Ben Affleck is no stranger to George Clooney. Affleck was on Clooney’s radar for years. He tried to get him to appear in various projects over the years. Clooney eventually helped the younger actor win a Best Picture Academy Award for “Argo,” which they both produced. Hell, Clooney even tried to warn Affleck to turn down Batman, so he didn’t ruin his career.
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Well, it looks like they will finally be working together closely on Clooney’s next film. The actor/director, we mean, Clooney this time, who just completed the sci-fi film, “The Midnight Sky” for Netflix, is eyeing another feature called, “The Tender Bar.” According to Deadline, Affleck is being considered to star in Clooney’s feature film version of J.R. Moehringer’s coming-of-age story “The Tender Bar: A Memoir” for Amazon Studios.
That likely means, Affleck is Clooney’s first choice, and a deal has to be struck, but nothing’s official yet. William Monahan, who won the Best-Adapted Screenplay Academy Award for Martin Scorsese‘s “The Departed,” has written “The Tender Bar” script. The narrative is definitely a human drama, a story of self-invention and escape, which centers on the author seeking a replacement for his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before his son spoke his first word. It’s essentially a coming of age story, but one for a man in his 40s.
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Here’s the official synopsis from Amazon.
J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.’s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice.
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At eight years old, suddenly unable to find The Voice on the radio, J.R. turned in desperation to the bar on the corner, where he found a rousing chorus of new voices. The alphas along the bar–including J.R.’s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted brawler–took J.R. to the beach, to ballgames, and ultimately into their circle. They taught J.R., tended him, and provided a kind of fathering-by-committee. Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J.R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J.R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys. Time and again, the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak–and eventually from reality.
No word on when it will shoot and Affleck, has to agree to star in it first before it goes anywhere. That said, it’s set up by producer Ted Hope, who used to work in film development at Amazon, so it feels like a done deal in the end, even if Affleck doesn’t ultimately say yes.
