Bluntly Speaking: Matt Damon
an emily blunt interview

Irregardless of Matt Damon's wicked popularity and stuff, he's just friggin' cute. I'm just sayin' I'd be happy to hit a Southie packy grab sum beers an' head ova to Revere Beach for a wicked make out session with the guy…an' don't even get me started on his talents.

Okay, Bostonian lingo clichés aside, Matt Damon is one helluva talent. Who's a thought a schmoo from Southie could be an action hero to rival Rambo?

Matt's meteoric climb into the front pages of Variety began after he and a pal had a hit film (that they wrote and produced). Hunting something or Good Will? I forget. But now Matt is a concrete fixture in Hollywood. He tends to volley between action hero roles (which seem to work) and quiet lead drama pieces (which don't seem to). Ironic that the film that made him a brand name is so-not his MO of success.

Whateva. His latest film, Bourne Supremacy "revisits" his Jason Bourne character in life-a-coupla-years-after the last film. Jason's now happily cohabitating and just wants to be left alone. Well, that wouldn't make a very interesting sequel so you get the idea he's about to get a call from his old colleagues from the secret CIA-like firm he was a part of - and it aint a social call involving a cooler of chilled Heffenreffers and Oscar Meyers - they want him gone (again) permanently.

So, Matt and I sat and chatted about his film choices and things on a rather warm Southern California day:

Emily: Where have you been boy? [his tardiness allowed me to snag all the nifty toiletries however...yum, Agua]

Matt: I was with the Hollywood Foreign Press - feel for me [laughter] Have you been waitin' long? I'm looking for sympathy! [He seemed to glance at my "loot" bag...no...]

Emily: Nah, just being a …How have you approached your success? What are you looking forward to?

Matt: Well, I guess in terms of picking jobs? What ever philosophy I have hasn't really changed. Obviously around the time of doing "one line' in Chasing Amy it was like hey takin' any job I could get. But since Good Will Hunting I've been offered movies rather than having to go hustles in the audition forum. Now it's three things I look for; a good script, a good director and a good role. Usually I'll settle for any two of those - because the combo is really hard to come by. I felt like I had all three in a movie like Ripley. A different thing then I normally had to do.

All the pretty horses for example. There's a version of that - Billy Bob's cut - that I really do love. So I still proud of that movie- in that form- that nobody ever saw! [Laughter] Still the process of doin it was good
it's weird to talk about my success. I mean right before Bourne Identity came out I hadn't been offered a movie since the Legend of Bagger Vance bombed…

Emily: That wasn't such a good one

Matt: [laughter] and don't forget All the Pretty horses came out and bombed [laughter]. So the word on Bourne Identity was it was gonna tank also because the back up the release date a coupla time-and they were like, "oh no! That's always a sign that it's not going well" When in fact Universal had given us more money to go back and shoot some things that we needed. The outward signals within the industry were that it sucked though! Nobody really called or offered me any jobs. I went and did a play in London. But Bourne opened the weekend it closed. So when I got home there was something like 30 scripts offers! [laughter] So in terms of my success - it never feels secure.

Emily: Would you work with Kevin Smith again?

Matt: Oh yeah. I'm always ready to do what ever Kevin wants- he's very good about giving me something in his movies. Kevin kind of writes kind of what's going on in his life. When he wrote Jersey Girl he had just become a father and started thinking on what would happen if e lost Jen -this whole thing- and Jersey Girl came out of that. So as Kevin keeps living his life maybe a role will come out that he'll offer to me.

Emily: What's up with the project you and Ben have been working on . . . any progress?

Matt: Well, I think the one Ben's talking about right now is the Dennis Lehane novel he had, Gone Baby Gone. He's got the rights for that one, but I don't really know what's going on with that right now. A lot depends on whether he wants to be in it or wants to direct it or where his head's at. But I've been so busy doing all these other movies that we haven't had a chance to sit down and do any righting for some time. But when I saw him last night . . . it's something we talk about every time we see each other.

We want to do it, but it's just a matter of kind of handling the logistics, and finding a way to get us in the same place at the same time. One of the things is that having struggled for work for so long, it's about seven years that we've both been working consistently, having struggled for so long through our teens and early twenties, it's kind of an athema to us to turn down work.

So that's what I think we'll have to do to try to write something. We'll just have to block out the time . . .For both of us probably the most creatively fulfilling experience was Goodwill Hunting, just because we took an idea from its very beginning, and shepherded it all the way through until it was a film. And that's just incredibly fulfilling to do. That's how we used to write actually. We'd improvise all the scenes so I'm used to those little guys. But even right now, we're having a lot of creative input with the directors we work with. And it is a collaborative feeling, taking a movie like Bourne, I was really involved in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day, it's the director's vision and it's got to be because it's the director's meaning, and there's no getting around that you're kind of hired labor. So in terms of writing and taking something all the way from the beginning to kind of finished form is a feeling I think we both want to have again.

Emily: Have you seen 'Matt and Ben' the play?

Matt: I haven't seen it. Some people have said it's funny. Some people have said it's kind of a knock or whatever. I don't know. I just figure it's like an extension of Project Greenlight, a chance to give people a job! [laughter]

Emily: Touche'

END

Im not too keen on Bourne Supremacy - but Matt's genuinely nice and he's got talent. If you adore Matt - you'll simply have to run to see Bourne - he's el bufforini in it and lookin' like Mr. Hotty McHunkayum squared.