“The Accountant” is not really a film about single-entry ledgers, balance sheets and profit-and- loss statements.
Instead, it’s a sometimes violent drama about a man named Christian Wolff, played by Ben Affleck, who does the bookkeeping for some pretty shady customers. Not Wells Fargo, but mobsters.
When the life of another auditor is threatened, Wolff sets down his calculator and picks up a gun.
Opening this weekend, the film is directed by Gavin O’Connor. He previously made the films “Tumbleweeds,” “Miracle,” “Pride and Glory” and “Warrior.”
Part of the conceit of “The Accountant,” which was written by Bill Dubuque, is that Affleck’s character is on the autism spectrum. When O’Connor visited The Frame earlier this week, John Horn began by asking him how he and Affleck approached this delicate depiction.
Interview Highlights:
On how he and Ben Affleck approached the delicate depiction of a character on the autism spectrum:
One of the agreements that Ben and I had was that we're going to go into this, the research of autism, as if we know nothing, which is really valuable. Because I did have some preconceptions, based on my own experience. There's a woman named Laurie Stevens that opened up her doors to us. She runs a school called Exceptional Minds. And she opened up the doors to Ben and I. We met so many men on the spectrum, varying degrees, and spent a lot of time with them.
They opened up their minds, their hearts, their lives to us. They're as nuanced as you and I are, and anyone who's considered like a neurotypical. So it was really liberating, in a way, to build this character vis a vis all the people that we met.... Once I allowed myself to be pulled into their world and experiencing the world through their eyes, I started to say that sometimes it was autistic and at times it felt artistic. The vividness of the way they handled things or displayed things or saw things was extraordinary.
On the successes and setbacks in his film career from the 1999 Sundance film Tumbleweeds to today:
You know, "Tumbleweeds," ignorance is bliss. So I had no idea really what I was doing. I didn't understand how difficult it was and how fortunate I was — everything that happened at Sundance. I remember after "Tumbleweeds" my friend and I wrote "Pride and Glory." I was just about to get it going. I had some really great actors attached and New Line was going to make the movie and 9/11 happened. And it was over. By September 12 it was over. And rightfully so. I understood that.
I remember my attorney, Kevin Morris — who is one of my closest friends — he said to me, "So what else you got?" I said, "I don't have anything else." He goes, "You have no other scripts? No other projects?" I said, "No, I had 'Pride and Glory.'" He goes, "OK, so here's your lesson in Hollywood: You need to have several projects that you're passionate about, that you're pushing forward. My goal for you is, you have several projects that you want to make. You have to be passionate. ... I want you to be choosing what you want to do, not have people choosing for you. And that was the biggest lesson for me. And that's what I do now.
On the perils of pushing a beloved film project through production and release:
Then you get curveballs, like on "Warrior," as an example. ..."Rocky" was a big influence for me as a child. So "Warrior" ... I had a trilogy set up for that.... It was one of those movies, that from writing it, it just all came out. And then it was very fast from writing it to going to shoot it. So, everything was so alive in me, my nerve endings were always palpitating while I was making the film. Then they held it for a year because of "The Fighter," [David O. Russell's] movie. Then the whole marketing of the movie I was pulling my hair out — what little hair I have — because I disagreed with everything that was going on.
I remember we opened on a Friday. On Saturday night the band The National was playing at the Hollywood Bowl and my buddy who I wrote the movie with was waiting for me outside the venue. He went to hug me. He goes, "We got how many more weeks of this? The movie just opened!" And I said to him, "It's over. It's over." I'm saying, "It's Lionsgate. It's f***ing Lionsgate. It didn't do well Friday night and they are not going to spend more money next weekend. It's over. It was all over." That broke my heart. Honestly, I can tell you this, we're not at Lionsgate anymore.
On the feeling right before "The Accountant" reviews came in and it opened in theaters:
As I sit here today I feel — because the last few weeks have just been a whirlwind. I woke up today and I was really emotional. The thoughts that went through my mind were that my family is so much more important than a movie. My wife's parents, her aunt, our kids, they were all at the house today. I came downstairs and people were talking about the movie and I said, "I don't even want to talk about the movie," because I'm just so grateful to have my family with me. My wife's pregnant, and that to me is the priority of life is family, and all the other stuff is just bulls**t in the end.