I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her On A Meathook, And Now I Have A Three-Picture Deal With Disney

Almost every great director starts out small, but few quite so small as Ben Affleck. Made in 1993, this early short is a venture he admits he's not proud of, but it will no doubt still intrigue his fans.

The problem with the popular mantra that one should write about what one knows is that it inevitably leads to lots of books about writers and lots of films about filmmaking, both in the most part by indviduals who don't understand their respective crafts very well at all. Here the story focuses on a film director, moving back and forth in time between a casting session and domestic scenes in which he is clearly delusional. In accordance with the tile, there's violence, but Affleck has wisely chosen to keep this offscreen. It's the only evidence of wisdom in the entire film.

Three years after Twin Peaks, lead actor Jay Lacopo is clearly channeling Ray Wise in full on manic phase, but without either the intensity or the nuance that made that performance work. He's so OTT is his leering and shrieking that the attempt at satire misfires; it simply isn't possible to believe anyone would take this man seriously. Madness is often used by inexperienced writers as a cover for plot holes and general incoherence, and that's very much in evidence here. Alongside Lacopo, Karla Montana, the only one who can act, strives against the odds to make her role believable. It's particularly difficult for her in scenes with the director's roomate, played by the leaden Johanna McCloy, which make no sense at all. Have they been edited down from something that did? Were some of the recorded scenes so terrible that they had to be thrown out altogether? These questions pose an infinitely more interesting mystery than the one we are presented with.

Affleck has noted that the film "looks like it was made by someone with no prospects," and perhaps at the time he believed himself to be in that position. There is no evidence here of either love or care. One might call it a car crash of a film but whiplash would be preferable to viewing it. One can only imagine how much more painful that must now be for its director.