interview - MATT DAMON
Total Recall
Matt Damon promises that by the end of The Bourne Ultimatum Jason Bourne will remember his past. Will he like what he discovers?
By Earl Dittman
If Matt Damon had decided to take the lead role in Tim Burton’s remake of Planet of the Apes, this month’s The Bourne Ultimatum may never have been made.
“I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to say that the Bourne films wouldn’t have been as successful without me,” says 36-year-old Damon as he plops himself down on a chair at a New York hotel, “but who knows if they could have found another fool like me to make three of them?”
The Bourne Ultimatum is indeed the third installment in the blockbuster franchise based on Robert Ludlum’s books about amnesia-plagued, rogue CIA agent Jason Bourne (Damon).
“I had absolutely no great desire to play an action hero, even as I got older,” says Damon, decked out in a stylish suit and crisp, white button-down shirt, minus a tie. “Before I got into acting, I really wanted to be a baseball player. I went to my first baseball game when I was about eight years old, and it was like the thrill of my lifetime. My father and I even got to go on the field after the game, and it was such an adrenaline rush for me. I still think that there is a chance that I’m going to pitch for the Red Sox one day.”
But Damon’s dreams of playing for the major leagues disappeared when a starring role in a high school play convinced him that acting was his true calling. After making dozens of commercials and scoring minor roles in such films as Mystic Pizza and School Ties, he and his good friend Ben Affleck decided to write their own screenplay and cast themselves in the starring roles.
Their effort, Good Will Hunting, would earn the boys from Boston the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1998, instantly transforming them into leading men. For Damon, the film roles and the big paydays started to roll in, including prime parts in The Rainmaker, All the Pretty Horses, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Ocean’s Eleven. But with the exception of the ensemble piece Ocean’s Eleven, none of Damon’s movies were big hits. That would soon change.
Due to a previous commitment, Affleck had passed on The Bourne Identity, but encouraged his friend to give the screenplay a serious read. Although Damon was a signature away from reporting to the set of the Planet of the Apes redux, he reluctantly gave the script a read.
“Even though I didn’t see myself as an action hero, I was always a big fan of movies in that genre,” he says. “The problem was that I was constantly disappointed by them, because they never seemed smart enough. The action seemed contrived, because you could set your watch to the next explosion — four minutes goes by, so more stuff is going to blow up, and it does. I was constantly disappointed.
“But I really liked the script for Bourne Identity and the fact that Doug Liman [Swingers] was directing it, because he tends to think outside the box a little bit,” Damon continues. “So he gave me hope that the movie was going to be unique for the action movie genre…. I mean, the mere fact that the lead character was the kind of guy that gets out of a building using a map and a radio instead of a gun was kind of interesting and a little bit
different.”
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Matt Damon and Julia Stiles in
The Bourne Ultimatum
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Not only did The Bourne Identity become one of the biggest hits of the year, but the film raised the bar for other action films. And its success elevated Damon’s status.
The film’s 2004 sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, did even better at the box office than its predecessor. Damon,
however, is most proud of the second film for other reasons.
“There are three major tent-pole ideas in that one that I really liked,” he says. “In the first act, the woman he cares about dies in a really brutal way. This character that we went to great lengths for…did all this work to establish their relationship and create this one, kind of, ray of hope in this guy’s life — and she’s basically murdered. In the second act, I shoot a woman in the face, just completely in cold blood, and as an audience you sit there and see your central character do this horrible, horrible thing. Then, in the third act, I go to apologize to this young woman after having learned about loss in my own life. Usually, in a mainstream movie, when something terribly wrong happens to you, your first instinct is to go get revenge.”
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Of all the young actors in Hollywood, Damon is one of the few who doesn’t attract round-the-clock coverage. He comes off as a simple guy, living a relatively normal life, and he says there’s a reason for that.
“When I think about fame and remaining grounded, there’s this famous story that I heard that I always remember,” he explains. “It was in the ’80s, when Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson were like at the height of their celebrity. Michael Jackson couldn’t leave his house and Bruce Springsteen you might see at a bar around the corner. Someone told me that, and I believe it. My experience makes me believe it, because I think celebrity is what you make of it. If you walk around with 10 bodyguards, then you are going to get treated in that way…. I have no problems at all. If I have to go to a premiere, I say, ‘Okay. I’m going to my premiere, so it’s going to be 10 minutes of madness and then I’m out the back door, and then I’m back to my normal life. You’re a celebrity if you want to be one, that’s the bottom line.”
After dating actors Winona Ryder and Minnie Driver, these days the woman walking down the red carpet with Damon is Argentina-born Luciana Barroso, whom he married in December 2005, two years after meeting the interior designer on the Florida set of Stuck on You.
“It feels great to be married, because there is always someone you love to come home to,” beams Damon. “I knew she was the one from the moment we met, and I knew it was about time for me to settle down. We’ve bought a house in Florida, and I’m learning how to speak Spanish. So we’re off to a great start.”
Damon’s family includes his young stepdaughter Alexia (Barroso’s daughter from a previous relationship) and Isabella, Matt and Luciana’s daughter born in Miami a year ago. “She’s the smartest baby in the world,” boasts Damon. “I never knew that fatherhood could be such an incredibly fulfilling experience. I feel so blessed. I feel like I’ve been made a member of a club that I didn’t know existed. Ben and I are constantly saying to each other, ‘How did we do without this for so long?’ If I had known being a father would feel so great, I would have gotten married years ago. It’s just tough to leave home to make a movie, that’s all.”
Luckily, the better part of The Bourne Ultimatum was filmed in the States and the film was halfway finished by the time Isabella was born. Like the second film, Ultimatum is directed by Paul Greengrass, and Damon is once again joined by former Bourne castmates Julia Stiles, Joan Allen and Brian Cox.
In what is being touted as the end of a trilogy, The Bourne Ultimatum finds Jason Bourne being pursued by a foreign agent with whom he had a gun battle in Moscow. While trying to keep himself out of the Russian’s scope, Bourne thinks he is close to putting together the final pieces of the puzzle that will reveal all about his past. And Damon says that by the end of this film, Bourne has remembered everything.
“We said to each other, ‘I think this should be the last one,’” Damon recalls of a talk with Greengrass. “I mean, I’m half-joking, but how long can you do this? Jason’s search for his identity is definitely going to have to come to an end one day.”
However, in the next breath, Damon doesn’t dismiss the possibility of doing another Bourne film 20 years from now. “I would love that — if I was like a hundred pounds heavier, and it’d be like, ‘They pulled me back in! They won’t let me go!’ and they’re like, ‘No. They don’t give a crap about you. What are you talking about?’” Damon jokes. “Actually, I think the only way to do another Bourne movie is to do it 20 years down the road. That’s the only way I’d even consider it.”
Earl Dittman is a Houston-based entertainment writer.
Unforgettable Films
Jason Bourne’s got a bad case of Hollywood amnesia. You know, the amnesia that afflicts good-looking secret agents with deadly fighting skills?
Amnesia is an established — albeit rare — medical condition, one that screenwriters love to exploit for movie plots. Here’s a primer on two sorts of amnesia and how they’ve been used in recent movies.
Retrograde Amnesia:
Retrograde amnesia effects one’s long-term memory, meaning you cannot recall events prior to the onset of amnesia, but can recall events that take place after the amnesia has occurred. This is what Jason Bourne suffers from in the Bourne films.
Movie Usage:
• Paycheck: Ben Affleck (Matt Damon’s real-life best friend) plays another dangerous dude who can’t remember his identity so follows clues he’s left for himself to help remember who he is.
• The X-Men trilogy: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) has had his memories wiped by government types and is searching for clues to his identity.
• The Majestic: Jim Carrey plays a 1950s screenwriter who loses his memory, winds up in a small town and is hailed as a hometown soldier thought killed in World War Two.
Anterograde Amnesia:
This amnesia effects one’s short-term memory, meaning you can recall events prior to the onset of amnesia, but can’t store new information after the amnesia has kicked in, thus leading a person to forget things they’ve just said and done.
Movie Usage:
• Memento: The king of amnesia movies sees Guy Pearce playing a man surrounded by Post-it notes, Polaroids and even messages tattooed on his body to help him search for his wife’s killer.
• 50 First Dates: Poor Drew Barrymore can’t remember that she keeps dating Adam Sandler over and over again in this romantic comedy.
• Finding Nemo: Ellen DeGeneres earned raves for her portrayal of Dory the blue tang fish whose short-term memory loss frustrates her fellow fish.
—Ingrid Randoja