BEN AFFLECK ON POLITICS, AI AND WHY JENNIFER LOPEZ IS A HOLLYWOOD PIONEER | THE MOMENT PODCAST - VIVENDI

Hola, I am Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos, and welcome to The Moment. Today we have an interview with Ben Affleck and his new movie, Animals, just released by Netflix. It's a movie that he wrote, directed, and produced. Ben Afflick needs no introduction. We know exactly who he is, but always important to remember, if you don't, that he was the youngest person to ever win an Academy Award for his film, of course, Good Will Hunting. He won another Oscar for Argo. If you grew up in the 90s, he was, you know, part of your coming of age, as he was in my case. In this case, though, Dad, Animals, it's super interesting, right? Ben plays an independent politician that's running for office to become mayor of L.A. He's married to Abigail. Abigail is played by Kerry Washington. Kerry Washington, I, too. You love Scandal. I loved Scandal, I lived in D.C. for many years. So, yeah, Scandal was part of my Netflix. Is it on Netflix? Netflix upbringing. Anyways, this film is full of these plots and twists, right? There's kidnapping involved. There's kind of the intensity of being sucked into a political campaign. There's all these interesting racial dynamics between Ben Affleck's character and Mexican immigrants. So it does feel super timely. And what I really like is how he was not afraid of dealing with really complicated issues. Immigration, the Latino vote morality. And I particularly like the way he used the language. Yeah. Sometimes when actors speak in Spanish, it's kind of fake. This was not the case. So this is, I would say, the kind of film that you would see in these political times. I mean, yeah, it is a film, but it almost feels like you are watching the middle of the midterm elections, which are happening in a couple of weeks. So watch it. Also, very interesting that they filmed this in the middleof the ice raids in L.A. Ben Affleck talks about that and many, many other things, including Jennifer Lopez, which I have to say that is true yeah in a very honest and frank way and the loss of his mother yeah that was a very touching moment it was so tune in let's stop talking so people can can hear Ben Affleck also remember you can catch this episode on our YouTube channel and if you want to find us online all you have to do is search at The Moment Ramos Pod Gracias thanks so much for doing this thank you for having me it's a pleasure an honor you're welcome we saw the movie and there's so many things to talk about. And I'm not going to, I will spare both of you from going back down memory lane of growing up in the 90s and having my dad take me to all of your movies and I will not do that. I like it. I never used to do that, literally. It's a good start, right? Yes, but truly, my 90s, 9, 10, 11 years, it was all you. But Animals is amazing. Thank you. It's timely, it's so clever. I was watching it a couple of days after I was covering a Republican event in the southern border, a MAGA rally. And there in those crowds, you notice the way in which the term animal is used, right, in a very specific way, right? In a very diminishing way. Obviously, it's a word that carries so much political weight. And then I was watching your film. And correct me if I'm wrong, it seemed to me immediately that you are in a way flipping the script on who is labeled an animal, who gets to perceive what and sort of pushing us and challenging us to to to think differently about reality so i want to start there what was your intention with that word specifically part of that obviously is that like there is an aspect of humanity that when we when we are threatened or when we we have a base self that can be animal and that we and that мы have a self to which we aspire and that what i was seeing around in the world is a performative morality, an advertised morality, and the incongruity between that and the actual actions that people are taking. And so one of the things is an exploration of that. And obviously, you know, look, you can't look at this movie without confronting the fact that, and this is not a new phenomenon, but like in times of economic difficulty or with politicians who are seeking to curry favor with voters, it's a lot easier to say to scapegoat and point fingers. And xenophobia and anti-immigration policies have been a part of the history of the United States for a very long time. Where I grew up in Boston, I remember this is called the sort of slam the door immigrants, like the Irish come in and we don't want the Italians. The Italians come in, we don't what the Portuguese. And it's why it is a complicated issue. And you have Latinos in this country who also voted for some of these policies which you can understand because people are saying, hey, nobody wants, you know, if I obey the rules and the laws and, you know, you're waiting in line for something, nobody want to see somebody cut the line. Right. So that you're taking advantage a little bit of that resentment. Yeah. And you're also capitalizing on you providing an easy answer for people, which is to say, oh, you have problems. You're unhappy. Well, it's not the system. It's not me. It'S not this. It' s actually these people's fault. And that's, it's una mentira, pero una mentida atractiva. But it's worse than ever, don't you think? I mean, I've been in this country for 40 years. I've never seen so much fear and persecution as we're seeing it right now. Absolutely. And the only comfort that I take is I think that what you're seeing is that actually the vast majority of the people in this country don't believe that every immigrant is a criminal, a rapist, a bad person. In fact, the the way that it was enforced you know you saw a lot of people recoil in horror and and say like hold on we object to this like everybody nobody wants you know criminals or rapists but the idea that like somehow those people were being ignored previously is totally false it's simply a veneer to paper over uh and and give a more polite presented voice to one of our more base ugly tendencies, which is to get, to hoard, to protect, to seek our own protection at the expense of somebody else. But if you live in a place like Los Angeles, which has immigrants worth documentation, that's immigrants without documentation, that's people whose families have been living there since before it was california or the united states um there's the saying of like we didn't cross the border the border crossed us uh so it's it's a much more complicated than anybody wants to give it credit for but i think fun the fundamental basic falsehood that seeks to identify any group of people as below or beneath or bad or sub like it is is repellent and a lie and needs to be I think, objected to loudly. Which is why your film does a beautiful job, like I said, at showing us a different face of that. Thank you. Let me ask you about the language. We were talking about Luis Gerardo and Adriana Paz. And I was surprised to see the authenticity of the language, and I wonder not only if you allowed them to do whatever they wanted with the language but also what have you learned not to do in a movie that you've seen people speak in Spanish or the language and say, that's fake. I mean, the main lesson is like when you, and this extended to asking Carrie to contribute as a writer to the scenes of our marriage, you know, because I want, like, if it's, if It's just my point of view, it's sort of like playing a game of chess with myself. Well, I sort of, you It's all me pretending to make multiple sides, but you don't have the real voices. And I certainly am aware of, look, I'm aware when I watch movies in english that take place in different states or different regions or someone from the uk comes and i can hear the difference so i know well enough to know that not i certainly can't write a scene that's specific to a certain like the expressions that are used or the modes of behavioral morality or expressions that Are common to certain you know states in mexico and certain social classes there and i needed them to to bring those in authentically in particular because I also wanted it to contrast with the kind of Spanish that my character spoke, which is this sort of belief that, well, like if I do a little Duolingo and speak some Spanish, I'm going to get Latinos to vote for me as if like this is a monoculture that can be kind of pandered to so easily. And for like, I wanted to have things as subtle as there's a scene where I'm trying to get sort of the Ramon character on my side. And I say, mira, estoy entre la pared, right? The wall, the sword, which I understood to be a kind of a Spanish, you know, saying from Spain that would, like, to him, would sound just as foreign kind of as anything else. Whereas to me, I think, I'm telling you, man, in a way that you'll understand. And there's another time where I sort of adopt this, like more in for the, hace mime un favor, mano. You know, like we're brothers, you Know, because I've heard these other Mexican guys go like, hey, mano, you know, which i heard picked up like from living in Mexico. So when I would live in Mexico, I started calling people, hey, mano. And then I'd see people look at me a little bit and they'd be like, que juega. You know what I mean? I was like, they're calling me a waiter. Blondie. I used to have blonde hair when I lived. You used to Have blonde hair? I used To have blonde Hair. So yeah, in Mexico. The juega, it was. El huerito. The huerita, si. But I was going to say, even the way that you said trick or treat, when you said truco or treat or just talking about that, I was Like, I guess I would have said it the same way. Like, i actually don't know how you say trick or Treat in espanol. You know you're gringos when you say that. No, but it works. In fact, his reaction, he actually had a line in there where he corrects me. And then he said, and I said, can you, then you say it the way you would say it. And he did it. And then He came back and was like, it's right, but my character would not correct you. He wouldn't go to the, he's already nervous. He wouldn'T correct your Spanish to him, you know? And so he asked me to cut it out. And I was like I don't want to cut out because it shows you that I'm saying it wrong. And he was like it's wrong for my character. he would never do that like the way he was like i don't even want to look at you in the eye he's always gonna you don't want to come down he's gonna be like and i like this idea that in their backstory that she had fallen in love with him and she loved him and that she's trying to get him a job and he's saying stop yeah i don'T want this is nothing but trouble for me you're gonna get me involved with this family it's gonna BE bad for me and my son and it's that thing in a in a relationship where the woman is so in love and she's like you know she keeps being like oh he's It's so great. He can do this and he can do that. And he's like, oh, my God. Like, please don't do this to me. Like, I'll get a job somewhere else. It's almost too difficult for him. So he's not even really trying. When I say, like, hey, you know, like can you help out in the playground and fix this thing? He's like it's kind of dark. He literally didn't want to do it. I don't wantto do that much. My tools are in the truck. And I'm like and I give him and I offer him $500. I think it was $100 actually. At first I'm, like. And that's finally he's, like… fuck it all right fine you know he does it but he's clearly uncomfortable you know and that i just don't see his discomfort you're you're obviously honoring language but but the film is also a tribute to la now it's a a form of a love letter to the city and you're also filming this in la in a very unprecedented time in the country you know you have literally ice raids surrounding you guys what was that like to shoot in la during the ice race here's the irony like i'd like to be able to like sit here and say you know i wanted to take this on because i'm just so virtuous and noble and blah blah blah but the truth is i wrote most of this storyline before the election and my biggest concern was like is anyone gonna believe that a guy who's undocumented still wouldn't call the police because when his kid gets kidnapped because i think before the election you would think you might still call the policy in 2024 trump winning yes okay then the election happened, and nobody had a problem believing him. No, no, no. And you buy it. He's like, and then he has the scene where he's like... They're just going to think I'm some fucking suspect. They'd rather send me back to Mexico than lift a finger to find my son. And I don't think anyone who sees the movie is going to say tragically, oh, that's not true. So it was one of these... It was right on the limit, as a matter of fact. You could have gone even farther than that, no? You don't want to be seen by the police. I mean, and I think that, yeah, exactly. He's like, I don't even want if they just show up or see me like no matter whether the LAPD says, oh, we don't do immigration enforcement. Like at this point, it's just the fear is if I if I were a document without an immigrant, without documentation, I would just be terrified all the time. And I'd be, you know, staying home. It's like you go you're working at your job at the car wash. They're just sweeping in and gathering people up. It's terrifying. Yeah. Obviously, you're you're humanizing immigrants. But then I think the underlying theme also is there's a profound disillusionment with the system, right? You have characters that are seeing the way in which their lives are at the hands of rich, powerful people. And I thought it was really interesting in the film where you, as the viewer, you recognize the way in which the kidnapper and then Ramon, of course, the undocumented immigrant father, kind of have the same common enemy, which is you, right. It is the rich, white, elitist man in their view. And there's two lines there. I know the kidnapper at one point says to you, your character, he says, the days where you fuck the people are so over. And then Ramon says, this country is so fucked up, my son's life is in the hands of American politicians. Is that you kind of reflecting the way in which this country is feeling this sentiment of this deep disillusionment in the system? I think that even very broadly, this country, no matter what you believe, ironically, or what candidate you vote for, I think there is a collective disillusionment in a general overall failure of the system. Like, it's not really nobody out there feels like it's working great. It's working Great for me. We hear that. And so I think That's true. In terms of those particular lines, the irony is that these are two people who both feel profoundly alienated and disenfranchised by the system in one part because like Mark has had this early on in his career, took on some environmental case where he thought would win him traction with voters. So I think he's a guy who's been preparing to be a politician his whole life and took on some case and kind of ignored the fact that there was, hey, if we do this, there's a bunch of small businesses that are also going to get wiped out because they're going to be in this super fun zone. And, you know, you hear this line briefly from the character going, yeah, oh, that's just something that they say. And it's not true because we ignore the things that are inconvenient for us that stand in the way of our personal goals. And so he's totally oblivious to the life that he has had a part in dismantling, also oblivious to this other guy's life. Like to me, it's a movie about, as I said, about the, yes, the conversations that we have in certain rooms and also the fact that like, it is difficult for us to see one another, you know, and that we all are sort of focused on, especially if things are difficult or if we're fearful, we feel that we don't have any additional empathy or capacity to spare for somebody else times are hard you gotta look out for yourself and the more that feeling encroaches in the world the less generous of spirit we are and it asks that question of like if it's correct morally to do whatever is required for your child why isn't it correct morally to do that for someone else's child yeah um that that was at the center of the movie right yeah also the film centers on the race for mayor and it feels obviously very very timely At the same time, Javier Becerra could become the first Latino governor of California in 150 years. So I wonder about your politics, because in the past, if I'm correct, you helped Cory Booker, right? I have been historically. I've helped Cory Books again. You've endorsed Joe Biden? I did not endorse actually Joe Biden. By the time Joe Biden ran, I went on the campaign trip with John Kerry. I was with Al Gore in 1999 in Miami, and I raised a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat. My policies tend to be sympathetic to that particular party. Unfortunately, what happened to me was that I found myself kind of feeling like a prop. And also what I saw was the degree to which politics really was—I saw the disconnection between what people—the mask that they put on in front and that who people really were. Which is your film, too. It was about just like raising money and that ultimately the real power is in the money. So you stopped doing that. I wonder now in 2026, have you endorsed someone? Are you supporting someone openly? You mean for mayor or for? I have not. For mayor, for governor, for 2028? I'm also mindful. And I probably I certainly can imagine that that I would certainly feel strongly enough at this point to, you know, to endorse someone. The question around whether or not, you Know, I remember after 2004, they there was a billboard that there was taken up by the Republican Party on Sunset Boulevard that said, Thank you, Hollywood, for electing George Bush. And I had, like, my picture and Sean Penn and Barbra Streisand. And the sense was, which I also heard, like internally from other people, was like, hey, stop. It doesn't help. Nobody wants to be perceived as the Hollywood candidate. So there's this message that was like you're not helping this cause. It makes them appear frivolous or elitist or whatever it was. And so I heard that naturally. But I also think like, you know, like I don't believe in this idea of like, well, just be quiet and do your job, because I think everyone's entitled to have their say. What was important to me about this movie and what I've learned about films as opposed to sermons or lectures is that you do need to if people can sort of see it coming or feels preachy or strident. What happens is that you lose the ability to connect on an empathetic human level, which is why it was important to me to be like, this guy is a independent. Because no matter what you think of him, good or bad, you then all of a sudden just start conjuring up all these things about which people feel incredibly passionate. And they project all these judgments onto it. And they just have no ability to see the human beings in the film. I did when the film ended. I was wondering about the future of a potential President Mark Kimball, right? Like, say, obviously, he wins the election. You tell us in the film that he has really big presidential aspirations. And then I was wondering if if Mark makes it to the White House, he makes it so the Oval Office, given everything that he's experienced and gone through, is he then the type of president that pushes for a comprehensive immigration reform? Or is he, again, the person that is too fearful of that and sort of side, say, with Republicans? Right. I guess. Does the does the animal instinct ever ever leave you? I think the question around whether or not we are inherently moral creatures or whether we are self-serving creatures who fashion stories in order to justify our behaviors is a fundamental one. And I don't pretend to have answers for that. I think there's probably a spectrum and that there are tensions. I think that what I did intend to say is this is the kind of guy who probably would be elected president now. Which is like, oh, you appear to have confronted crime yourself and shot someone. Therefore, this is the kind of guy, like the media attention around an event like that and the way that that could make a candidate, I think is quite telling. Is he a decent man, though? Because you say that the difference between a human and an animal is decency. Do you see your own character as a decent person? I think this is somebody who wants to be decent and has a difficult time discerning the difference between true basic decency and the perception of decency. I would hope that his experience, for example, with the Ramon character would have left him with a more fundamental understanding of the basic my belief, which is that I would say is a humanist belief, which is the fundamental connection between all human beings and that all human being are deserving of dignity and the same, you know, basic human rights. I think that I would hope that that's something that he absorbed. But I think one of the interesting things about politics is that there's this tension between does the ends justify the means? And if we imagine that we're so virtuous that what we're going to do when we get there is so meaningful that we can do anything to get there. I thinkthat's actually one ofthe ways that starts to corrode our morality. I secondarily, one of the things I've seen is that one of the ways that you get people to behave in ways that are in contrast with their basic fundamental morality is to impose a personal cost or the threat of a personal cost, which I think is a very current issue. And I think that the idea of this guy, you know, as the likely president of the United States, like ought to raise some interesting questions. Yeah. let me ask you are you a little bit nostalgic about how things are going down right now in hollywood i i used to be an anchor for 38 years and now i'm a youtuber and podcaster and tiktoker and um and i wonder if ai has changed the way you think about doing movies and how much ai was part of the movie that you did that's a really good question um i mean i think ai has gotten is probably like the central issue for people right now in terms of when we think about what's the future going to be. And there's so much fear and uncertainty. What I can tell you about the company that I started in my own approach and use of AI is rooted in a couple of things. One, seeing that there are tech companies who genuinely feel and seek that, like the goal is to take the human out of the loop and how much can we automate and do without people is going to equate to value. And I want to seek to do that. My feeling is very much in contrast with that, which is I want to, and if you want to do something, I think then you've, the best way to do it is to sort of demonstrate it and establish a model for it, which has to say the AI that's used in this movie, we have all the same human beings, all the Same crew members, all the same actors. There's nobody that would, who has worked on this movie who would look at the movie and say, oh, this is, this AI or this is generative or even the dichotomy between it's all real or it's all fake. Lots of machine learning in terms of visual effects has been used historically to do things like take away green screens, put us in different environments. You know, I had Justice League, and all we ever did was look at green screens and imagine fake monsters and all that stuff. But the river was real. The river is real, but there's also a sequence where, like, where I'm running, in particular in slow motion, where it was like a blue screen, and typically that would have involved one kind of computer exercise with a convolutional neural network to do edge detection and feature extraction to remove that and it turns out that with ai you can do that much more easily and where it looks more believable to me it's the difference between you know how do we make most efficient the aspects of the creative process that are like laborious and boring and not particularly creative and that get in the way from us doing the scenes with the human beings spending the time the time we want to and maybe like it doesn't scare you i listen there are things about ai that scare me the things that scare me are like are are the potential for a learned helplessness like i have kids in school yeah and i hear about like everybody using you know chat gbt or whatever it is to do their tests like i think you could really lose the opportunity to develop crucial critical thinking skills i think there are real energy concerns i think there's a the mag seven companies are so heavily exposed to hyperscalers and frontier providers that there's real question around too big to fail And if a bubble does happen, are we now knowingly putting ourselves in a situation where there has to be – where effectively all the taxpayers have to bail out these companies if the promised productivity gains don't materialize? I think what I'm not scared of is like Skynet and, you know, taking over and all of that stuff. It just doesn't work that way. Nor am I scared, nor do I believe, and I think it's important to draw the distinction between what AI does, which is simply predict the next token or the next word in a sentence, then add that word on, run it back to the machine, do a lot of computation and pick the next Word. Like, that is a very different thing than sentience or thought. And I think we need to be really clear about that, because it can be convincingly, in an illusory way, sound like thought or like a person. But let's be real clear. This is matrix multiplication. This is linear algebra. These are floating point calculations. It has nothing to do with thought, humanity, or feeling. We literally don't even know the words that you're saying. It's math. We're like trying to figure it out, too. But you clearly like— But it is just math. I'm like, do you know what he's saying? No idea. It's a prediction machine. No, but I know, but yeah, but that's why we're asking you. Like, the way you think is not, I say A, and then what's the next word that comes? Place. We think in much more complex ways. Based on our experiences, our feelings, we put together ideas, and then we think about how can I construct these ideas in an order and in a way that this other person can understand. AI is just a very complex, sophisticated prediction machine, whether it's predicting the next pixel in an image or the next word in a sentence. The most important aspect of that is to understand that it's inherently fallible because it's probabilistic. In other words, what's the likeliest next word? It's not deterministic like a calculator that if you say four times four, it's going to tell you 16 every single time and be correct. We've learned to rely on computers as if they are exact. AI language models can sound very authoritative, but that doesn't make it right. The reason that's an important lesson is I would be extremely judicious and mindful about turning over important decisions, never mind like the operating of weapons and things like that, to AI. And there's this temptation to go, oh, this technology is going to take over everything. In my experience, using it quite a bit, whether for coding or for video or for anything, is that it only really works effectively with humans managing and interacting with it and who have a domain expertise where they can go, no, that's not right. Let's not do this because it's constantly making mistakes because it is what they call stochastic. It means to aim. That's why they call it inference. It's inferring. It's guessing. It's also seeking a mean. And that's different than what we're used to with computers. We have just a few more minutes. Okay, I'm going to ask you something that I wasn't planning on asking you, but only because you recently said that you have enormous respect for someone that I also have enormous disrespect, obviously, in a different way, obviously Jennifer Lopez. But when you mentioned that, where my mind went was, particularly given this movie and the way in which you really work with Latino characters and Latino actors, when you said that, I was wondering the things that you may have learned through her around the way in which Latinos navigate Hollywood, right, and all of the different hoops that you have to go to just to be part of a movie like this which is honestly pretty rare i have to say like what did she teach you in terms of that it will be hard for me to like sum up briefly the things that i got to learn from knowing jennifer and witnessing her like you have to understand i think to understand jennifera lopez honestly is to understand somebody who is a really is a pioneer who did things before when she was told they're not possible and you're not welcome and by kind of force of will and even when they were like gates that were erected in front of her she kind of she was able to use social media to demonstrate actually hey look at this yeah there is a there is an audience for me and for what i'm doing and her whole sort of career has been marked by and this is a tough business anyway yeah uh but but definitely doubly so for her triply so and And I think you have to afford her the credit of a kind of, you know, when they give an Olympic diver like a degree of difficulty, I think she's got a 4X, you know, on what she's done. And I hold her in enormous, enormous respect and regard. And personally, there are many things that, you know, she's taught me have nothing to do with any of this. But in terms of professionally watching her do what she does, seeing, I think that she's exposed to a degree of criticism still that I think in which there is a implicit or at least subconscious double standard. And also I stand in like enormous respect for what she's been able to achieve. And she's always done it by saying, even if nobody else believes in me, I'm going to bet on myself. And she has also taken real risks, invested her own money. She's done all of the things that we're told this is what great American entrepreneurs do. um and and she's done them to spectacular success and i have nothing but respect for and she also is probably the hardest working person that i've ever known i mean and i feel like i work pretty hard but around her i just i've always thought like oh damn you know that's really something um and it's and yeah and i learned a lot not just from her but her family and the people i got to know through them and um and that resonates a lot with our audience and kind of the well that's just the truth i mean she's uh she's pretty extraordinary and and um you know i i i'm not surprised at all to see her having uh ongoing success and i i wish her for she deserves it in every way the way you're promoting the movie and and all the time that it took to to do the movie and and many people don't know that you've gone through a very difficult personal time with the loss of your parents i don't know how you handle that i handled the way that you know people do i mean it's an interesting thing to learn that something can happen that's profoundly sad but not tragic right like my mother you know i can remember it clearly saying like i've had a great life i've got a long life and i have no regrets but i miss her every day uh and it's i donno i don't have any answers for how long does it take or what do you do it's definitely made me you know see her differently and appreciate her more appreciate a person who had a whole life you know and then dedicated that life really to being a great mom and a great teacher and then a great grandmother and um and it's certainly made me go okay like that's that thing happens where you realize like guess i'm next i'm on deck and and you know we only have so much time right like i remember my mom said to me gosh i thought 84 years would feel longer and it's like i bet you know i thought 54 would feel younger and it would feel like it would and i'm sure that that feeling stays with one and um it's it's definitely look it's just left me with more love and respect for her but also i think like the way to the way i live and to honor that is to like i'd like to be has lived to be as good a grandparent as she was to my kids uh she set a very high bar and i i hope to fate i which she also taught me was like the last chapter of our life is a challenge that we face and we can choose how we handle that and yeah she handled it with enormous courage i i hope i have as much courage as she did it was you know she she took charge of it this is the i don't want to do this treatment this is the way i want to live this is the way I'm going to finish my life she did it without self-pity and she did it with courage and she said the things she needed to say and look nobody wants to die that's the other thing i learned you know um and i and i wish we didn't have to and i miss her you know very much but um you know i i focus on i was talking to uh to to jen garner about this who also lost her dad not so long ago and it kind of focuses you on your your kids you know and you know oh this is actually the way it's supposed to happen you know uh we're supposed to bury our parents not the other way around and that's the thing that's made me go okay this is right they didn't want to bury me and i don't want you know this is the right way for it to go so so good i mean and it's that this is kind of what that's lucky in four years is it's actually lucky so So I think every day, like, I should live like that. Ben, gracias. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, so much, spectacular. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Thank you guys. It's a pleasure. Thanks, guys. It was nice talking to you. Mano Paula, what do you think? It was, for me, it was interesting. The movie raises so many different conversations, you know? But when I was watching the movie, the main character, Ben's character, suddenly says, Gracias, Mano. And then I recognized that I'm from Mexico City, soy chilango, and that's where we say Mano, and then I realized how the other characters too, Luis Gerardo Mendez and Adriana Paz, the way they were talking, that's exactly something that I recognized. when I was growing up in Mexico City. So it was real. And I think he has learned, Ben Affleck, what not to do in the movies when you're speaking a different language. Yeah, right. It's a question of how can you be as authentic as possible and how is that integrated into your work? And I Think what he said is exactly that, right? That he gave them the freedom. To say whatever they want. To say what they wanted. I think what's interesting too, right, you could also look at this film and see it from another perspective, right ? that is this movie also sort of capturing a stereotypical image of what it means to be playing a Mexican today, right? Of course, one of... Maybe at the beginning you get the idea. Sure, maybe at the begining, you know, they play a housekeeper, they play undocumented immigrants, so there's that part, right, which I think is important to acknowledge. But what I think ist very clever in the film is that there's no kind of, like, white savior syndrome, right. At the end of the day, it's not Ben Affleck who is the protagonist. it is the most unlikely character in the film, right? It is the Mexican immigrant. And so I think that's very smart, particularly today, the way in which, like I said, right, he flips the script into what we perceive as the heroes, what we conceive as the animals. And I think he does a really good job at at least provoking interesting conversations. And the idea that the immigrant becomes the hero at the end, because we've seen so many different movies in which the immigrant just has a secondary role, Not in this case. So I think that's that's one of the most important things. I in terms of the interview, he was very open, super open. He was, which I expected. He seems like someone that is, you know, not guarded, not scripted. And it does honestly meeting him in person that that really comes across. And I thought, you know, beyond knowing him as a director and as a filmmaker, also, we kind of got an understanding of his political thoughts, right? In a nuanced way, I think he is, he touches on the film. And I think she also kind of holds this inside of him. He exposes what I think a lot of viewers will relate to. A lot of voters will relate too right now, which is this kind of deep disillusionment with American politics and with the system. Right. And it doesn't matter. I think it shows in the movie. You can see right at the end how the main character, you cannot you cannot love him because of all the things that he has done. But somehow it's so interesting somehow when I asked Ben about that, right, like, you know, because I think the film also kind of pulls you in different directions, which is the purpose, right? To have you always question these like big moral conundrums. And that's why I asked him like, is your character at the end a decent person? And I actually was surprised at his response, right? His response was essentially that yes, right. But I think I was left watching, you know, I actually had a different reaction when I watched the film, right, I kind of came out of it with a more cynical perspective, which is that at the capable of, you know, doing bad. And the main question presented by the movie, which is, should we care about an immigrant child the same way as we care About a U.S. citizen who's just a minor? Yeah, which Is, again, so relevant in today's conversation. Another thing that I'm glad we talked about, you Know, and it's always, you always have To be careful with, as you know. You're a private person, I'm a private Person. And so it's it's tricky when you when you bring up personal things. But I I really respected the way in which he talked about Jennifer Lopez. I thought I can tell the like immense admiration that he has for her. And he said something that as someone that also has grown up with her and listening to her, like, obviously, I don't know this. I don'T know her. I wish I did. But But I can tell that she's such a hard worker, right? And that she has just been hustling her entire career and never gives up. And I do think everyone can relate to that, you know? And finally, something that I really appreciate is that he's obviously promoting a movie. Yeah. And he has done hundreds of interviews. And he was present. Very present. We spoke with him 30 minutes and another 10 minutes in Spanish. Yeah. He was here. Yeah. The whole time. And as interviewers, we respect that, honestly. Yeah, I mean, you know, because sometimes you get tired of just repeating over and over again the same thing. He's so busy. He's been doing so many interviews. And so it really, really did feel like he was with us. Okay, so if you have any questions or if you Have a different point of view about the movie or about the moment. Or tell us about how you feel about the move. Yeah, so you can always send us your thoughts at TheMomentRamosPod. Yes. ¿Lo dije bien? Lo dije muy bien. the moment is a production of radio ambulante studios in partnership with iHeart's my cultura podcast network our staff includes daniela narcon laura rojas alponte miguel santiago colón anna breton mauricio sarasat and allison brennan with help from diego corso paola alean natalia Ramirez and Elsa Liliana Olloa. The CEO of Rally Implanted Studios is Carolina Guerrero. Executive Producers at iHeart are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana. Pablo Cabrera also serves as producer. Sound design, final mix, and theme song by Elias Gonzalez. Our hosts are Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos. If you like this episode, please share the word. Recommend the moment to anyone who might enjoy unpacking these complicated times with us. And if you listen to the moment, pero también te gustan los podcasts en español, check out Radio Ambulante Studios. Our shows Radio Ambulance, El Hilo, and Central are really worth a listen. I'm Lisa Cerda. Thanks for listening.