Paul Drinkwater/NBCThe moral of the story: If Ben Affleck can make it, so can you.
As Argo continues its seemingly inevitable march to a Best Picture win at Sunday's Academy Awards despite the thesp missing out a Best Director Oscar nod, Affleck's first film, the clunkily titled I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meathook & Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal With Disney, is not so coincidentally getting a second look online.
No doubt because the flick, which Ben himself called "atrocious," is managing to inspire young filmmakers who assume their low-budget disaster can't be any worse.
The 1993 short, which Affleck directed, tells the tale of a B-grade director who auditions actresses for a movie while berating his bound and gagged wife.
At the time I Killed My Lesbian Wife first surfaced on the Internet in 2010, it drew harsh criticism from the actor himself who admitted to Entertainment Weekly it was beyond bad.
"It's a 13-minute film and stars a friend of mine, Jay Lacopo, who's now a writer. It's horrible. It's atrocious," Affleck told the magazine then. "I knew I wanted to be a director, and I did a couple of short films, and this is the only one that haunts me. I'm not proud of it. It looks like it was made by someone who has no prospects, no promise."
Of course, Jennifer Garner's husband eventually went on to prove himself a capable helmer with his first two features behind the camera—2007's Gone Baby Gone and 2010's The Town—both critically acclaimed which helped earn him the respect of fellow actor-director-producer George Clooney who entrusted him with the Argo assignment.
And with Argo taking home Best Director trophies for Affleck at the British Academy Film Awards, Critics Choice Awards, and the Golden Globes among others, he's more than vindicated himself.
You can check out Ben's short below in two parts.
And for all the naysayers who think Affleck hasn't progressed much artistically from those neophyte days, all we can say is: "Argo f--k yourself."