Ben Affleck isn’t just starring in the headlines this week.
He’s also in a new drama directed by old pal George Clooney.
It’s about a bartender who takes his fatherless nephew under his wing.
Deco’s Alex Miranda, who hasn’t fathered children but sure wants to, has the story.
“The Tender Bar” is a sweet story about a young boy who manages to achieve his dreams despite a crappy dad.
It’s taken from the pages of a best-selling memoir but has that gotten star Ben Affleck to think about writing a memoir of his own? Ben Affleck is opening up again!
Alex: “You’ve lived an extraordinary life, Ben. Would you go the memoir route?”
Ben Affleck: “I would write a memoir. I would type it out. I would read it once, and I would light it on fire.”
This time, about the “The Tender Bar,” a new drama directed by George Clooney that tells the story, based on the best-selling memoir of a fatherless boy who grows up around a quirky group of father figures but mainly his uncle Charlie, a small-town bartender.
But this coming-of-age story isn’t just another script for the academy award-winner.
Ben Affleck: “Where I grew up in Massachusetts is actually quite similar. My dad worked in a bar, and I used to go up and see him in the bar. I remember it from that point of view, you know, looking up and trying to figure it out.”
Daniel Ranieri plays a young J.R.
Ben Affleck: “Tell him. Tell him how I really am.”
Daniel Ranieri: “No, Ben is actually really great.”
Ben Affleck: “I told you, you better get it right this time! That’s how you work with actors. You have to really.”
Tye Sheridan, the grown up version who dreams of becoming a writer.
Tye Sheridan: “It’s really about a guy who’s on this journey and really longing for something that he feels is absent.”
Alex Miranda: “This real person, this character, has no help from– effectively no father. How does he find the motivation to achieve so much?”
Tye Sheridan: “You may call it the perpetual love and support from his mother.”
That’s Dorothy, played by Lily Rabe.
Lily Rabe: “Her sort of default position is one of hope.”
Lily told me the tenderness wasn’t only in the title.
Lily Rabe: “Talking to Daniel and Tye about their mothers, talking to Ben and George about our children, it was so present on set.”
And this book-to-movie had me thinking, in the biopic of Ben’s life…
Alex Miranda: “Who would you want to play you?”
Ben Affleck: “All actors really believe they should play every part, too. Can you imagine anything more painful then being like, you know, ‘They won’t even cast me in the Ben Affleck story!'”
You can watch “The Tender Bar” in select theaters on Wednesday and on Amazon Prime Video in January.
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