he wanted to work with her again,' " says Mr. Smith by telephone, laughing. "Suddenly his suggestion didn't seem so altruistic." By the time scenes from the movie were shot in New York City last summer, scores of paparazzi were hounding the couple. "You really felt how obsessed people are," Mr. Smith says.
Now Mr. Smith can only hope that obsession translates into box office. Will audiences pay $9 to watch J. Lo and Ben falling in love on the big screen when they can see them every night on "Access Hollywood"?
The same question is probably being pondered by the folks at Revolution and Sony who have $54 million invested in "Gigli," which comes out in August. In recent weeks some nasty buzz has swirled around "Gigli," after an Ain't-It-Cool News film critic infiltrated a Los Angeles test screening and posted his opinion that the movie was "unreleasable," comparing it unfavorably to the calamitous "Showgirls." Then The New York Post's Page Six reported that the movie's director, Martin Brest ("Beverly Hills Cop," "Meet Joe Black"), and its producer, Joe Roth, had come close to a fistfight in the theater after the lights went up. (A Revolution Studios spokeswoman denies this, although she admits that tempers flared).
It's always been a risky business when stars fall in love for real while making movies, but in today's celebrity-saturated culture our investment in actors' lives increasingly interferes with our ability to believe they are the fictional characters they play. No wonder that movie marketers get wigged out over stars' love affairs: if the couple breaks up they're likely to refuse to promote the film (Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack played this scenario for laughs two years ago in the romantic comedy "America's Sweethearts"), while if they stay together the public might get bored with them. At the same time, the raging vanity of a supercouple in love knows no bounds. Even as studio executives wring their hands over whether J. Lo and Ben are going to flame out, an Internet rumor spread that the pair wants to remake "Casablanca" together (not true, say their publicists). Someone would surely finance that effort, but would it be worth more than a hill of beans in this crazy world?
Movies that feature real-life couples can be divided into two main categories. The first type, which occurs when the leading actors court and spark during shooting, can succeed if the director can capture their crackling sexual tension. Mr. Smith is hopeful that he's got lightning in a bottle in "Jersey Girl." "We got Ben and Jennifer at a perfect time," he says. "They were falling in love in real life and falling in love on film." Shooting their PG-13 love scenes, he adds, was a breeze: "I don't know that they had to act that much. There were times when we'd say `cut' and that didn't seem to matter to them."
...This summer, we'll be treated to a "Gigli" marketing orgy that is sure to have J. Lo and Ben prattling on about their love on talk shows, their mugs plastered on billboards and buses. By November, Mr. Smith may be grateful that he killed off Ms. Lopez's character 30 minutes into "Jersey Girl."
It's Take-Your-Daughter-to-Work-Day for Ollie Trinke, the music-industry publicist on daddy duty in Jersey Girl.
Here at Center City's Hard Rock Cafe, on a crisp day in mid-October, Ben Affleck, as flack Ollie, is flustered and flailing in director Kevin Smith's romance - which, not-so-coincidentally, costars the actor's real-life paramour, Jennifer Lopez, as Ollie's wife.
Sadly for those tracking the lovebirds' every flutter - the supermarket tabloids and weekly glossies are in bidding wars for photos of the hunk and his honey - today on the set it's Ben without Jen.
Though he's been filming in Philadelphia and South Jersey for more than six weeks, the actor (Changing Lanes), Oscar-winning screenwriter (Good Will Hunting), TV producer (Project Greenlight; Push, Nevada), and square-jawed heartthrob claims there hasn't been much time, not to mention privacy, for sight-seeing.
"I go from the box I live in to the box I drive in to the box I work in," says Affleck, whom Lopez has kept company even during the three weeks she hasn't been needed on the set.
The Boston native likes Philadelphia for its history, "the colonial era looming large," but "about the only places I've been as a tourist are LOVE Park and South Street."
Fortunately for the film, Smith reports, art is imitating life in the eye of the media hurricane.
"Shooting a movie about two people falling in love when your leads are actually falling in love is a huge bonus," the writer-director of Clerks and Chasing Amy says of his ode to romantic and parental love.
In the $35 million production, which began filming Aug. 26, a young husband is caught off-guard by the overwhelming love he has for his baby daughter, who grows to age 7 in the story.
Over the next 12 hours, about 100 minutes of film will be shot for what is likely to be two minutes in the final cut. In those two minutes, Affleck's working parent experiences multitasking meltdown.
In the scene, it's 1996 in New York and 300 music journalists are screaming at Ollie because they've waited hours for rapper Will Smith (who will film a cameo appearance later in the production). Ollie has ears only for his newborn, Gertie, whose cries are more compelling.
Caught between a Hard Rock and a stinky place, Ollie dashes between the podium, where he soothes inflamed reporter egos, and the kitchen, where he soothes Gertie's diaper rash.
When Ollie's core blows, Affleck erupts in tongue-twisting dialogue as molten as Jimmy Stewart's during his meltdown in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: "Shut up with the Fresh Prince [stuff]!" he shrieks. "He's a two-bit TV actor who won't be around any longer than it takes for the ink to dry on the pages of the worthless rags you jerks work for!"
After more than a dozen takes, it's safe to say that the Jersey Girl actor has done more emoting in one scene than in Pearl Harbor and The Sum of All Fears put together.
It's not hard to see that the 30-year-old former babehound, like his alter ego, is a sucker for babies.
"Ben loves children," says Nyree Dardarian, mother of twins Ani and Aden, 16 days old, who are among the numerous infants cast as Ollie's bundle of love.
"Yesterday, when the scene called for a diaper change" - butterscotch pudding substituted for poop - "the prop person put talcum powder on the makeshift changing table," says Dardarian, a dietitian from Manayunk. Affleck, aware that talc is a threat to babies' respiratory systems, immediately insisted that baby powder, made of cornstarch, be substituted.
To Dardarian's delight, Affleck coos and sings to Ani or Aden after every take, and partners them in impromptu dances.
"The twins love being manhandled by Ben," she jokes. "He's very gentle."
Though it's a sunny day for Affleck the actor, storm clouds are gathering on other fronts.
Prospects aren't good for Push, Nevada, the series he developed for ABC. "We weren't optimistic about the time slot [opposite CBS's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and NBC's Will & Grace on Thursdays]. And when it drew all this praise, it made me worry that 'critics' fave' might be a euphemism for 'cancellation,' " he says. (He was right: Push's last episode airs Thursday.)
Then there are the photos of Affleck and the recently separated Lopez, 32, playing with the Agnew babies - Northeast Philadelphia twins also cast as Gertie - that accompany a speculative tabloid story about the family planning of a couple who have been dating just three months.
While before the cameras Affleck plays out a publicist's and parent's nightmare, behind the cameras it's been a dream for Kevin Smith. Ben loves babies. Ben loves Jen. Jen loves Ben. Kevin loves Ben 'n' Jen.
Kevin loves his Jen - spouse Jennifer Schwalbach, who has a supporting role in the film as Ollie's assistant. And Kevin loves his daughter, Harley Quinn, age 3, a moon-faced imp in a Dutch-boy bob.
It doesn't hurt that the most successful director to come out of Red Bank, N.J., is close pals with Affleck, whom he gave a small part in Mallrats (1995) and a star-making turn in Chasing Amy (1997).
"We don't share the standard political friendship most directors working with high-paid actors maintain," Smith, 30, wrote in an August e-mail.
"We don't handle one another with kid gloves. After a bad take, I feel free to hit him with a good-natured 'Why can't you be a better actor?' without fretting for my job. And he'll smile and shoot back, 'Because you're not a better director,' without fretting how I'll make him look once I get to the editing room."
Does he repeatedly cast Affleck to serve as his cinematic alter ego, as Alfred Hitchcock cast Jimmy Stewart?
"Hmm, slim, charismatic movie star standing in for tubby, balding director," Smith muses. "Where the comparison falls a bit short is that Hitchcock was the genuine article and I'm an ersatz director, at best."
His own baby fever inspired Smith, who became a husband and father in 1999, to write Jersey Girl. But while he has a keen ear for dialogue and boundless affection for actors, he's the first to admit that he lacks an eye. Anyone who has seen Smith's Dogma can testify that it has all the visual flair of a radio play.
So the honchos at Miramax, producers of Jersey Girl, assigned a Yoda to mentor their Luke, hiring legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Deliverance, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) to add texture to Smith's text.
From what's visible on the playback machines, the Hard Rock on film resembles a Goth annex of the Louvre, its gold-framed memorabilia glowing like Old Master paintings.
"I've never been lit like this," Smith says, impressed though obviously in need of coffee at the start of another marathon day more than midway into the production. (Jersey Girl, which also shot in Paulsboro, decamps Philadelphia on Nov. 1 for a final week of exterior shooting in Manhattan and Highlands on the central Jersey shore.)
The atmosphere on most sets is like Groundhog Day, the tedium of reenacting the same sequence making it feel as if time had stopped. But at the Hard Rock, the Smith-Zsigmond dynamic and Smith-Affleck energy have an oxygenating effect.
One sees the filmmakers and actor layer the scene, adding detail and nuance. Between takes, Zsigmond tweaks the camera, giving a shot Smith worried was "straight-on and boring" an oblique angle that adds depth and excitement.
And Affleck, who holds back early on, plumbs deeper and deeper in subsequent shots. Fortunately for everyone, his jaw-breaking outburst as Ollie - challenging to swallow in one continuous, and oft-repeated, take - is so entertaining. It's exhausting to work at this level, but not, as on so many film sets, enervating.
"It's a lot more interesting and rewarding than construction," observes Affleck, a former hard-hat.
With three movies out in 2002 (Changing Lanes, The Sum of All Fears and The Third Wheel) and another trio next year, does Affleck have time for anything extracurricular?
"Daredevil is coming out Feb. 14 next year. Gigli [the mob comedy in which he costars with Lopez] is slated for July. And Jersey Girl is due out in November," he says. "I'm also working on TV scripts and an adaptation."
Might the adaptation be a biopic of the Attila the Hun tome that Zsigmond, the man Affleck calls "my Hungarian brother," gave him to read? He smiles, but has no comment.
"From March through June next year, I've scheduled writing time with my brother [actor Casey] and Matt [Damon, his Good Will Hunting cowriter and costar]. We've set aside that time not just to begin but actually complete a project."
"Starting is easy," the prolific actor says. "Finishing is hard."
Someone had better make Ben Affleck a father soon.
During the local shooting of Jersey Girl, he's been spotted kissing and cuddling more babies than a political candidate with a lifetime supply of Chapstick.
Affleck was at it again Wednesday, when he and costar Liv Tyler visited Mercy Community Outpatient Campus in Haverford to shoot a nursery scene. (It's where Affleck's character, Ollie, becomes a new daddy.)
Between takes, Affleck spotted little Shane Kubiak, an extra, there with his parents, John Kubiak, group events manager for Greater Philadelphia Radio Group, and Theresa Marsden, a broker's assistant for Merrill Lynch.
"He said, 'Can I hold him?' " Kubiak said. Affleck scooped Shane and baby-talked for 10 minutes. Tyler joined in, too.
Shane's path to stardom was paved by Marsden's sister, Fran Savastano, who works for Mike Lemon Casting of Philadelphia. Newborns were needed, and Marsden delivered on time.
Turns out that the little guy and Affleck have something in common: They were born exactly 30 years apart - Aug. 15, 1972 and 2002 - a fact that Kubiak says he forgot to mention to Affleck.
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck will star in director Kevin Smith's latest project, "Jersey Girl," to be made here. Here's one reason Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have been spotted together lately: They're in preproduction.
Kevin Smith will film Jersey Girl, starring Affleck, Lopez and George Carlin, in Philadelphia for about 10 weeks beginning in mid-August, the director confirmed yesterday.
"I pushed to shoot in Philadelphia over Toronto because it's in America, I liked the locations here, and because it's a great production center," said Smith, the Rabelais of Red Bank, N.J., by phone.
The Miramax film, budgeted at "upwards of $20 million," will be the sixth feature from the writer-director of Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.
The '90s-era dramatic comedy costars Affleck and Lopez as parents, and Carlin as Affleck's dad. The title character of Jersey Girl - the closest thing to a family film the defiantly profane 31-year-old has made - is the couple's preschool daughter, who has not yet been cast.
"I don't think I could have written this except for my experience as a dad," noted Smith, spouse of actress Jennifer Schwalbach Smith and father of Harley Quinn, 3. (Smith, a comics geek, named his daughter after the Batman archvillain.)
"Unless the MPAA gets weirdly stringent, this will be my first PG-13 film," Smith said. "It's not profanity-laced, it's not even profanity-dotted, which is weird because it's Affleck, Carlin and me - guys known for cursing their brains out."
Affleck, whose breakout role was as the smitten cartoonist in Smith's Chasing Amy and who now stars in The Sum of All Fears, recently wrapped Martin Brest's comedy Gigli, costarring Lopez as a lesbian hitwoman. The project is scheduled for release next year.
"He really had a great time working with Lopez and pushed her big-time for Jersey Girl," Smith says.
"Are they dating? Unequivocally, no," said the director, responding to rumors that Lopez, 31, who recently separated from husband Cris Judd, may be keeping company with eligible bachelor Affleck, 29.
"We've been excited about the prospect of hosting Kevin Smith in Philadelphia since we heard about the project in March," Sharon Pinkenson, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, said yesterday.
With episodes of the CBS-TV drama Hack starring David Morse and Jersey Girl both in production here this summer, the film office is bucking the national trend of runaway productions going north where, because of the devalued Canadian dollar, budgets go further.
"We're thrilled to be bringing millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs to the region," she said.
