Affleck, Tinseltown crew make return to favored location – Lynn’s Gannon Municipal GC

LYNN – The cameras were rolling once again in Lynn Tuesday as actor Ben Affleck and the crew of the upcoming movie “The Company Men” took over the 18th green at the Lawrence Gannon Municipal Golf Course.It is the second trip to Lynn for Affleck and the movie crew, who filmed several scenes on the course in early April. Unlike the last film session, the crew asked that club officials close Gannon to the public for a portion of the morning Tuesday, so that cars traveling in the parking lot did not enter into the shots.”They filmed on the 18th and they teed off in reverse, so the 18th green was a practice hole,” said Rick Comfort of Gannon. “Some of the shots included the front of the clubhouse, so they didn’t want any traffic in the shots. We had to close down in the morning, but they (were) actually packing up ahead of schedule.”Affleck stars alongside Tommy Lee Jones and Kevin Costner, who were not in attendance Tuesday, in the modern day drama about three men trying to survive a corporate merger. Directed by John Wells, the plot centers on the nation’s economic downturn that leaves Affleck’s character – a six-figure corporate executive – out of work and looking to his blue-collar construction worker brother-in-law, played by Costner, for guidance.Much of the drama has been filmed in Boston, with brief stops at Gannon to film golf scenes with Affleck.Club employees had a good time with the movie crews Tuesday and some took pictures with Affleck, who Comfort described as “big and athletic,” but with a less than desirable golf swing.”His swing was so atrocious they had to have a stand-in,” he quipped.”The Company Men” is the second movie to be filmed at Gannon in the last year, joining Mel Gibson’s “Edge of Darkness,” which set up on the course in 2008. “Darkness” was to have starred Robert DeNiro alongside Gibson until DeNiro’s reportedly repeated failures as a golfer in an artificially deep Gannon sand trap, which led to a confrontation between DeNiro and the filmmakers on set that day, and ultimately to his replacement by British tough-guy actor and passable duffer Ray Winstone.”Edge of Darkness joins the Bruce Willis sci-fi thriller “Surrogates,” due out in September, and the television drama “Bunker Hill,” starring Donnie Wahlberg and Bridget Moynahan, which were both filmed in Lynn in 2008.Set for a 2010 release, “The Company Men” also stars actresses Rosemary DeWitt, Maria Bello and Craig T. Nelson, former star of the television show “Coach” and the movie “Poltergiest.”