Is Details bending over for November coverboy Ben Affleck, or did the mag actually run with a piece of shoddy journalism? In his December editor's letter, Dan Peres apologizes for printing a quote that he now says Affleck never made. "I've gone out and directed a movie and made it really fucking good," writer Bart Blasengame has Affleck on the record as saying of Gone Baby Gone. Never said it! says Peres. Peres also claims that Affleck never implied that he would leave Los Angeles if the movie bombs (Blasengame writes, "As if to prove how far he's willing to go to regain a toehold in the upper echelons of Hollywood, Affleck says he might even leave Los Angeles altogether if Gone Baby Gone is a bust.")
Curiously, Peres didn't rescind the rest of Affleck's quotation, in which he explains, "If the movie's good, people will like it and go see it. All the rest is bullshit." Also curious: neither Blasengame's name nor that of photographer Steven Klein is found anywhere on the piece.
A rep for Details claims that Affleck and Peres are "good friends." Could it be that, despite the fact that the movie has been critically well-received, not many butts are actually filling theater seats, and Peres is hedging on behalf of his buddy? Of course not. Who would think of tarnishing the career of a journalist simply to maintain a Hollywood connection?