AT: You’ve got some really intense emotional scenes in this movie. To be honest, you spend a lot more time crying in JERSEY GIRL then I would have ever imagined. There’s one scene in a hospital that I was struck by a real sense of honesty in your performance, a reaction to tragedy. I myself have stood in that emergency room, and I myself have gotten that kind of news, and I know that your reaction is exactly what happens. I know it’s difficult to talk about where you go as an actor when you’re preparing to do a scene like that, but can you shed a little light on your technique in that moment?

BA: It’s just being able to realistically imagine getting that news about somebody that you really care about. You have to make it real to yourself to make it work. It was a combination of a couple of things. I haven’t had to be in that particular situation, thank God and knock wood, but eventually most of us are. I’ve been around it and seen it. I had some memory of what it looked like from the outside. A moment like that, when you read the script, always stands out. You think about the fact that, ‘Okay, this is going to be a big deal. How am I going to do this?’ For me, I just put it in my subconscious and work on it over time. You get there on the day, and it’s scary because either it just happens, or it doesn’t. You can’t fake it. It was a brave and new thing for one of Kevin’s movies, too, so all of us were wary and respectful of it…When something is well-written, it’s easier to play than trying to imbue some asinine wooden scene with some resonance. With JERSEY GIRL, there are so many cues that the writer gives you as an actor to tell you where the character is. You can fall into it. It’s refreshing. Every day I felt like I was coming to work and contributing something, not being part of some giant story juggernaut that sort of rolls over everything with effects. The time was time taken, and the attention was spent, and there was patience that said, ‘We have to get this right.’ It was a great opportunity for me, and it’s the kind of thing I want to continue to do.

Q: You speak a monologue during the movie, standing over the crib of your daughter. That speech is rather epic in length. How long did it take you to shoot that?

BA: We took all day. That was another one of those highlighted scenes. Kevin sent me forty pages of the story, and like any first draft, half of that stuff’s not in the final draft. [The crib] monologue was there [in the end] word for word. I got to that in my reading, and that was the moment where I thought, ‘This movie’s going to work. You haven’t seen anything like this. It’s a really interesting idea, this guy talking to his own daughter who isn’t even able to understand, but he’s giving himself over to her.’ In a weird way, the conservatism of this movie is kind of radical to me. There’s the suggestion that we live in a society that is very professionally oriented, and that everyone takes for family for granted, that these goals that we have in our profession are not what we should be pursuing. Playing it kind of reminded me that, particularly being an actor with a bunch of stuff swirling around me, there’s a tendency to want to be able, at some time, to say, ‘Forget it. I give this up. I want to just have this simpler life that’s about something more intimate.’

Q: Do you see your involvement with Kevin Smith as important to your career? Do you see yourself doing a movie with him every couple of years?

BA: I hope so. It’s the single most important aspect of my career. Kevin’s the reason GOOD WILL HUNTING got made. Kevin gave the film to Harvey Weinstein, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten it picked it up. Kevin’s the first guy who said, ‘I think you can play a lead.’ I was playing bad guys, doing TV series bad guys, you know, slamming kids against lockers. It was so tiresome [Laughs].

AT: And paddling kids…[in DAZED AND CONFUSED]

BA: That I liked. The paddling I liked. [Laughs] There’s very little I can say I don’t owe to Kevin. In continuing to work with him, I sort of rely on it for my artistic livelihood. It continues to offer me interesting parts…so it’s sad that Kevin is now selling out and going Hollywood by doing a comic book movie. I’m sticking to indies. Whenever Kevin wants to come back to his true roots, he can give me a call. [Laughs]

Q: You got your start in independent films, and now you’ve done lots of big Hollywood movies as well. Are you leaning back towards smaller stories from now on?

BA: I’ve come to a crossroads in my life. For a long time I was afraid of being a failure. I was afraid everything would go away. You’re really insecure when you’re starting out because you’re forever being rejected. You have to believe in yourself when nobody else does, so that has stayed with me even as I’ve achieved some success. I felt that I had to keep doing movies that did well financially or nobody would hire me for anything interesting. I’ve gotten to a point now where I’ve allowed myself to say, ‘Okay, you’re not going to be broke’, so that’s okay. It’s weird, even after you’ve made so much dough. My father wanted to be a writer/director and was broke, stone broke his whole life. That was terrifying to me to become that. Now, I also want to try writing and directing more. I know that there’s a real deleterious aspect to doing Hollywood movies because they put you in a position personally where you’re exposed to a degree you don’t necessarily have to be as a writer and director. I look at what Kevin has, and I’m actually sort of envious of it.

AT: When we last spoke on the set of JERSEY GIRL, you told me that you and Matt Damon had started faxing some ideas back and forth, throwing ideas for a new screenplay you might like to write together around. You had talked about going out and doing a writing retreat with him. Did you ever get a chance to do that?

BA: The way that it’s sort of working out is that Matt got the chance to work with Terry Gilliam, so he obviously took that, and then he got the deal to do THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, so that worked out, and right after that was OCEAN’S TWELVE, so Matt’s been in Europe for over a year now. My brother is having a baby, and he’s doing OCEAN’S TWELVE with Matt, so I think I’m going to go over to Europe and sort of hang out and use that time to write. Those OCEAN movies are like the dream job, you know. You work like three days a week, and they’re all a bunch of fun guys, and they’re all really talented and cool, and they’re all basically over there having fun. There’ll be some time, and I’ll get to see my nephew get born, so it’s all coming together.

Q: What sort of story do you think we might see from you?

BA: All the stories and ideas that we’ve kicked around were set in Boston, in a similar kind of world. There was one story we wanted to do about these two older men that we wanted to do with Billy Bob Thornton and Morgan Freeman, but it’s not dissimilar to AN UNFINISHED LIFE, which is really good. I saw it, so I thought ‘Maybe we should do something else’.

Q: Who might you site as your influences as far as directing and writing and writing go?

BA: I think Paul Thomas Anderson is brilliant. I think he’s one of the towering talents out there. I like Spike Jonze a lot. I like Ridley Scott. I like Peter Weir. I watch FEARLESS over and over and over again.

Q: The average person, when they’ve gone through a breakup, doesn’t have to watch that relationship on the big screen after its all over. Can you comment on that?

BA: I’ve done it twice. I broke up with Gwynneth [Paltrow] shortly before BOUNCE came out. So it’s looking like bad luck, right? You’d think I’d have learned my lesson [Laughs]. This movie, there’s only twelve minutes of it, so it sort of fades. Fortunately, I’m on really good terms with Jen. We still talk. She sent me a nice note the other day that said, ‘I do not envy you having to do [press for JERSEY GIRL]. There’s a lot of sadness. I go through a lot of feelings, wondering what could have been different, and so on and so forth…but this movie, and the making of it, I’m so proud of it, and I have really fond memories of it. It’s actually fun. I can look at [the movie] and think, ‘Wow, that was a great time.’ It’s not like a GIGLI thing, where it’s like, ‘God, just not one thing worked out.’ JERSEY GIRL is the antithesis of that. In a weird way, I’m glad that we were able to do this, so that the last memory of us working together is really positive. It all ends on a positive note for me.

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