The live-action Daredevil movie, starring Ben Affleck as the Marvel Comics character, arrives in some 3,500 theaters on Friday and is poised as a blockbuster. Affleck has been on television all week promoting the movie as the buzz builds.

But what did Affleck feel like last summer while Daredevil was being filmed, before his relationship with Jennifer Lopez dominated questions his way? Following is part of a question-and-answer session from the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, where Daredevil's ballroom scenes were filmed.

Question: You had a history with the character before signing on to it?

Ben Affleck: Yeah, Daredevil, it was my favorite comic book as a kid, not as a little kid, but maybe early adolescence, 13 or 14. And that was an enthusiasm I shared with Kevin Smith. And what I got to know while we're doing Mallrats and Chasing Amy was that Kevin was like an avid collector of comics, so he was impressed with my knowledge of the Daredevil storyline. As compared to my knowledge of other comics' storylines, which was seriously lacking.

So he told me he was writing a series of the comic books. So when they were compiling them into what they call a graphic novel, he called me and said, "Do you want to write a foreword to this?" And I thought that would be a really, cool fun thing, particularly since in the comic book because he had somebody talking about Matt Murdock having tickets to the Good Will Hunting premiere. So I thought that was very sweet that tangentially my name appeared in the Daredevil comics, and it was pretty exciting.

Anyway I wrote the foreword and talked about how much I loved the comic and I guess how that's how some of these guys came to me. It was sort of a no-brainer to me. Everybody has their one thing from their childhood that they remember, and this was that thing for me. It was really a no-brainer.

And it's such an incredible cast to work with. And Mark (Steven Johnson, director) has some really exciting and interesting ideas about how to shoot the movie and how they want it to look and how they want it to feel and how they want it to be different.

Question: How is the fight choreography?

Ben Affleck: One of the influences that Mark wanted was anime, which is Japanese animation, kind of look. And to make that live-action is a very interesting idea. That has a very distinct feel to it.

We had one of these masters, he's one of these guys from Hong Kong with all the wire stuff, and we've have another master of a similar but different kind of style and we're mixing smash-mouth street fighting with kung-fu and karate. So hopefully there will be fight scenes you really haven't seen.

Jennifer (Garner, who plays Elektra), she has had so much training from the Alias thing and she's a dancer, so she shames me everyday. That's not being self-deprecating. That's true.

Question: How did you prepare to be a blind character?

Ben Affleck: That's a good question. Because, it's kind of deceiving. In a way, he is blind, yes, but because he's able to cobble together a mosaic impression because of his heightened other senses, he is able to navigate in the world. Through smell, through hearing, through a kind of evolved sort of sonar - which will be represented in the movie with this really cool series of effects that Mark came up with, this kind of a shadow world - he sees where things are, but he really can't see texture. He knows where things are, but he still has to fold his bills the way a regular blind man folds his bills, so he can tell the difference between a one and five. He still has to read Braille text.

So one of the things that Mark came up with his ways to show the nature of the vulnerability of the handicap with kind of the extra abilities.

But the hard part really is Matt, because everyone else thinks he's blind. So playing it is sort of tricky because he really can get around and he has to sort of look like an actual blind person.

And in doing that, I worked with Tom Sullivan. He's blind and he's an extraordinary over-achiever. He's blind, but he's a great skier and jumps out of planes and does all of that kind of stuff. He was very helpful just in terms of stuff like how do you cane-walk.

I have the contacts that I wear and they're deep blue, so when I wear them, I am, in fact, blind. So the challenge is actually not to walk into furniture.

Question: What's it like playing a comic-book character?

Ben Affleck: For me, being a fan of it my whole life and basically read everything that's been written, I knew what that side of it was.

You sort of run up in things in the real world that when you're saying it seem silly, that don't seem silly when they're in a comic book. You have to try and find that balance. In terms of the genre of comic books, this one is definitely leaning toward a character-driven kind of story, so there are certain challenges in making it honest and believable

One of things in the comic books is that he's kind of brooding and sulky and full of rage, and you have to modulate to a degree which way you do that. But the last thing I want to do is betray the spirit of the book. At the end of the day, my barometer is if this fits in the Daredevil I read as a kid.

Rob Allstetter, Deputy Sports Editor for The Detroit News, has been a comics journalist for the past decade, having written for numerous publications. He currently publishes The Comics Continuum. He can be reached at RobAlls@aol.com.

The Trailer Park Archive

July 2 2003 - Hellboy June 25, 2003 - Ang Lee June 18, 2003 - Eric Bana June 11, 2003 - Spider-Man Animation June 4 , 2003 - Lou Ferrigno May 27 , 2003 - Teen Titans May 20 , 2003 - Bryan Singer May 14 , 2003 - Al Gough May 8 , 2003 - Kelly Hu April 22, 2003 - Aaron Stanford April 18, 2003 - James Marsden April 15, 2003 - Jaime King April 8, 2003 - Halle Berry April 2, 2003 - Anna Paquin March 26 , 2003 - Scott McNeil March 21 , 2003 - Alan Cumming March 18 , 2003 - Michael Rosenbaum March 14 , 2003 - Ted Raimi: The "Other" Raimi Is Coming Back March 11 , 2003 - Maria Canals likes the call of the wild March 7 , 2003 - John Shea - Welcome to Mutant X March 4 , 2003 - Anthony Cistaro - Witchblade February 27 , 2003 - David Kaye - Professor X February 18 , 2003 - Victor Webster February 14 , 2003 - Ben Affleck February 11 , 2003 - Colin Farrell February 7 , 2003 - Comic Controversy? January 31 , 2003 - Static Shock January 24 , 2003 - Jennifer Garner