Matt Damon

Spotlight By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

*Click here for another interview with Matt Damon!* Matt Damon is one of Hollywood's top actors and there is literally no limit to how dedicated he is. His diverse palette of great roles range the gamut from films like Good Will Hunting (which he also co-wrote with fellow actor and longtime friend Ben Affleck, giving him his first Oscar for Best Screenplay), The Talented Mr. Ripley, Dogma, Stuck On You, and the Ocean's series.

Matt's most popular film role as of late is as amnesiac CIA assassin Jason Bourne in the popular Bourne series, based on best-selling novels by author Robert Ludlum. After the successes of 2002's The Bourne Identity and 2004's The Bourne Supremacy, Damon now reprises his role in The Bourne Ultimatum.

In Ultimatum, Bourne continues to be hunted by the CIA and will finally learn his true identity, making this entry purportedly the final chapter in what is a trilogy. But knowing all too well how Hollywood works with successful franchises regardless of story logistics, we asked the now 36-year-old actor to set the record straight on whether this was the final Bourne film for him.

'I made that comment at Cannes, when we were about nine months into shooting the movie. I went, 'I'm never doing this again!'' says Matt, 'But I think in terms of another one, the story of this guy's search for his identity is over.'

'He's got all the answers,' he adds, 'So there's no way we could trot out the same character and so much of what makes him interesting was that internal stuggle that was happening for him. Am I a good guy' Am I a bad guy' What is the secret behind my identity' What am I blocking out' Why am I remembering these images, these disturbing images' So all of that internal, compulsive mechanism that drives the character is not there. So if there was to be another one, there would have to be a complete reconfiguration, where do you go from there' I feel like for me, the story we set out to tell has now been told.'

However, Damon does note that he is not closed to the possibility of doing another Bourne film if a really good idea for a sequel came along.

'I love the character,' he notes, 'And if Paul Greengrass calls me in ten years and says, 'Now we can do it, 'cause it's been ten years and we have a way to bring him back,' then there's a world where I can go, 'Oh, yeah, absolutely.' If we could get the band back together and if there was a great idea, kind of, but now, in terms of this story, the story's been told. If we came out with a fourth one and suddenly, I got bonked on the head, I mean you guys would be like, 'Are you kidding me'!' I actually talked to somebody about the fourth one about Bourne losing his keys and we could do an entire movie, 'Where are my keys'!' you know. That kind of illustrates how out of story we are at this point, in terms of what was good about these first three.'

We also asked about the actor how he felt in general about doing franchises and sequels.

'I'm trying to only do franchises. That's my new thing,' Damon jokes, 'For me, for either of them being franchises, I don't think that way and so I'm open to anything. Any good movie, if I enjoy the experience and I love the people I'm working with and if I feel like there's a chance to make a good movie, I'll make it, if it's a sequel or it's not.'

Matt also discusses how playing Jason Bourne has made an incredible impact on and solidified such an already incredible and diverse career.

'It completely changed my life,' he claims, 'Starting with the first one, where nobody offered me a movie in six months and I was in London doing a play in the West End and the movie opened and by Monday, I had twenty offers. So that was where I would be 31 or 32 years old. The rose-colored lenses came off and I went, 'OK, I get it. If you're in a hit, you have a career, and if you're not, it doesn't matter. They might think you're a real nice guy, they're not hanging a movie on you.' There's hasn't been a role that has been a bigger impact on my life, maybe Good Will Hunting did because it pulled Ben and I out of total obscurity.'

Damon also mentions what it is about Jason Bourne that continually makes him such a great character to play.

'Bourne has a lot of integrity,' he says, 'You think he's an American character. I like that about him, His thoughtfulness, his intelligence, the fact that he's trying to do the right thing. He's misled, but he's trying to do the right thing, so those things I think are great.'

One rather incredible thing we discovered from the actor about The Bourne Ultimatum was how much of the script was written as it was being filmed.

'We were lucky to have George Nolfi there everyday,' Damon recalls, 'George kept out ahead of us. He would be literally be in his hotel room, working on the pages for the next day, while we would be working on the pages he'd given us for this day. We would be making our tweaks and in the real location, going, 'Let's change this to that, because that thing's over there.' It's not an advisable way to make movie.'

'You couldn't teach that in film school and send people out there, but it works for Paul,' he adds, 'And there's something about the chaos of and the alchemy of Frank Marshall and Paul Greengrass, and in this case, we had three different guys working on the script, Tony Gilroy, Scott Burns, and George Nolfi, who were on it different stages, they are three of the best writers working today. And so it's like you get this big mix and then, you get the actors in there, but they've all gone down to the eleventh hour. It was literally haven't known till two nights ago, so it should come with a stint. It's not an advisable way to work if you want to live a long life.'

Damon also notes how the political developments of recent years has each evolved the Bourne story with each film.

'All the movies I think are very much of the time,' he says, 'The first one, it's 2002, it's obviously a post-9/11, all of the paranoia, everything in there. What I love about them is that you'll be able to look back and know the second one is 2004 and things are starting to turn in Iraq and now this iconic American figure is going, apologizing and atoning for his misdeeds, for everything, and things that he's done, he's taking responsibility And so I think each movie is a reflection of the time which it's made.'

He goes on to explain some of the new elements involving the character in Ultimatum that mirror the political developments of recent years.

'Now you have the movie ending where Bourne is pulling the gun and putting it to the head of the person who lied to him, who said, 'This is what you're at, going to be doing. You're going to save American lives,' Matt explains, 'And Bourne said, 'I see now. You're going to let me into something under false pretenses and now I understand that and I'm not going to do that anymore.' Obviously, you have the images of waterboarding, of somebody getting shot in the corner of the room, Bourne doesn't even know what he did, he asks, 'What did he do'' He's been told, 'We've been through this. You can't know that.' So this is somebody who's an American, who's killed without a trial. So all these things are little kind of nods to the world that we're living in right now and I like that about them. They feel relevant.'

As excitement is mounting for the newest Bourne adventure, we felt it customary to ask the star what was his favorite action scene in the new entry.

'I always liked the Tangier sequence and the running along the roof, because it's Bourne just absolutely 100 miles flat out,' he answers, 'And I always liked grabbing the things and the things that come up when were on the real location. That's the fun stuff, because you get a bunch of guys together, going, 'Alright, what would be the smart thing to do here.' And we kind of figure out those sequences and we cut them together and they actually work is a really good feeling. And it's really Paul, he came up with Waterloo, that was all his kind of design and what it would be like leading a complete novice through trying to elude and that was all Paul's. And I love that sequence, too. And the car chase I really like.'

However, as he brings this up, he also mentions some of the increased difficulty in doing his most of his own stunts from doing the first film to his latest one.

'The first movie I was 29 and in this last one now I was 36 and I definitely felt my age,' Damon admits, 'Particularly because that fight scene in Tangier, Joey [Ansah], the other actor, the guy that I'm fighting, he's like 23 years old. The first movie came out and he's was like in high school.'

'And he was so happy and he was like, (speaks in an English accent) 'Matt, I'm in a Bourne fight. This is great',' he adds, 'And he's in really good shape and he's already a much better athlete than me, so I was like, 'Oh, man, Joey, you're killing me. You got to slow down.' And so, I think it probably took a couple extra days. It probably cost the studio a couple extra days, because I'm a little older now. He was just so excited, so I couldn't possibly defend myself against him, so you're going to be like, 'Dude, just like three moves at a time. Come on, man.' So he was a good sport about it though and he did a great job.'

As we were close to winding things down, he shared what he hopes to accomplish next in his career, now that the Bourne series is more or less over for him.

'The career that I think Ben and I look at, well Clooney's definitely doing it right now and Clint Eastwood, those are the careers where guys are acting, writing, and directing and doing it on their terms, I think that is the biggest,' Matt claimed, 'I love movies and I love everything about it and I love writing and I love acting. And I really want to direct and I've been taking this last ten years to really carefully study these directors I've been working with. I worked with a lot of really good ones at this point, so I feel like I'm ready to do it and that to me would be the great.'

He also mentions what ultimately hopes to achieve most of all.

'To have a long career,' he continues, 'It's so hard to have a long career in this business. I'm still here after ten years, so we're all probably a little amazed by that. But at this point, I just want to try and be smart about the work that I'm doing and try to have integrity about the choices I make, and that's it.'

A little surprised that he'd mention Ben Affleck, we closed by asking whether or not he and his longtime friend had any plans to write another film together again.

'In terms of my hetero life mate, that's what Kevin Smith said in one of his movies, we're not working on a script now,' Damon says, 'We're talking about a bunch of different things. His career has gone in this new and totally exciting different direction, because I've seen the movie he directed and it's really good. So now he's gone from being an actor to being a director, somebody that can give me a job, so our whole relationship's just completely changed.'

'That's a new dynamic our partnership can have, right'' he adds, 'And we can do a movie that we act in and I act in and he directs, something that we co-direct, or something that we co-write and co-direct. There's so many different possibilities now. So it's exciting and now we've started to talk about that stuff again. It's been ten years since the last one and we both put our heads down and worked really hard in this last ten years, so now we've woken up with careers and families and all of the things we wanted. So hopefully, I think the next ten years, I think will be about doing better work, maybe doing a little less of it, but doing better stuff and doing more together.'