– We get to NPR where I meet up with Robert and segment producer Jim Wallace. Robert and I cram into a small recording booth while the techs get Frank Miller on the line from NYC.

– Interview goes great. It’s about an hour long, and we cover the “Sin City” books, film, and ethos. Both Robert and Frank are articulate, eager speakers, so the hour flies by (Frank tells me I out-Catholic’ed him on my “Daredevil” run, which I find kind of funny). After we wrap, Jim tells me he’s now gotta somehow cut the piece down to eight minutes for NPR broadcast (the entire interview will run on NPR’s website shortly after the piece airs). I pick Robert’s brain about using Troublemaker’s Austin facilities for “Ranger Danger” (as always, he’s very accommodating and encouraging) and Malcolm and I head back to the house.

– On the drive home, we crack one another up with the outlandish premise built off Mewes’ meeting with Erin Gray (Wilma Deering from the “Buck Rogers” tv show) the previous day. Ms. Gray had generously invited Mewes to a ComiCon over in the UK in June. Mewes and I turn it into a what if scenario: what if Mewes gets there, only to discover that he’s to dress up as Twiki from “Buck Rogers”, in complete Twiki costume, minus a face-plate. For the three days, he’s expected to follow Ms. Gray around, doing his best Twiki impersonation, never mentioning that he’s Jason Mewes. Mewes ups the stakes by insisting I go as well, only to discover the Con’s insisting I hang off a chain around Mewes neck and play the role of Dr. Theopolis. We riff on this for the entire ride home.

Disney takes Affleck’s ‘Baby’

Thesp will make helming debut on Boston-set pic

Touchstone and Ben Affleck are “Gone, Baby, Gone.”

Affleck will make his directing debut on his adaptation of novel “Gone, Baby, Gone,” by “Mystic River” author Dennis Lehane. Pic had been in development at Paramount for producer Alan Ladd Jr.

Pic will shoot this fall in Boston, and Affleck will not act in the pic.

Project marks a return to Affleck’s scripting roots, since he won an Oscar for co-writing “Good Will Hunting” with Matt Damon.

“Gone, Baby, Gone” is about a pair of private detectives in a working-class Boston neighborhood who are hired to search for a kidnapped 4-year-old girl.

Ladd, Dan Rissner and Sean Bailey will produce.

Besides his acting career, Affleck has been busy as a producer through his Live Planet shingle, in TV (”Project Greenlight”) and features (”American Wedding”).

“As far as the Fletch rumors, that was news to me. I’m a huge Fletch fan and a huge Kevin Smith fan, so maybe when the time comes he’ll really want me and I’l be available to do it.”

“That last trailer was already so good that Im tempted to try and disguise myself as Kevin Smith so I can sneak into that mid-April friends and family screening at Skywalker Ranch. People have mistaken me for him before. Maybe that and a well-timed Jedi Mind Trick might just do the trick… but I digress.”