Ben Affleck on New Film 'The Sum Of All Fears'
N E W Y O R K, May 28 -- In The Sum of All Fears, a film based on Tom Clancy's best-selling book, Ben Affleck plays CIA hero Jack Ryan. In the film, which was shot before Sept. 11, his character tries to stop the world's superpowers from bringing on the nuclear destruction of the human race. Affleck talked about the film and the controversy surrounding it in an interview with ABCNEWS' Diane Sawyer.
The following in an uncorrected, unedited transcript of the interview as it aired on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.
ABCNEWS' DIANE SAWYER:
There's a new political thriller about to charge into the theaters.It is called The Sum of All Fears, and it's based on that Tom Clancybest-seller. In it, neo-Nazis have their hands on nuclear weaponsand are trying to trick the superpowers into all-out nucleardestruction. Affleck plays CIA hero Jack Ryan who knowsthe truth and is begging his superiors to listen. (Clip from The Sum of All Fears)
SAWYER:It is a movie that already has everybody talking. Ben Affleck joinsus now. How are you?
AFFLECK:Good. How are you doing?
SAWYER:What'd you do on Memorial Day?
AFFLECK:I actually spent Memorial Day in Canada doing interviews andpromoting the movie, since it wasn't a holiday there.
SAWYER:That's cheerless, isn't it? Doing interviews with people like me.
AFFLECK:Exactly. Exactly, it wasn't …
SAWYER:Well, what a sensation this movie is already causing. As we know, anumber of people — it was made before Sept. 11.
AFFLECK:Yeah. It was made, we shot it last year, last winter.
SAWYER:And yet a lot of people are saying, 'Is there such a thing' — nuclearweapons, somebody desperately trying to get people to heed what'sgoing on here. Is there such a thing as too real, too scary, tooclose to the bone?
AFFLECK:Yeah, I know. It's and I don't know what the answer is tothat question, really. I mean, I know that, you know, we shot themovie and wanted to make a kind of smart, adult, political thrillerand we made it last year. And, you know, at the time, it was justthat, an escapist, political thriller. And then the whole, sort of,world changed, and the movie now has turned into a drama, you know,in a weird way without us having changed anything.
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