Steven Spielberg hates Ben Affleck over surf dad rage incident

"...made my son cry."

So there I was, yesterday, minding my own business, when I accidentally stumbled across a headline in Entertainment Weekly reading, “Steven Spielberg refused to work with Ben Affleck because of pool fight on a family vacation, filmmaker claims” and immediately thought, “Uh oh. Did Ben Affleck go full surf dad?”

I quickly put down the Christmas gifts that I wasn’t wrapping due distraction, clicked on the story and had my fears confirmed. Filmmaker Mike Binder had learned about the incident whilst he and Spielberg were working on the initial drafts of what would later become the 2006 bust Man About Town. Binder, who wanted Affleck to star, told the Jaw’s director such and Spielberg allegedly responded, “‘No. Can’t do it with [Affleck]. We just bombed with a movie with him, he’s got that whole J. Lo thing going on now, and I have other problems with him…”

Binder pressed what “other problems,” Spielberg purportedly bringing up a time when his family was on vacation with Affleck and his goddaughter Gwyneth Paltrow, back when those two were an item, and Affleck pitched his kid in the swimming pool.

“‘Ben came in fully dressed and my son pushed Ben into the pool,” Binder says he was told, “…and Ben got really mad at him, and he came out of the pool and he picked him up and threw him back into the pool and made my son cry.'”

Classic surf dad rage.

But who, here, has never picked up a child not wanting to swim and heaved him or her into a swimming pool? Who, here, hasn’t repeated at least ten times with either own children, nieces, nephews, the spazzy son of a friend of a friend?

It is a very important ritual of the surf dad. The fact that Ben Affleck became enraged by getting pushed into the pool fully clothed shows that he was not a surf dad, then. The fact that he pitched the boy into the drink shows that there is hope.

Springing eternal.

Do you have a favorite “tossing-kid-in-pool” tale?

Share, please.