‘I’VE EXPERIENCED every kind of movie-making at this point. I’ve gone from working on a little indie, ‘Chasing Amy,’ that cost less than $200,000, to a $128 million epic, ‘Pearl Harbor.’ All this puts me in good stead to direct, eventually. I sure know what makes the business tick. I know what everybody does and how they do it. And I’m still learning, too.”

That was Ben Affleck last week, at the post-premiere party for his new romantic drama, “Bounce,” co-starring his friend, Gwyneth Paltrow. Affleck has to be one of the most regular, down to earth, and attractive men in the movie world. He is compellingly likeable, even in the hurly-burly of such a party, where he is passed around like an hor d’oeuvre – or a hooker – to the panting press. Affleck laughed boisterously when we said, “We’re so proud to be the first to get to you. Everybody else has to make do with sloppy seconds!”

Ben gives a remarkably sensitive performance in “Bounce,” bettering even his best work in “Dogma.” Women, in particular will be seduced. Nothing is more appealing than a big, beautiful guy, weeping for his ladylove, and Affleck has some admirably tearful moments here – and one in which, while listening to Paltrow muse affectionately about her dead husband, a single tear glistens at the corner of his eye, but never falls. “I was so moved by the material, and in that scene, I was just completely overcome with the story. I lost myself to Abby” (Gwyneth’s character).

Typically, Ben gives credit to his director, Don Roos, of “The Opposite of Sex” fame. “All Don had to do, at any moment, was just lean in and whisper one or two words to us. His sensitivity, to actors and to his craft and to the art of storytelling is amazing.”

I have to add a little P.S. here about Ben Affleck. He was just sensational with Diane Sawyer the other night. It’s rare to see such an actor so open, so willing to talk about his feelings, so “real.” He has always been marvelous to chat with in the flesh. But that doesn’t always translate in an interview. But Ben’s charisma – and Diane’s excellent questions – resulted in one of the very best bits of TV I’ve seen in ages.

“Bounce” is indeed the opposite of “The Opposite of Sex.” Roos’ first movie was stepped in cynicism, though in the end, even the hard-bitten anti-heroine, played by Christina Ricci, grudgingly accepted sentimentality. (And the movie has one of the great romantic lines ever, uttered by Lyle Lovett to Lisa Kudrow, “Think of me first, in any crowded room.”) The director’s second effort is a real old-fashioned movie-movie. It’s the sort of thing MGM would have done to a T back in the 1940s – with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy in the lead. Sentimentality and high emotion are given full sway, and the leading actors, Ben and Gwyneth, are completely in synch, a perfect pairing. (I suppose their off-screen palship didn’t hurt their on-screen intimacy.)

Director Roos says working with Ben and Gwyneth (”Benneth” as they are now popularly referred) was “the 10 best weeks of my life!” He praised, in particular, Ben’s “sense of reality” in approaching the material, of “staying exactly within the emotional parameters of the story, never going too far, and never, ever holding back.”

Johnny Galecki, who has a supporting role in “Bounce” – he also appeared in “The Opposite of Sex” – says Roos has “the knack for touching upon every human idiosyncrisy. When I first read this script, I couldn’t believe this was the same writer of ‘The Opposite of Sex!’ Galecki says he wouldn’t mind becoming a recurring player in the film ouvre of Don Roos. “But then, I wouldn’t mind going to lunch with him every day, either.” The young actor, who found fame on “Roseanne,” as Sara Gilbert’s sweet, hapless boyfriend, has a role in Cameron Crowe’s upcoming “Vanilla Sky” and soon heads to his hometown of Chicago, for theater work.

The “Bounce” party was held at the Hudson Hotel, which for some reason has become the new party “in” spot. Can’t imagine why. The space is not at all conducive to a crowded fete, there’s no flow. The place was packed, movement restricted, and velvet ropes protected the stars and their handlers from the great unwashed. There were a great many “Gwenabees” in the room -tall slender blondes sporting hairdos of Paltrow past. The Oscar-winning actress, dressed in bare black, therefore probably avoided additional mauling, because people were never sure that night if it was really she or one of her erstaz look-a-likes. Maybe Paltrow herself hires them as decoys? The real-life Miss P. looked radiant.

Her mom, Blythe Danner, and dad, Bruce Paltrow, were there to lend support to their famous child, who exuded both the assured air of a seasoned movie queen and the vivacity of a fresh, vital young actress justifiably pleased by her own, and everybody else’s efforts.