Matt Damon: Bourne...Again

The first time you might have seen actor Matt Damon, he was standing by his buddy Ben Affleck's side accepting an Academy Award for writing Good Will Hunting. Both buddies from Boston branched into acting on very different paths. Ben turned more action/thriller hero for a time while Matt took on serious drama as a cowboy in All the Pretty Horses and a conniving conman in The Talented Mr. Ripley but it was the spy thriller The Bourne Identity and his part in the con game film Ocean's Eleven with pal George Clooney that caught the attention of young moviegoers. On the gossip circuit, Matt has been written up through two romances; Wynona Ryder and Minnie Driver but keeps up a clean, nice guy image.

Matt goes into action as troubled spy with big blanks in his memory Jason Bourne again this week in The Bourne Supremacy and will  soon be seen as the creator of classic fairy tales as one of the two Brothers Grimm in a movie about the famous German creators of fantasy literature. Matt is just plain old charming, friendly, smiling and open. What's not to like? He talked with the press recently in Beverly Hills about playing Bourne for a second time, trying to find a window of time to write another script with pal Ben and his career ups and downs and life challenges.

TeenHollywood: Tell us about how you've built your career and what kinds of roles are you looking for now?

Matt: At first, around the time of doing one line in Chasing Amy, it was take any job I can get, but since Good Will Hunting and since I've been offered movies rather than having to go and hustle and audition for them, it's basically been just three things that  look for; a script that I like, a good director and a good role. And usually I settle for any two of those. The combination of all three are really hard to come by. Right before The Bourne Identity came out, I hadn't been offered a movie in a year, because (I'd been in some movies that bombed). People were afraid "Bourne" was going to suck. I went and did a play in London and we closed on a Saturday Night. Bourne had opened that Friday, and by the time I got back to New York Sunday night, Monday morning there were something like 30 script offers. So in terms of any success I've had, it's always been tenuous. I don't think anyone really feels secure.

TeenHollywood: A personal question. Do you have any favorite holiday traditions in your family?

Matt: That's a good question because I come from a family where my mom and dad divorced when I was two, me and 60 per cent of the rest of the world, so the guy my mom was with for 16 years, was also a parental figure in my life.  I guess my favorite tradition around that time, my dad would come despite the fact that they were divorced, he would sleep on the couch every Christmas eve, because he wanted to be there when my brother and I woke up in the morning. He and my mother and my mother's boyfriend would stay up after we went to bed and wrap all the gifts, and they'd get everything all ready for us and go to sleep, and that was part of my favorite tradition growing up - waking up and having my parents there and thinking Santa Claus had come.

TeenHollywood: You and Ben have some projects going together. Can you talk about that? 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. But I've been so busy doing all these other movies that we haven't had a chance to sit down and do any writing for some time. I saw him last  night and 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 finding a way to get us in the same place at the same time. For about seven years we've both been working consistently and having struggled for so long through our teens and early twenties, it's (hard for) us to turn down work. We'll just have to block out the time to write something. For both of us probably the most creatively fulfilling experience was Good Will 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.

(Whoops, a reporter's small tape recorder stops and Matt very quickly grabs it and turns over the tape. We note 'hey, you're really good at that').

Matt: Thank you. That's how we used to write actually. We'd improvise all the scenes (on tape) so I'm used to those little guys.

TeenHollywood: What were some of the challenges this time on this new Bourne movie?

Matt: One of the biggest challenges was that I don't talk a lot in the movie. That was another thing I really liked about it. 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,  and it's a pretty dark journey the guy goes on, so to get into that mindset every day, that was a huge challenge. The good news is that I got my laughter every day when I'd go home at night and unwind a little bit, get on the phone or talk to people. You know, rejoin humanity for the evenings but go to work. It's a pretty kind of heavy role this time around. It was pretty intense most of the way through, so that was kind of a challenge. Also, Berlin in the winter gets light at about 9 in the morning and gets dark, in terms of shootable light, about 3 to 3:30, and it's overcast. So the kind of (dark) mood we were all in for those months of shooting - we didn't see the sun for quite some time, so I think that probably was a sub-conscious aid.

TeenHollywood: Were you involved in all the creative aspects this time around?

Matt: 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 film is the director's medium, 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 finished form is a feeling I think (Ben and I) both want to have again.

TeenHollywood: You must have really gotten into shape for this film. Lots of action. You needed to be buff.

Matt: It was a big concern when I took the job the first time. It was really daring  to cast me as this guy because of the way I look. I look so young and this guy clearly has to have a history and he's got a very dark past, and people don't look at me and necessarily think that. So there was a lot of stuff physically in terms of getting ready. We just looked at every different aspect of how to kind of make this guy as believable as possible. Doug (the director) came up with certain things. He watched boxing on television and he liked the way boxers walked. They have and a kind of security in their bodies and this kind of forward momentum that he really liked.

TeenHollywood: So you had to do a lot of boxing to achieve that?

Matt:  I boxed for about six months before the movie, and that really helped. I found that just the way you move around other people, and it's a very subtle thing, but I think the some total of a lot of those little subtleties add up to creating the character.

TeenHollywood: The Jason Bourne character seems not to like guns but sure knows how to use them. How did you develop that?

Matt: The first scene where he picks up a gun for the first time and he throws it down. What it said in the screen (script) direction was that 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 got to look like an extension of his arm. So the only way to get around that was just to go to the firing range and just put in hundreds of hours, so I didn't have to think about the gun. It was just there.

TeenHollywood: Bourne isn't always a nice guy but the audience can still root for him. Was that important to you?

Matt: Basically what I liked about it was putting out in a mainstream movie a feeling that (when) something terribly wrong happens to you, your first instinct is to go to get revenge, but if you just sit back and think about it and you start to look at yourself  in your own life and take responsibility for your own actions, the most important thing you do to rejoin the human race is to start atoning for the things that you've done. And the last shot of the movie is him walking and rejoining a sea of humanity in New York City of all places. That was the first time we'd ever seen him in this country. At the end he does a very powerful thing - he does the only thing that he can, which is to attempt to atone and start to redeem himself.

TeenHollywood: There's a play about you and Ben. Have you seen it?

Matt: I haven't seen it. I don't know. 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.

TeenHollywood: What's up with the Ocean's Twelve movie?

Matt:  We're 75 per cent of the way through. We just came back from Europe and we're finishing it up at Warner Brothers and it's been going great so far. Everyone's back for this one plus Catherine Zeta Jones has a great role in it and there are a few celebrity surprises.

***

Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.