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Reeves' death was ruled a suicide but questions regarding the circumstances of his demise continue to linger. The official story has Reeves committing suicide with a bullet to the head. But friends of Reeves immediately suggested the actor was murdered, and the scene of his death was suspicious. The gun didn't have any fingerprints on it, the shell was found under Reeves' body, and the area surrounding the bullet entry wound was free of powder burns - indicating the gun was held at a distance when it was fired.
Ben Affleck on George Reeves the Man: “George Reeves was an iconic guy because of who he played and that was, in some ways, tragic for him. That very tragedy and kind of paradox in the sense that he got the thing that he wished for and ultimately it was very destructive, is part of what makes the story so good - and part of what makes the character so good. The onus was on me and on Allen [Coulter] and on the writers to be consistent with who the guy really was because there is a sort of burden and responsibility, and I think that even more so because I think of George as a guy who never really got a fair shake. So I thought that it would be the least that we could do here to give him his fair shake, finally, that he kind of didn't get in his career or following his death.
I researched it pretty meticulously and there was a ton of research that had been done before I even came on, which I was the beneficiary of, in terms of the screenplay and Allen and the producers and what they had done. So I was keyed into where to look and who to talk to. I wanted to play him as authentically as possible and, fortunately, he left behind a body of work that I could look at and watch. I saw 104 episodes of the television show among other things – 52 in color and 52 in black & white. He obviously had other work, like he was in the beginning of Gone With The Wind. There is stuff available, and so that was a great help to me. But to not belabor the point, yes, I really wanted to try and treat him fairly and you benefit from the huge wealth of information to draw from. So if I screw that up, I really have no excuse.”
The Appeal of Hollywoodland: “I was attracted to the project because of Allen and because of the screenplay and because of the actors that I was going to get a chance to work with, and because the story itself was pretty great. The way that I got into looking at the character and the things that I identified with him were, among other things, this idea of being and feeling that you were someone other than what the outside world saw you as, and the injuries that he sustained in some ways from that. There's just a lot about him that he went through and dealt with as a person that I think a lot of people can identify with. I think that he was an interesting guy who thoroughly lived his life and that offered a lot of entrees into understanding him. It was a pretty rich character.”
Affleck believes a lot of aspects of this story are universal. “I think that it's about like – there is a line where George Reeves says, 'It should've been enough for life,' what he had. To me it's about the condition of humanity whereby it's never really enough. It's that feeling, that ambition that drives you to achieve and for people to invent rockets and to build machines and the industrial age, and it also keeps us perpetually kind of dissatisfied. That sort of ‘grass is greener’ thing, and that those things that at propel us at the same time frustrate us and stifle us in trying to live and manage those two things. It's really that contradiction and the contradictory impulses that are universally human that I believe everyone can understand and that are really painful.
It's like in life us going, 'If I just had this, then I would be happy,’ and then finding out that that's not really the thing. I think that's really what's at the root of it all for me. I think that it really kind of transcends Hollywood, even though it is a really good example of that kind of thing because it is to the extreme.
