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Behind the scenes of ''Changing Lanes'' | 153920__changing2_l
RAGING GRACEFULLY Jackson pleads his case in family court
Changing Lanes: Kerry Hayes

Whatever else it may be, ''Changing Lanes'' is definitely no yukfest -- and there isn't much love to be found in it, either. Set during 36 hours in the spring in New York City, the film stars Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson as a hotshot young attorney and a down-and-out divorced dad who cross paths during a fender bender on the FDR Drive, then spend the rest of the movie tearing at each other's throats in an escalating war of nerves that nearly destroys them both. ''It's being sold as a 'road rage' movie, but that's just a marketing hook,'' says Affleck, 29, who gained 15 pounds on a strict doughnut diet to play the puffed-up lawyer. ''It's much more complicated than that. It's a drama about morality and compromise and corporate culture and alienation from the workplace and the way institutions dehumanize people...but I guess I can see why the marketing people went with 'road rage.'''

That there's a movie to market at all is itself something of an accident -- or rather a long, random string of them. Jackson, for instance, might not have signed up for the film had he not ''accidentally seen a play Roger had directed'' in London a few years earlier. ''And then I saw 'Notting Hill,''' Jackson, 53, continues, ''and I could see that he directed his movies the same way he directed his theater -- that he was more concerned with the emotional aspects of his characters, that he doesn't just use actors to take up space in a scene.''

Affleck might have passed on ''Lanes'' too, if he hadn't been stuck on an aircraft carrier when he read the script. ''I was making 'Pearl Harbor,' which is the sort of movie where the characters are obviously subservient to the action,'' he says. ''And the script for 'Changing Lanes' was so different from that. It was a totally character-driven story. That really appealed to me, especially on that aircraft carrier.''


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