{"id":612444,"date":"2026-09-02T17:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612444\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T17:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:04:11","slug":"why-casey-affleck-cast-his-family-in-his-gothic-new-film-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612444\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Casey Affleck Cast His Family in His Gothic New Film \u2018Company\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt is clear, in conversation, that Casey Affleck<\/a> is still trying to work Company out. His third directorial feature, set to premiere next week at the Venice<\/a> Film Festival, begins on Christmas Day circa 1975, when a young woman (Emily Alyn Lind) arrives at a party and begins telling a strange story to those in attendance. From there, Company proves as rich in atmosphere as it is in ambiguity, unfurling a Gothic-infused mystery across three different timelines that click into collective place only in the film\u2019s final moments. \u201cThere\u2019s the story you think you\u2019re going to tell, and then there\u2019s the one that comes out of you,\u201d Affleck says. \u201cThose, at least in my experience, are never the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it comes to the final product, a haunting but earnest tale of loneliness and healing, the roots proved deeply personal for Affleck, though he\u2019s reluctant to say too much on that score. The script was written over six years with Ron Hansen, with whom Affleck has remained close since starring in the 2007 adaptation of Hansen\u2019s novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and evolved into a reflection on old wounds and how to move past them. \u201cIf there\u2019s anything that can be taken from really awful experiences that seem to have no explanation and certainly no justification, it\u2019s that if nothing else, they\u2019re going to give you a way to connect to other people who have had similar kinds of hardships,\u201d Affleck says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe screenplay is structured as a kind of cinematic nesting doll, with the 1975 woman\u2019s story transporting us to the Colorado mountains of 1953, where an older man living in isolation named Tom (Nick Nolte<\/a>) takes in an actress (Caylee Cowan) who\u2019s materialized outside his cabin and is on the verge of freezing to death. She then has her own story to tell to keep them company, which is where the crux of the film\u2019s action takes place: in 1903, with spouses Emmett (Scoot McNairy<\/a>) and Rebecca (Adelaide Clemens<\/a>) allowing a mercurial young drifter named Caleb (Atticus Affleck) to live on their farm. This strand of the film gradually informs the secrets and surprises of the later timelines.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAtticus Affleck and Adelaide Clemens in \u2018Company.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tOpposite Australian native Clemens (Rectify, R.J. Decker), a standout in one of her most notable big-screen showcases to date, 18-year-old Atticus emerges as Company\u2019s unlikely lead in his first acting role. He\u2019s Casey\u2019s youngest son, and this is only where the intimate familial nature of Company begins: Casey\u2019s eldest son, Indiana Affleck, also plays a sneakily pivotal role onscreen; Cowan, who portrays the \u201950s actress, is the director\u2019s girlfriend of more than five years. Finally, both of Casey\u2019s parents appear in the movie \u2014 and it is dedicated to them, as they both died earlier this year, after production but before its completion in the edit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI suddenly felt an enormous amount of pressure,\u201d Affleck says of involving his loved ones in the movie. \u201cI\u2019ve made lots of movies and my kids have said, \u2018That sucks\u2019 \u2014 they\u2019re always very honest with me, and they definitely don\u2019t like everything that I\u2019ve done, and that didn\u2019t hurt my feelings ever \u2014 but this time, I really felt responsible for all those people in a way that I hadn\u2019t even been thinking of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tightknit nature of the set was partly a matter of necessity: Company is, like Affleck\u2019s last directorial effort, the post-apocalyptic family drama Light of My Life, its own quirky thing. \u201cIt feels unlike anything that I\u2019ve ever read,\u201d Affleck says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t fit neatly into any one genre. It doesn\u2019t behave the way that most movies do, doesn\u2019t follow those rules. It doesn\u2019t really even have a three-act structure. It just moves along in this really unpredictable way, which I like.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Affleck was doing press for his eventually Oscar-winning turn in Manchester by the Sea, a Variety cover story called him \u201cThe Outsider.\u201d While he\u2019d bristled at the label at the time \u2014 and others might find it surprising given his collaborative history with brother Ben Affleck and Matt Damon \u2014 he\u2019s since assumed it with conviction. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly, in fact, how I think of myself when it comes to Hollywood \u2014 it doesn\u2019t feel like I\u2019m a part of the club,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m definitely not an insider, so when I go around to raise money for a movie, people aren\u2019t quite sure what to think.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNobody wanted to take on the whole thing, write a check for $6\u202fmillion,\u201d Affleck continues. \u201cI think people aren\u2019t really sure of who I am as a filmmaker.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat resulted with Company is perhaps his clearest statement in that regard \u2014 executed, not so coincidentally, through \u201cthe most guerrilla filmmaking that I\u2019ve ever been a part of,\u201d Affleck says. The bulk of production took place over two weeks on Whistler Mountain in Canada \u2014 and across all four seasons. \u201cIt was nothing but favors just to make it work because we had no\u00a0money,\u201d Affleck says. For each of those shoots, lasting a couple of days, he\u2019d need to assemble a new crew: \u201cSometimes I had no DP and I was shooting it myself. Sometimes I had just a local person who happened to own a camera, and I would invite them to come and operate. And Indiana participated in every department on the crew: He was shoveling snow, he was helping with the horses, he was carrying boxes and light\u00a0stands.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe on-the-fly approach extended to casting. Nolte and Ben Mendelsohn<\/a>, who makes a vivid impression as a farmer who encounters Caleb, were locked in early on, but otherwise, things went down to the wire. Clemens arrived on set 48 hours before her first scene on camera. Lind read the script 36 hours before speaking her first\u202flines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBen Mendelsohn in \u2018Company.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd then there was Atticus, who had no interest in doing the movie at all. He\u2019d never done school plays and, per his father, still does not want to be an actor. \u201cAtticus was never going to be in the movie, but I couldn\u2019t find anybody that felt right to me, and our dates kept changing,\u201d the director says. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want to miss any school, and I didn\u2019t want him to miss school, but now it was his one week of spring break that we were going to shoot, and he said, \u2018Listen, if you want me to come do it, I\u2019ll do it.\u2019 I said, \u2018Thank God.\u2019\u202f\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhether Atticus changes his mind or not about his ambitions, he makes an auspicious debut in Company. He was tasked with holding the movie\u2019s most complex, morally challenging ideas, as a young boy running from trauma and left to decide between danger and redemption. He recognized the story his father was telling \u2014 maybe even better than Casey Affleck himself knew until he saw for himself.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAtticus showed me that he understood that part of me, that he understood these complicated, grown-up feelings of dealing with the really hard stuff that happened in your life that you\u2019re never going to get an apology for \u2014 that you\u2019re never going to get any sense of satisfaction around,\u201d Affleck says. \u201cIt was really an acting job for him. It wasn\u2019t like, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m writing a part that\u2019s just like you, can you come do it?\u2019 It was like, \u2018I\u2019m writing this part that is a part of myself.\u2019 And he was able to find those shoes and step into them, lace them up \u2014 and walk a mile.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is clear, in conversation, that Casey Affleck is still trying to work Company out. His third directorial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[259491,5670,141233,321,93,61,60,74245,234626,35168],"class_list":["post-612444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-adelaide-clemens","tag-ben-mendelsohn","tag-casey-affleck","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nick-nolte","tag-scoot-mcnairy","tag-venice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}