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"That Matt Damon is going places", Gregory Peck, 1998. . .
Ben Affleck & Matt Damon - Marla (Feb 19, 2001, 07:34 PM)
I was having dinner with my husband on Valentines Day at Nobu Next Door in Tribeca, and at 11:30 pm, we were getting ready to leave and spotted Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and an unknown girl standing outside the restaurant smoking cigarettes... As we walked out, they walked in...
My response to Diane:
I am glad Matt has appreciative fans such as you. Of course I agree
with you - I have loved everyone of his films: Rounders, BV, and ATPH
included. I truly think that Matt is one talented guy, and it is
rare to see that combination of talents+looks+good-naturedness in a
guy. Which is why it really bothers me that he seems to have hit
a lull. Let's face it, he is in a lull. On the other hand, it is
better this way, because now he has to strive to achieve his full
potential, instead of sitting on his laurels. Matt is just an
extremely interesting actor to watch, in my opinion. I just hope that
we continue to get the opportunities to see his performances. You
just never know. Hollywood is a cruel place. Heck, the world is
a mean street generally :-) I do have faith in Matt. Although
now that I have seen how shallow the Oscars/Golden Globes really
are, I really don't know what defines a crowning achievement for an
actor anymore.
BTW: I did get a chance to see the letters section in the new TALK with Uma Thurman on the cover. There are two letters pertaining to Matt's interview. One, by a professed Matt "junkie" who claims to be more interested in his films than his personal life, nevertheless thanks the magazine for the "witty" and "intelligent" interview. The other letter takes offense at the cover phrase "I literally have nowhere to sleep" because of what he considers a tasteless comparison to actual homeless people. Whatever! For what it's worth, his comments seem to be directed more toward the magazine's editors than toward Matt himself.
Ben's move to NY is interesting. Dare we say it has anything to do with Matt's decision to finally move into his NY loft? Of course, neither is likely to spend much time there until summer, I would imagine.
As for the Greenlight Chicago photos, maybe it's the cold weather or the particular angle, but doesn't Matt seem a bit thin again? It worries me that his weight seems to vary so often. That can't be healthy.
Molly went on to say: My comments is that I wonder what Matt did but obviously it has to have been something funny. He's known for his sense of humor which was wonderfully displayed the last time he was on Oprah with Billy Bob.
I've found a site which has photos from the set of Bourne Identity when it
was filming in the Italian Riviera (early November). It must be the first
scenes in the book, where Bourne is washed up on the coast into a little
village. There are two shots of Matt, although I can't recognise him in
one - the other one has him signing autographs for fans.
The site is in Italian at:
http://www.rivieraligure.it/eventi/mattdamon.htm.
For some new shots of Matt at the Pretty Horses premiere in NY: http://www.beautyspot.com/photos/dec12.htm
For footage of Matt and the Ripley cast at the Berlin Film Festival last
year:
http://www.reeldv.com/Berlinale.html.
And a quote from Matt during that festival: "We met in Toronto when he was shooting eXistenZ, and talked about how we could make our bodies similar." -- Matt Damon reveals how he and Jude Law prepared for The Talented Mr. Ripley.
"endearing"
While he's no longer the kid who crashed the party, that kid-like quality
that makes Damon so endearing is still in healthy abundance as he confesses
his own surprise at making it to the top of the pecking order. "I keep
waiting for someone to come tap me on the shoulder and tell me to leave," he
grins, "but that's probably a common thing. I think most actors probably
feel that way but I like to think I still have the same enthusiasm I had
when I stood on that stage at the Golden Globes two years ago. I certainly
don't think Ben and I have become jaded or anything!"
Part of the secret to his ease and comfort with becoming a household name,
Damon insists, are the friends and family from his hometown of Boston that
he has remained close to throughout his life. Sitting in a swank New York
hotel dutifully doing press duties for The Legend of Bagger Vance, Damon is
also excitedly looking forward to his 30th birthday party at another New
York hotel that same week. "I've flown my friends and family in from Boston
so it should be a big night," he casually admits. "These are friends that I'
ve had my whole life so they are there for all the stuff that happens, the
good and the bad."
"The perks of stardom"
But even Damon has to acknowledge with a grin a mile wide that the perks of
stardom don't entirely leave his family and friends unaffected. "My father
came down to the set of The Legend of Bagger Vance and we played a lot of
baseball and catch, he recalls. "The prop department had a baseball and some
gloves and we went and picked up the gloves and started having a catch. One
day, Redford walked over and grabbed a glove and started playing catch and
about two minutes into it, my dad just turned to me and said, 'I'm having a
catch with Roy Hobbs (Redford's character in The Natural)!' So there are
always reminders of how kind of cool and exciting my life is."
In The Legend of Bagger Vance, Damon plays Rannulph Junuh, a professional
golfer who had it all but disappeared after going off to war and becoming
disillusioned with the world. When he's coaxed into playing a
once-in-a-lifetime golf match against the greatest golfers of the day, Junuh
meets a mysterious man called Bagger Vance (Will Smith) who insists on
becoming his golf caddie and helping him find his swing, a metaphor for what
's really at stake for Junuh during the game. Based on the novel by Steven
Pressfield, The Legend of Bagger Vance marks the sixth film to be directed
by legendary actor Robert Redford, who won an Oscar for his directorial
debut Ordinary People two decades ago and has always been attracted to
themes of redemption. And much like he did with Brad Pitt in A River Runs
Through It, Redford has again handpicked another Hollywood golden boy to be
his muse. "I got very taken with the idea of Matt Damon who, at least at
this point in his life, doesn't have much of a mark on him which is part of
his appeal," he explains. "I thought it would be interesting to put him in
the part of this damaged young man and then watch him come back from that."
"phenomenal results"
So convinced was Redford that Damon was the perfect actor for the role, he
changed his mind about only hiring actors who were good golfers, taking a
gamble that PGA master professional Tim Moss could turn him into one in less
than a month. Moss, who was also the film's technical advisor, worked with
Damon for eight hours a day, seven days a week during that month and became
not just an acting fan of the star, but a fan of his athletic prowess. "I
have never seen anyone take to the game as quickly as he did," Moss says.
"In order to present Matt as a legitimate player, I decided the best thing
to do would be to teach him exactly as I would anyone else, to turn him into
a fundamentally sound player. He worked very hard and pulled it off with
phenomenal results."
Maybe a little too hard for poor Damon, it seems. The actor developed
blisters from his hundreds of hours on the driving range and also separated
his ribs during one practice session but still talks about his
indoctrination into the sport with unbridled enthusiasm. "I'd tried to swing
a club before and been really bad so when I met Redford I asked him if he
thought there was enough time and he said, 'I think you can do it'. It was
probably him saying, 'I think you can do it' that was the challenge for me,
rather than him saying, 'I know you can do it!'," he chuckles. "So I went
down to Georgia and worked with Tim and now I'm completely addicted to the
game!"
Like Redford, Damon embraced the metaphor of finding his swing as a parallel
for discovering his true self. "I didn't have the respect for the game that
I do now," he acknowledges. "I played a lot of baseball growing up so I
figured this game would be easy but it's hard and it's also a real
exploration of yourself and who you are and how you handle things. As Tim
told me, 'I can take anybody out on a golf course and by the end of the day
know everything about them. If they try and cheat you, if they push their
ball, if they change the way the ball is sitting to give themselves a better
shot, they'll cheat you in real life.' He said that the entire range of
human emotions are all identifiable in somebody's golf game and I find that
even now, when I'm playing alone, often the way I'm playing is a reflection
of how at peace I am with myself. If I'm calm and things are good in life,
it's very easy and effortless. If things aren't going well, even if I can
hide those things from people around me, they'll come out immediately in the
way that I hit the golf ball."
"To work with Robert Redford"
Damon readily admits his main reason for making the film was to work with
Robert Redford. "I'm really careful about the things I do and usually I look
at the director and the script at the same time but in this case, if you
notice in Good Will Hunting there's huge similarities between that and
Ordinary People not only because Ben and I loved that movie but because
Ordinary People is one of (Good Will Hunting director) Gus Van Sant's
favorite movies. The dynamics between the therapist and the young person
trying to overcome something are very similar, so a chance to not only work
with an actor that I really admired but somebody whose directing I admired,
was something I could not say no to," he says.
While accolades have come quickly for Damon, he seems strangely unaffected
by them or the Oscar hype already being thrown around for his performances
in The Legend of Bagger Vance and All the Pretty Horses, based on Cormac
McCarthy's best-selling novel about a Texan cowboy who falls in love with a
Mexican in the 1940s. "I know a lot of actors who strategize about doing a
big movie, then a small one, then a big one and then you really have nothing
to show for the experience of being in the movie if it doesn't work out," he
says. "With All the Pretty Horses, it was the first time that I really don't
care what happens in terms of box-office because I did it for all the right
reasons and I'm really proud of it. I just hope I get to a place where it
doesn't matter with all of them."
"An optimistic cynic"
While Damon jokingly describes himself as "an optimistic cynic", it seems
his optimism is contagious. He recently teamed up with Affleck again, only
this time the pair are doing it for free, launching a competition to help
other budding screenwriters get their first movie made by Miramax Films, who
will offer the winner a chance to direct their own movie with a US$1 million
budget, and HBO cable giant will make a documentary-style series about the
making of the movie, executive produced by Damon and Affleck. Details of
Project Greenlight, (winner announced in March 2001), are available on
www.projectgreenlight.com and Damon seems genuinely proud of this
achievement. "We're not just lending our names but we're actively involved
in the hope of helping bring an influx of new writers from places like Maine
or Seattle, where they are outsiders like we felt - and just want a chance
to get their foot in the door," he says.
These days Damon's foot is not only through the door, but kicking it down!
From Tennis Match magazine, details about a charity event that Matt attended last year. It received very little press at the time, but it's a lovely story (especially for those tennis fans amongst us):
Touching the stars
By: Kevin OKeefe
In the locker room of the North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village, Calif., Matt Damon has voluntarily changed into a Pete Sampras Classic golf shirt and carefully affixed a gold Tim & Tom Gullikson Foundation lapel pin. “I’d wear the [Pete Sampras Classic] hat, too, but I didn’t want to look like a Pete stalker,” he jokes.
Damon, one of the celebrity player captains for March’s Pete Sampras Classic golf event benefiting the Tim & Tom Gullikson Foundation, is about to meet up with Sampras and face one of those red-carpet media swarms of flashing bulbs, extended mikes and tape recorders.
But in a hushed locker room corner away from that scene, Damon was talking about his admiration for Pete Sampras both on and off the court and about the important role of the Gullikson Foundation, of which Sampras is a board member.
That’s the reason Damon was here on this unseasonably cold Monday and the night before at the tournament party, a fund-raiser for the Foundation that was held at Damon’s new Beverly Hills club. It’s the reason he was the first of about 30 Hollywood, sports and media celebrities—people such as Dennis Miller, Dennis Hopper, Andy Garcia, Wayne Gretzky, Evander Holyfield, Stone Phillips and Dan Patrick—who gave their day to Pete Sampras so that he could raise the Foundation’s awareness among those who don’t necessarily follow tennis.
“I’m so happy to help support Pete and what Tim and Tom established,” Damon said inside the locker room. Soon after, he embraced Tim Gullikson’s loving family—wife Rosemary and children Erik and Megan—and Tom Gullikson and Sampras.
Rosemary, Erik and Megan flew in from Chicago for the event, as did Tom Lembeck, a friend of Damon’s whose company was the first to purchase a Pete Sampras Classic sponsorship. At that evening’s event dinner and auction, Lembeck helped the proceedings with the donation of a rare magnum of 1975 wine that went for $2,000. From the same table, Damon made a healthy cash donation to the event.
The generosity of Sampras, Damon, Lembeck and more than 200 others helped raise $90,000 for the Foundation, which funds care and support programs for brain-tumor patients and their families. “It’s a great feeling to have raised this significant sum for the Foundation,” said Sampras. “And it seems appropriate to have raised it through a golf event. I have fond memories both of Tim’s love of golf and his sparking my interest in it.”
For those new to tennis, Tim Gullikson was Sampras’ coach. He died of brain cancer four years ago this month. Tom Gullikson, the head of coaching for the United States Tennis Association, is probably the nicest guy among tennis’ power brokers. The identical twins—who won 10 doubles titles together on the tour—created the Foundation in 1995.
As the Gulliksons have positively touched Pete Sampras and, in turn, Matt Damon and, in turn, Tom Lembeck, they continue to touch many others in and out of tennis—people whose stories unfold far beyond the North Ranch Country Club.
They touch people like the teaching pro in Arizona who was diagnosed with brain cancer and didn’t know where to turn. The Tim & Tom Gullikson Foundation made sure he got the information he needed. They touch people like Sheryl Shetsky, president of the South Florida Brain Tumor Association—one of the country’s oldest support groups—by providing the association with the money it needs to augment its regional programs.
They touch people like David Bailey, 34, a Virginia recording artist and brain tumor survivor who was told in 1996 that he had a year to live. Last year, Bailey received the first Tim Gullikson Spirit Award.
They touch the more than 1,000 families that utilize the resources of Duke University Medical Center’s Brain Tumor Family Support Center—a Tim & Tom Gullikson Foundation Program. They touch touch kids with brain tumors who attend camp each summer in California through Foundation gifts. They touch Pete Sampras, who touched Tim Gullikson. Just ask Rosemary Gullikson, the Foundation’s president, who remembers the important support role Pete played when her husband was suffering from brain cancer.
“Pete’s calls from events around the world would always brighten Tim’s day,” she told guests at the Pete Sampras Classic. “Tim was Pete’s coach and friend, but Pete was there to provide coaching and support when Tim needed it most.” The Tim & Tom Gullikson Foundation does the same for brain tumor patients and their loved ones every day.
The philosophic Matt... But he still hasn't become accustomed to being recognised by fans??
The magazine gave it a very good four star review, and included a new photo I don't think I've seen before: Matt and Charlize dancing, shown side-on. It almost looks like a scene cut from the movie, as it's next to a lake and Charlize is in a dress I don't recognise. Matt's in a tux, hair slicked.