14 DAY TRIAL // Ben Affleck has a very strange way of promoting his new movie, the thriller “Gone Girl,” now out in theaters: he sat on a panel on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher and got himself into a heated debate with host Maher over his belief that all Muslims are jihadists.
The entire segment is available in the video below: the dispute started when author Sam Harris described the Muslim faith as “the motherload of bad ideas,” which is when Affleck completely lost his cool.
He compared saying this to saying “oh you shifty Jew” and argued that islamophobia is a real thing, no matter what Maher and Harris believed. Not all people of the Muslim faith were jihadists, and no one should generalize over “a few bad apples,” Affleck continued.
Towards the end of the interview, he and Maher were really at each other’s throat but the dispute ended with neither winning the argument or, more importantly, managing to convince the other.
“What is your answer? Is it just to condemn Islam? We've killed more Muslims than they have killed us by an awful lot,” Affleck said. “Yet somehow we are exempt from these things. Because they are not really a reflection of what we believe in. It was by accident, that's how we invaded Iraq. I am explicitly telling you that I disagree with what you think.”
The conversation was a very serious one, but not few celebrity pundits remained oblivious to the irony in the fact that Affleck was actually promoting a movie while he sat on the panel, taking part in it.
“Gone Girl” is directed by David Fincher and is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Gillian Flynn. The story has nothing to do with the topic he got so passionate about, being the story of a man who becomes prime suspect in a murder investigation when his wife disappears.
Until now, Affleck promoted his new leading role with a series of “regular” TV appearances on talk shows, including Fallon, Live! With Kelly and Michael, and John Stewart. It seems that he’s found a new way of getting media attention now.
