The Bourne Supremacy
Good Will Hunting achieved two goals. One, it gave us all a
reason to never visit a shrink that looks like Robin Williams, and two, it
launched the career of one Matt Damon. Co-writer with close buddy and fellow
star Ben Affleck, Matt went on to earn an Oscar for his writing talents and
became one of
But not even an Oscar can keep one on top of the
Matt: “Really
recently, right before The Bourne Identity came out, I hadn’t been offered a
movie in a year. Because The Legend of Bagger Vance had come out and bombed and
All The Pretty Horses had come out and bombed. And the
word on The Bourne Identity was that it was gonna
tank also because we had pushed back the release date a couple times and so
people went “Oh, well that’s always a sign that things aren’t going well.”. When in fact Universal had given us more money to go back
and reshoot and pick up a couple things that we
needed. And we were making the movie a lot better so we were holding the movie
for the right reasons. But the outward signals from the industry were “Oh God,
this thing’s gonna suck.”.
So nobody had really called and gave me any job offers for quite some time. I
went and did a play in
Playing an assassin, while it may seem like it is a pretty exciting job for almost any experienced actor, can be frustrating at times. There is actually more preparation not just physically, but mentally as well.
Matt: “We just tried to look at every different aspect of how to make this guy as believable as possible. Because the worst thing that could happen is if you have a good movie but the central character’s just not quite believable and he’s constantly taking your audience right out of movie. That’s a complete disaster. The movie will just fall apart.
One of the biggest challenges starting off just as an acting thing was the fact that I don’t talk a lot in the movie. And that was another thing that I really liked about it. You can’t really tell in the final movie but reading the script I only had about four scenes in the movie where I speak. But I’m on screen for a lot of the movie, so that was a huge challenge. It’s a pretty dark journey that the guy goes on so to get into that mindset every day, that was a huge challenge.”
And physically?
Matt: “I boxed for about six months before the movie and that really did help. I found just the way that you move around other people. And it’s a very subtle thing. But I think the sum total of a lot of those little subtleties add up into making something either believable or not. And a lot of the weapons training, just little tips from the guy that I was training with, I put in so many hours. For one thing there was that moment in the first one (Bourne Identity) where he picks up a gun for the first time and he throws it down. What it said in the screen direction was it feels so comfortable in his hand that he throws it down, and from that moment on any time he’s holding a gun it’s gotta look like an extension of his arm. So the only way to really get around that was just to go to the firing range and put in hundreds of hours and just shoot and shoot so that I didn’t have to think about the gun. It was just there and it would never be pointed at anything I wasn’t prepared to destroy.”
So we know that he can shoot, but what about when guns aren’t available and a man has to settle his differences with some good old fashioned brawling? Most movies use a stuntman to ensure that the actors don’t get hurt during a fight scene.
Matt: “It’s really important to have me doing it because audiences are smart enough to know that when you cut to the wide shot of the really buff stuntman doing it, it’s a giveaway. And even if they can’t quite put their finger on it, it’s just something that takes them out of the movie. So it was working out all of that stuff to make sure that I could do it and the other actor could do it in a way that looked real and credible and kept the illusion afloat.”
But the Bourne Supremacy is not the only thing on Matt
Damon’s mind. Ben Affleck had mentioned re-teaming with his Good Will buddy for
another
Matt: ““I think the one Ben’s talking about right now is the Dennis Lehane novel that he had ‘Gone Baby Gone’. He’s got the right to that one. But I don’t really know what’s going on with that right now. A lot depends on whether or not he wants to be in it or not. To direct it, or where his heads at. But I’ve been so busy doing all these other movies, I haven’t had a chance to sit down and really do any writing. I mean 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 a matter of kind of handling the logistics, and figuring out a way to get us in the same place at the same time. One of the things is having struggled for work for so long, even though now it’s been 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 hard for us to turn down work. And I think that’s what we’ll have to do to write something. We just have to block out the time and commit to it.”
Matt further elaborates on why writing is still an important creative medium. Something that he and Ben have ignored for far too long.
Matt: “Ya, I think for both of us probably the most creatively fulfilling experience for us was Good Will Hunting just because we took an idea from the very beginning and sheparded it all the way through until it was a film. And that’s just incredibly fulfilling to do that. But even like now, we’ll have a lot of creative input with the directors we work with. And it is a collaborative feeling. Taking a movie like Bourne, like I was really involved in a lot of ways. But at the end of the day, you know, it’s the director’s vision and it’s gotta be because it’s a director’s medium and there’s no getting around it, you’re kind of hired labor at the end of the day. So in terms of writing and bringing something all the way from the beginning to kind of finished form is a feeling that I think we both want to have again.”
The Bourne Supremacy is not the only sequel Matt will be starring in. Ocean’s Twelve is still shooting and looks to be another bullseye in this young man’s list of hit roles.
Matt: ““We’re
about 75% of our way through. We just came back from
And what are the chances of him starring in another Kevin Smith film?
Matt: “Well, I was in Jersey Girl. I had one scene in Jersey Girl. I’m always ready to do whatever Kevin wants. He’s very good about giving me something to do in his movies. And sometimes like in the case of Dogma he gives me a big role. So I’m sure one of these days. Kevin kind of writes what’s going on his life. Obviously Jersey Girl there was this huge thing of when he became a father and he started permeating about what would happen if he lost Jen. And then suddenly Jersey Girl came out of that. As Kevin keeps kind of keeps living his life maybe a role will come out that he offers to me. But you know the second he does, I’ll take it.”
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY SHOOTS INTO THEATERS JULY 23RD.