Ben Affleck Shut Down ‘Gone Girl’ Production Over a Yankees Cap
Ben Affleck has played plenty of roles in his career, but a Yankees fan? That’s where he draws the line.
You might have heard that during the filming of Gone Girl, director David Fincher kindly asked Affleck to sport a Yankees hat for a scene in which his character, Nick Dunne, was attempting to go unrecognized in an airport. The scene in question took place in New York, so it wasn’t as though Fincher was simply trolling Affleck’s endless love for the Red Sox, but the actor couldn’t bring himself to don the cap of the hated Bronx Bombers.
“I said, ‘David, I love you, I would do anything for you,'” Affleck told The New York Times in 2014. “‘But I will not wear a Yankees hat. I just can’t. I can’t wear it because it’s going to become a thing, David. I will never hear the end of it. I can’t do it.’ And I couldn’t put it on my head.”
And he really couldn’t. Because, as Fincher reveals in his director’s commentary on the Gone Girl DVD and Blu-ray, it took them four days to reach a compromise – a Mets hat – and during that time, there was no communication, no filming, nothing. All over a baseball hat.
“I really wanted it to be a Yankees cap but [inhales loudly], being from Boston and not being very professional as an actor, Ben refused to wear a Yankees cap,” Fincher said. “I mean it did not come to blows but we had to shut down production for four days.”
That inhale is telling, revealing both Fincher’s love of minute details and Affleck’s bullheaded dedication to his beloved Sox. Ben also told The Times that the hat was the only fight he had with Fincher and it was basically a “one-man riot against the Yankees.” The good news: No punches were thrown. And you’ve got to give him credit for standing his ground – if he would’ve been seen wearing a Yankees cap, he never would’ve heard the end of it from Matt Damon.