Hey folks, Harry here... I met Matt Damon on the set of ALL THE PRETTY HORSES and actually found him to be one of the brightest actors I've met thus far. I remember our conversations regarding Kubrick and the knowledge he gleamed from one of Stanley's cohorts. So this writer's assessment about the coolness of one Mr Damon, well I can confirm. Here's the latest, he talks a tad about a sequel to BOURNE IDENTITY below...
Hey Harry,
I'm A Long Time Reader, But First Time Contributor. I'd Really Appreciate If You Posted This Because I Think It Has Some Really Great Information. Well, Here Goes:
This evening I went to a Question and Answer session with Matt Damon. When I walked into the theater it was being held at, I was only a bit of a fan.
I had seen many of his movies, and though he was a very good actor. But that’s pretty much as far as it goes. I didn’t know much about his personal life, other than the fact that he was best friends with Ben Affleck. When I walked out of the theatre, however, I had been totally enraptured by Damon. My respect level of him went from nothing (because I knew nothing about him) to an incredible amount. Don’t believe anything else you hear about Matt. He truly is an incredible person. Now, here is how the evening’s proceedings went.
First off, the president of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival explained why this was being held. Though I had already knew, it didn’t seem as if most of the other people did. A woman named Lisa, who was Matt’s friend, and who had worked on The Rainmaker with him was going through exactly the same thing as the character in The Rainmaker. She had Leukemia, and the insurance companies were not being nice. To make a long story short, she was being screwed over. Matt had already donated 20,000 dollars to this girl, and now they were using the ticket prices (25 bucks) and the after-party ticket prices (175 bucks; I did not go to this for obvious reasons) to donate to the girl as well. This was simply wonderful. Next, they showed about a fifteen-minute montage of most of Matt’s films. Peopled clapped at different levels when different films came on. I noticed that the films with the most claps were Dogma, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Good Will Hunting. After that, the lights came back on, and Matt began to talk.
Some weird guy asked the first question. It was about life imitating art and art imitating life. Matt basically answered by saying that even this session had an ulterior motive; helping his friend.
I cannot remember every single other question, because I didn’t write it down, but here is what I do remember. He talked about a sequel to The Bourne Identity and said that he would only do it if he thought it was better than the first. He said that audiences are smart enough to realize when someone is “milking the cash cow.” He also talked about his upcoming conjoined twins movie with Greg Kinnear and the farrelly brothers. He said that he was very excited to be doing a comedy. There was also mention of a very small independent movie he had made with Gus Van Sant that is being released sometime in February.
The rest of the questions and answers had to do with the formation of his career, advice to people who want to get into the industry, and other questions having to deal with him and Ben Affleck etc. During all of these questions, he kept reiterating the fact that you should never give up, and no matter what other people tell you, keep on pushing. When one girl asked if Ben and Matt had as many girls around them as they do today, he replied by saying that they were major geeks. He said that you should take this example; at your school, do the popular people even take turn around to tell the drama and film geeks the time of day? No, so that should answer your questions. I didn’t find this very helpful, because I am one of those film geeks.
Anyways, the final thing I found to be most interesting of all was when he was asked about a second script. He said that Ben and he mainly wrote Good Will Hunting so that they had major parts in a movie they could play. He then proceeded to say that the past five years (since GWH) have been incredibly hectic. Him and Ben have had hardly any time to hang out. He then continued by saying that just the other day he was on the set of Jersey Girl filming a cameo, and him and Ben started talking. They both hoped that someday in the near future they could set up time for them to write another script, but for now, they have too many movies in the near future.
All in all, this is one of the most fun nights I’ve ever had. I fell as if I had spent an incredible 90 minutes. At the end of this session, I realized just how much I really do love movies.
