Empire has just done the first starstruck thing of our film reporting days and had photos taken with both Ben Affleck and Adrien Brody. Unfortunately, due to copyright legislation and the fact they are cosily locked away on our cameraphone, you will never be able to see these pictures, but rest assured when Ben said “Use them wisely,” we really took it to heart. Marriage license anyone?The reason for Brody and Affleck’s presence in London is the LFF screening of Hollywoodland. Part murder mystery, part biopic, it focuses on a private eye (Brody)’s investigation into the death of the first Reeves – George (Affleck) – to play Superman back in the 1950s. And no, before you ask, Ben says he can “absolutely guarantee” he won’t be teaming up with wife, and Elektra star, Jennifer Garner in a tag-team superhero flick.
Of the cast, Bob Hoskins, who plays the ruthless manager of MGM whose free-spirited wife (Diane Lane, absent this evening) is having an affair with Reeves, is one of the few to have seen the original Supes in action on the big screen. “Before everyone had a television we used to go to the cinema every Saturday morning, all the kids, and we’d see Superman, Flash Gordon, Tarzan, all that sort of stuff, that’s what we did,” says Hoskins. After his very well-received role in Hollywoodland, his plans are more low-key. “Nothing! It’s wonderful! I love waking up in the morning and thinking today I have absolutely nothing to achieve. If anything takes my interest, it can have my full attention.
Director Allan Coulter is halfway through explaining what drew him to Hollywoodland when Bob Hoskins’s chair snaps quite literally in half, and he flops backwards towards the floor. It’s very hard not to laugh, so we look concerned instead. Back to Coulter: “Hollywood in the 50s? It was a great era.There’s this new cult of celebrity, radios, TVs, rock ‘n’ roll, which didn’t exist in the early 50s, but in 1959, George Reeves is really being left behind. He really is a dinosaur.”
Meanwhile, Adrien Brody is in playful mood and unsurprisingly keen to have a drink with the rest of the cast before the screening. Not the sort of mood you’d get after roles like The Pianist, then, this private eye lark? “Oh yeah, it was an easy role to be playful with, to have a sense of humour about yourself,” says Brody. “Even though there’s a lot of dark elements to the story it’s a guy who’s very immature and it’s fun to play a character who’s immature.” He grins, mischievously. “All the repercussions don’t fall on your shoulders!”
No, those repercussions belong to Affleck. If you can only visualise Affleck as an arrogant arse in Kevin Smith films, or in lycra as Daredevil, prepare to be surprised. This time round, Affleck pulls out every acting stop he has. He came across it through brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix, who was attached at one stage and says of the role: “I liked that contrast, he was trying to make other people feel good all the time but was never going to make himself feel better.
"The other really interesting aspect is that he played this character who represented invincibility and virility and male power and post-war American sense of grandness and again, because he was so tortured, it suggested when he killed himself that maybe this self-image that America has isn’t up to it.” Who does he think done it? “I think either he killed himself or he wound up in life so unhappy and so much difficulty that, as Bob Hoskins says, if he didn’t kill himself, someone did him a favour.”