The Matt Damon Column - August 2004 Archive

Updated 8/30/2004

Matt in Australia

Calendar

Syriana

Rounders

Ocean's Twelve

Syriana

The Brothers Grimm

8/30/2004

Matt has now left Australia and is probably heading next to Russia. Photos of Matt at Sydney airport earlier in the week are below (from Splash).
Interviews from radio stations Triple J and Merrick and Rosso are now online.

The transcript of the 60 Minutes inteview is also online, but it was a little deceptive. It was a standard hotel interview mixed with some clips from the premiere and party, including footage of Matt and Lucy being photographed together. In one of her first public appearances Lucy poses shyly, and Matt looks down and says to her quietly (amidst the flashbulbs): "It's a little un-nerving, isn't it". Lucy replies "A little", and Matt asks if she's alright. Lucy then looks away into Matt's shoulder before he breaks up the photos and Lucy walks quickly into the crowd. Enough mushy stuff. Interviewer Charles Wooley's introduction to the story:

INTRO - CHARLES WOOLEY: His publicists are really going to love this but Matt Damon really is the sort of bloke who gives Hollywood a good name. He was here this past week to promote his latest movie The Bourne Supremacy, but in the event, what he promoted most was his own reputation as an all-round good guy. He's famous for movies like Good Will Hunting and The Talented Mr Ripley and I have to say for being nice. And, in an industry full of men and women behaving badly, Mr Damon is, sadly, something of a rarity. So perhaps it was not surprising he charmed the pants off the local media, this crusty old reporter included.
Thanks to Matt's extensive local media blitz, Bourne Supremacy opened very well in Australia, and continues to perform strongly internationally:

"The Bourne Supremacy" minted an estimated $7.7 million from 1,100 playdates in 12 territories, sending its cume to $25 million.

Matt Damon starrer was tops in Australia (nabbing $3.4 million on 231, repping Universal's biggest opening of the year locally and its sixth best ever), New Zealand ($408,000 on 52) and Singapore ($400,000 on 26). Spy saga placed second in Thailand with $315,000 on 46. Pic rang up $1.8 million in its third in the U.K. (down 35%), driving the total to $15.4 million, surpassing the lifetime cume of "The Bourne Identity."
The Bourne Supremacy is dedicated to "our friend Peter Donen". Donen was the visual effects supervisor for The Bourne Identity, and died suddenly in January 2004. From the Hollywood Reporter's obituary:

Donen had said in interviews that his proudest professional moment was when film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper noted that one of the things they loved about Universal Pictures' "The Bourne Identity" was the lack of visual effects.

In fact, the film featured more than 150 visual effects shots skillfully incorporated into the film under Donen's watch.
From Newsweek's viewer poll of the most popular summer movies:

Tied at #4 'The Bourne Supremacy'
8% Damon, whose career looked iffy for a while, rebounded with this fast, fresh, life-size franchise, and proved himself to be not just a gifted, hugely likable actor but a player at the box office as well. The original was something of a surprise smash. No one will be surprised when Damon's Bourne again.
An uncle of Matt's, George Brunstad, has become the oldest person to swim the English Channel. Details everywhere, including here.

8/28/2004

Matt has spent the past few days in Sydney on a brief holiday - details from the Daily Telegraph.

Damon and his travelling party, including his girlfriend Luciana Barroso, appear to have a fun-filled week in Sydney. They visited Luna Park and went to see the amazing Cirque du Soleil. On Wednesday, when the actor was in Melbourne doing publicity, Barroso and other members of the entourage went to The Lion King.

A typical report from a social column in the Herald-Sun:

Hollywood star Matt Damon has again once again charmed everybody with his visit to Melbourne this week to promote The Bourne Supremacy. Other stars could learn from Damon on how to behave.
And a similar article from yourmovies:

Dashing Damon reigns supreme - Hollywood golden boy charms Australia

Friendly. Mature. Down to earth.

You don't usually hear these words associated with big-name Hollywood celebrities, but Matt Damon is an exception to the rule.

The 33-year-old actor is in Australia to promote his new film, "The Bourne Supremacy" and has done nothing but charm the pants off the entire nation.

On popular ABC-TV program "Enough Rope with Andrew Denton", Damon handled straight-down-the-barrel questions such as "Are you a good actor?" and "Why does Hollywood make so many bad movies?" with a grace rarely seen from Tinseltown's elite.
Who magazine (a local version of People), sponsored the small party after the premiere in Sydney, and their latest issue includes a 'letter' from the editor, Julietta Jameson, and an interview with Matt which is available on their website here - excerpts first:

You've got a great career, you're making a fortune, you get to sleep over at George Clooney's - oh, sorry, that's my fantasy - then Halle Berry admits a few weeks ago she's had a crush on you. Can life get much better?
Ah, no. (Laughs) I'd order those things differently though, starting with Halle.

Have you got yourself a cell phone yet?
Well, sometimes when I travel, like when I'm shooting or on this press junket, they give me a cell phone so I have a phone for the week that I'm here. The reason I don't like them is that they feel like a long leash to me. If I want someone to call me, I'll sit in my house next to the phone. Imagine if while you and I are sitting here talking, somebody just walked up and yelled, "RING RING! RING RING!" and we had to stop what we were doing because they wanted to talk to us. It's like, shut up, we're talking here. You can't just call at any moment and butt in to our conversation.

You've been at home in New York for about a week in the past two years. What do you miss most about it?
I think just the sense of a deeper, more profound relaxation. It's nice not to live out of a suitcase, too. Sleep in your own bed and get up and look through your drawers. To be constantly out of a suitcase wears you down.

I'm thinking George Clooney's Italian villa would be fairly relaxing...
(Laughs) You really want to go to Clooney's villa! No, that is a pretty great place to hang out. I'm always snooping around for another invite.

Write on...

A common cry around the halls of WHO this week: "He's sooooo much better looking in person!" Considering how photogenic Matt Damon is, such a call on his real-life looks is quite a rap. We saw him up close and personal this week, when WHO hosted a cocktail party for the Australian premiere of his new thriller, The Bourne Supremacy. Matt is a generous gentleman who took time out to chat to fans, including a few starstruck staffers. The only problem is that now the office has gone Matt mad. You'd think we'd never seen a celebrity before - an odd state of affairs for a magazine that is first with celebrity news! Grillmeister Di Webster, who interviewed him, is gushing. Associate editor Jennie Noonan is swooning. Fortunately, the blokes around here are a self-assured bunch. And I, of course, remain unmoved by Mr Damon's charms - although he does have lovely teeth (and arms and...)
And a mention of the premiere from arenatv:

Matt Damon hits Sydney... but not alone

He may have suffered from amnesia in his new sequel 'The Bourne Supremacy', but there was no chance Matt Damon could forget he was an A list star at the films Australian premiere! The buffed up babe flashed his trade mark grin as he enjoyed his 2nd visit down under. "I'm gonna do a couple of days of promotions and then I'm going to travel around a little bit, travel around Sydney and see some of the sights" shared Matt. When asked if he was here with anyone, Matt replied with a laugh "I got a lot of people here!" Sorry girls, but amongst them with him was new girlfriend Luciana who enjoyed the 'Who' after party with Matt, before shyly agreeing to pose for photographers.
More from Matt's interview in the Daily Telegraph about a possible third Bourne:

"I've learned a lot about this franchise or sequel stuff," he says. "According to people in Hollywood, you need to get it out roughly within two years or it ceases to be a sequel because people don't remember it."

"If you get the second film out two years after the first one, you can take longer before the third one comes out. So apparently we're in no rush which is good for me anyway, because everyone involved creatively should step away if we're going to do a third one and think about what it should be and only do it if it's as good as I think the second one is."
From the Herald-Sun interview, talking about the paparazzi attention during the filming of Ocean's Twelve:

Damon is convinced that he is far less interesting than his famous friends.

"It's kind of like a shark attack," he says of the paparazzi's attention.

"I felt the shark bump me a couple of times, but I knew at the end of the day there was a bunch of other stuff it wanted to eat and it was gonna swim away."
From an interview with Australian magazine NW (last week's issue):

You seem to be in a good time in your life now...
Yeah, I feel it. I've definitely settled down internally because it was such a mind f**k with everything that happened over the last few years.

How did you deal with all the craziness that comes with fame?
It was really heady. It was such a huge thing to adjust to and the ripple effect of that really took time. It took time to get back to a place of inner calm. I felt out of balance for a while.

How did you find that inner calm?
I hid in my work - all those movies I did back-to-back.

What's your philosophy on life?
To keep enjoying my work. I've really been enjoying it in the last year, travelling around. I feel centred, and that feels good.
Thanks to Sandi, here's a scan from last week's In Touch magazine about the Ocean's 12 wrap party:
Don Cheadle's updated his official website with news of the end of O12 filming and future projects:

It's a wrap! Ocean's 12 is done-duh-done-done. I'm going to get a look at it Thursday (and keep my ears plugged when I speak). I think it's going to be a good one. Look for it around the first week of Dec. Matt and George are off to Morocco to begin production on Syriana (Stephen Gaghan) and Brad's off to finish Mr and Mrs Smith with Angelina Jolie. Steven Soderbergh and myself are going into the think tank to work on a fall film while Tishomingo gets pushed to next spring.
From a People story on: "If you were President, who would be your running mate?" That's the best he could do?

Ben Affleck: Matt Damon would be a good VP. He's shorter than me - that would make me look presidential by comparison.
Matt's supporting local tax incentives for movies shooting in the Boston area - from this article.

8/26/2004

Interviews from Matt's Australian press tour continue at speed, but there were no live TV interviews Thursday in Australia, the day Bourne Supremacy opened here. Lucy and brother Kyle remained in Sydney while Matt continued the promo tour in Melbourne. Recent appearances have been on Rove (same show as Simon Le Bon and the Finn brothers), The Panel with guest Harry Shearer, and Mondo Thingo (summaries for most shows coming soon). The next major interview will be on the local version of Sixty Minutes Sunday, with the following preview currently online, and the transcript to be available Monday. Thanks to Bec for the info.

Charles Wooley goes on the road with actor Matt Damon, surely the nicest guy in Hollywood, as he plays the fame game promoting his new movie and charming his Australian fans from coast to coast...
Here's a summary of Matt's upcoming cover story in Vitals magazine by Natasha.

The piece was written by Dan Shaughnessy, a baseball author and novelist (he wrote The Curse Of The Bambino), so most of the article was describing Matt's visit to the Red Sox game a few months back. It was actually pretty fun just "hanging out" with Matt in the bleachers, and it's a different take than the usual star Q&A. The photos are also excellent.
Matt talked about Brothers Grimm co-star Heath Ledger in this interview.

Ledger 'next Spielberg'

Hollywood's Mr Nice Guy, Matt Damon, has tagged Aussie actor Heath Ledger as a future Steven Spielberg. Damon, in Melbourne to promote The Bourne Supremacy, said the Ned Kelly star already had the talent and imagination to become a great director. Ledger co-stars with Damon in the Terry Gilliam movie The Brothers Grimm.

"I think Heath is going to be a great director. Mark that I said that in 2004," Damon said.

"If he wanted to do a movie right now and there was a role for me, I'd jump at the chance. I think he's really talented."

Damon said he watched Ledger follow Gilliam around on set.

Ledger's "an incredibly imaginative guy and he's really curious", Damon said. "He already understands filmmaking at a very young age and already asks all the right questions," he said. In The Bourne Supremacy, which opens today, Damon reprises his anti-hero assassin role of Jason Bourne from the 2002 box office hit The Bourne Identity.

But suiting up again as Bourne meant more brutal fight scenes and another demolition derby-style car chase. Luckily, he said, the injuries were minimal.

"I threw my back out a couple of times," Damon said. "I pulled a hamstring. I realised I hadn't sprinted at all in my adulthood - there's no reason to," he said, laughing.

Damon brought his brother, girlfriend Luciana Barroso, and her mother to Australia, but they have stayed in Sydney.
A rare New Zealand mention from here.

(The same night I saw this production, I witnessed Hollywood A-list actor Matt Damon on the late news offer effusive praise for the authenticity two Kiwi actors brought to their foreign roles in The Bourne Supremacy. He then asked, in a bemused tone, "When are you guys going to be allowed to play New Zealanders?")
A Boston Globe article praises the longevity and quality of Bourne Supremacy.

And yet it is "The Bourne Supremacy" that owns the field. It flew from the gate late last month, opening its first weekend at $53 million, compared to $20 million for "Manchurian" and $24 million for "Collateral" early this month. As of this week, it has grossed more than $150 million, against $54 million and $70 million respectively. "Collateral" will do OK, "Manchurian" won't. The point is, "Supremacy" rules. What's going on here?

What's going on is some of the strongest word of mouth about a movie in ages. Yes, the reviews are fine and the ad campaign is solid, but that does not explain $150 million five weeks out. There is no merchandising strategy as with "Spider-Man 2" to sell "Bourne Supremacy" cups at the likes of McDonald's. Rather, people are simply telling other people, over and over, that the movie is wonderful entertainment.

Finally, there is Damon, a quiet revelation...

In this one, he is uncommonly still much of the time. That's why we can't take our eyes off him. He hardly talks. His face is opaque, masking emotions and, more important, live-or-die decisions forced upon him that must be made in an instant. Again and again, we see him making the right ones under duress and then executing them deftly. Like all pros, Bourne wastes no excess effort.

What happened this summer is that Greengrass beat Mann and Demme at their own game. "The Bourne Supremacy" is sleek and fast and very good. But, at the end of the day, it is Damon as Bourne who brings it home first and makes us embrace the inevitability of another installment.
From another summer movie wrap in the Boston Herald.

Brute force of the sort popularized by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger is out of fashion, and the backlash made a summer movie star out of a guy named Napoleon Dynamite.

Still, Matt Damon positioned himself as the thinking man's Schwarzenegger and as Cruise's heir apparent in the hit sequel "The Bourne Supremacy," although Cruise proved he still has the right stuff in "Collateral."
Some quotes from Matt's interview yesterday in The Herald-Sun:

Supremacy will be followed by Ocean's 12, which will be followed by The Brothers Grimm with Heath Ledger and Monica Bellucci. (Damon also worked with Bellucci's husband, French star Vincent Cassel, on Ocean's 12. They share only a second of screen time, he says, "but it's a great second!")

That in turn will be followed by another film with Clooney, Syriana, and another Soderbergh film, The Informant. Working with your mates means "you can have your cake and eat it too," Damon says.

Then comes the biggest thrill of all for this aspiring director - a Martin Scorsese movie, The Departed, a remake of the Hong Kong crime hit Infernal Affairs.

"I'm really, really excited. Really, really excited. I'll be paying very close attention to how he does it," Damon says. Damon's excitement at his manifold coming projects (he talks about each yet-to-be-filmed job, as well as those finished and awaiting release, with great zeal), means there'll be little time for lying back on a yacht in the foreseeable future.
And a quote from an interview in The Daily Telegraph.

"It's good to be doing a small part then work with Soderbergh and then Scorsese, that's a dream," Damon says.

"I mean there's only a couple of directors (left) on my list of people that I've been dying to work with. Can you call Peter Weir for me?"
And thanks to Stephanie for this story from Time magazine's fall preview about Ocean's Twelve:

Of these, Oceans, with Steven Soderbergh directing the original's all-star cast now augmented by Catherine Zeta-Jones, has the best pedigree. "We were always mindful that we had to be good. None of us just wanted to jump into a cynically made sequel," says Damon. The director never intended to reunite the cast, but while on a press tour in Italy "I could just see in his eyes that he had a great idea," adds the actor, whose own sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, was a summer hit.

The movie's retro-glamorous European locations ensured that the shoot was well documented by the paparazzi. And the parties at star George Clooney's house at Italy's Lake Como added to the Rat Pack mystique. "George raised a good point about sequels," Damon says. "He said if how much fun you had making the movie always translated into something good, Cannonball Run 2 would be the best movie ever." We know. And yet we still let Dom DeLuise burn us on that one. --By Joel Stein

8/25/2004

A photo of Matt and Lucy at the after-party for the Bourne Supremacy premiere in Sydney is below - from getty. Thanks to Jacqui for the alert.
Many thanks to Bec for this summary from a local TV show:

Matt was on Kerri-Anne this morning - an interview taped at the Sydney premiere. Matt was very relaxed and very happy to be in Australia promoting Bourne, just like he was last time. He said that there's nothing easier than coming back to Australia with another film that he really likes, said he promised only to come back with another movie he liked as much as Bourne Identity.

He said it's "Kind of like a victory lap, to come down and show people a movie that I really like, and hang out, and meet a bunch of Australians. It's not a bad life!" At the end, Kerri-Anne concluded "The more I see of Matt Damon, the more I realise that he's a really nice, down to earth, articulate, good old Hollywood bloke. Very, very nice man." Aw!
Australian radio interviews online so far are 2Day FM (very good) and Kyle and Jackie O (very poor). Interviews should be online shortly from Triple J (clips sounded great yesterday) and Nova.
There's a great interview by Clint from Moviehole just online which includes lots of information about upcoming projects, and news that Paul Greengrass is likely to be involved in Bourne 3, if and when it gets made. A few excerpts:

Damon says he looks forward to kicking and punching his way through a third round - called "The Bourne Ultimatum" - if all the elements come together. "They [the studio] definitely want one now. It's a great place to be in, because now we can kind of just stick back and listen to people's different ideas on what the third one should be. And if there is a third one... I'm going to have to do it."

Paul Greengrass is keen to helm the next chapter too, says Damon, which pleases him greatly. "He and I talked about it and he's open to the idea. The one fear with this movie [Supremacy] is that the director has such success that they get offered everything under the sun and want have time to come back and do the next sequel."

Damon's got quite a busy year or two ahead of him. His next gig is producing "Feast", a horror film conceived by the winners Damon and Ben Affleck's 'be a filmmaker' TV series "Project Greenlight". Damon laughs when asked how much decision he had in deciding which movie the winner gets to make. "You'll see on one of the first episodes of Project Greenlight me having this big argument - a total meltdown actually - with the guys from [studio] Dimension. They walked in and basically chose that movie Feast for us. It was supposed to be a community decision. I was like 'what the fuck is going on'?" he chuckles.

He's also about to start work on two films, one that will reunite him with "Oceans Eleven" co-star George Clooney called "Syriana", and another called "The Departed", a U.S remake of the Hong Kong hit "Infernal Affairs" that'll co-star Leonardo Di Caprio.

"Syriana, that's what I'm about to do now. It's not a role that keeps me up at night wondering how I'm going to pull it off, but I think it does have a chance to be a good movie. Steve Gaghan wrote it, he's the guy that directed Traffic, and he's directing this. Steve's really ready for this one. It's like Traffic but it's about oil, instead of drugs. It should be pretty cool", he says. "Clooney's in it, Amanda Peet plays my wife, Jeffrey Wright is in it, Chris Cooper's got a little part... it's like Traffic, the stories are all interwoven, and swim around one topic. I have one scene with George for instance; we have very limited interaction with one another. We're kind of in our own storylines", he explains.

"[The Departed] is one we're going to shoot in Boston next Summer, so I'm really excited about that. Scorsese hadn't even seen Infernal Affairs believe it or not, he knew what he needed from the screenplay and I don't think he wants it to affect his own thinking", says Damon, adding that the film will mark the first time he's shot something in Boston since his breakthrough hit "Good Will Hunting".
An interview from the Daily Telegraph. In the audio link yesterday Matt said the girl's name was Rachel and it was her 19th birthday.

Down-to-earth Damon

It may be Tom Cruise's signature red carpet trick but Hollywood superstar and all round nice guy Matt Damon made it his own on Monday night.

Damon, who was in Sydney for the Australian premiere of The Bourne Supremacy, granted a birthday wish to one lucky fan when he chatted to her on the phone.

"There was someone whose birthday it was so the cellphone got thrust into my hands," Damon explained.

The Oscar-winner also posed for shots, even taking a few of them himself, with admirers who waited for a glimpse of the glamour boy.

"I came halfway around the world and to have people come out, it's a great feeling," he said. The film opens nationally on August 26.

Are you the birthday girl who chatted with Matt? Or did you get a happy snap with the Hollywood star? If so, ring Confidential on 9288 3447 or email us at sydcon@dailytelegraph.com.au
And an interview originally from the Telegraph.

Bourne for 'real life' not celebrity trappings

You'd expect an actor of Matt Damon's standing to immerse himself in the celebrity lifestyle. But not only does he make a habit of taking his girlfriends and their mothers on overseas jaunts, he admits to avoiding the trappings of fame whenever possible.

"I hate that stuff," he says. "I don't want to live behind a big iron gate and not come out. When I live in New York I walk down the street and go to the grocery store like anyone else. I want to live in a city and I want to walk around and interact and learn new things."

The Hollywood A-lister, in Sydney yesterday to promote The Bourne Supremacy, brought Luciana Barroso and her mum along to Sydney. He did the same thing when in Sydney in 2002.

Damon's long been noted as a nice guy and that's something he tries to keep intact after seeing colleagues change once they attain celebrity.

"At a certain point you see people get cut off from reality," he says. "I've met a lot of people who do tend to be in some kind of suspended development... the moment they became a celebrity."

8/24/2004

The Australian media continues to be enraptured by Matt's visit, and there's significantly more press coverage of this visit than 2002's The Bourne Identity tour.
The full transcript of Matt's interview with Andrew Denton is here. It was a long, comprehensive interview that was probably comparable only to Matt's first appearance on Charlie Rose's show. Here's Denton's introduction and two Q&As.

There are Hollywood stars who catch every lens, walk every carpet and take up every path that might soak up a little more fame. They shine brightly for a while before imploding. Then there is another type of Hollywood star, the one who consciously avoids the most corrosive elements of celebrity and plays it smart. Matt Damon is one of these - a man who sees the game for what it is and understands that success is best kept in perspective.

ANDREW DENTON: How does a good movie get through this net?

MATT DAMON: Alright, well, generally... OK, with big studio movies, the bigger the budget, the simpler the characters, right? That would stand to reason - the more money... If you're Joe Studio-Executive, the more money you're going to wager on one of these movies, right, the simpler you want the characters. 'Cause you don't want anybody confused. Right? "I'm not putting 20 million dollars down on this if they don't know... They don't know even who the hero is!" You know what I mean?

So they're very, very cautious. So the bigger the budgets, the more cautious. So the stories become more cautious. The characters become simple and the whole thing becomes this predictable exercise, and you've got great special effects. So that's basically what a 200 million dollar movie looks like. So to get a movie that's daring, that's interesting, and that's got one of these huge budgets, they're few and far between. They're movies like 'Lord of the Rings', where tons of people lost their jobs over that thing. It was like 300 million dollars. They made them all three at once. People were going, "What are you, crazy? This is insanity! What if it doesn't work?"

And then, of course, it does and everyone's happy that it did and it wins all these awards and everyone makes a boatload of money and people get rehired and everyone, you know, goes on happily ever after. But by and large, studio executives do not get their jobs by taking gambles like that. It's...because it's bad business, as they see it. The bigger budgets will always be kind of safer and less kind of exciting. Kind of boring. They'll be big kind of high-concept epic disaster movies - "Ah! It's a giant tidal wave." "200 million dollars!" You know, things like that.

ANDREW DENTON: I read a great quote where you talk about this and you said that your parents impressed on you that if you wasted this money on yourself, or use it on yourself, it would not only be painful, it would be embarrassing. You said that your parents educated you to see the world. What was it that they educated you to see?

MATT DAMON: Well, that's a longer answer, but I would say in terms...insofar as that question is concerned, the massive inequality of the resources in the world. So I think, you know, to a certain extent, you kind of are obliged to kind of lead by, you know, whatever example you feel is appropriate, that you can live with yourself when you put your head on the pillow at night. And that's a different kind of level for most people.

ANDREW DENTON: What's appropriate for you?

MATT DAMON: I don't know. I'm still figuring it out. I don't think I'm going to give away all my money and wear like straw sandals and eat granola and live in a tree, but I'm also not going to get my bling-bling on, you know, what I mean? I'm not really that kind of guy, either. So somewhere in between.
An interview from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Star is Bourne again

By Gary Maddox

Last time he was in Sydney, Matt Damon was railing against Hollywood sequels.

"A lot of times you see these sequels and it just looks like they're all milking the cash cow," he said. Yesterday the clean-cut American actor and screenwriter was back for, you guessed it, the premiere of a sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, centring on spy Jason Bourne.

"I wasn't under any contract to make a sequel," he said. "I always said then I'd do it if I felt like we could make a movie as good or better than the first. And they came up with a story that I thought was really interesting."

The Oscar-winning star of Good Will Hunting, Saving Private Ryan, The Talented Mr Ripley, Ocean's 11 and The Bourne Identity has just finished shooting another second instalment in Ocean's 12. He accepts that sequels are a fact of life for Hollywood studios.

"When you see a movie like Die Hard, suddenly you see 20 rip-offs. You see Die Hard on a bus, Die Hard on a boat, Die Hard on a train. Suddenly everyone starts making their own Die Hard movie because there's money out there to be made."

Unlike Hollywood stars who baulk at commenting on religion and politics, Damon openly supports Michael Moore's aim to get rid of President George Bush and he believes Democrat John Kerry will win.

"I can't imagine that anyone who voted for Gore last time will vote for Bush. But I know personally a lot of Republicans who will, in protest, not be voting for George Bush. Unless they pull a Florida and try and screw the ballots around again, knock wood, George Bush will be out of there by November."

After that, don't rule out another sequel to The Bourne Identity. "If we can come up with something that's as good as the first two, we'll all run and do it," he said. "But if not, we're happy to let it slide."
Thanks to Sarah for this link to more photos from the Sydney premiere.
A photo gallery, interview and audio file from the premiere is available (probably for only a short time) at news.com.au. Part of the interview:

Matt (about the screaming fans): "I just appreciate it. I came halfway around the world and to have people come out, it's just a great feeling for me. I'm just a guy from Boston. It's cool."
An interview with Supremacy director Paul Greengrass is here.

8/23/2004

No photos from the Australian premiere are available yet, but pictures from the Sydney press conference are above (watermarked ones only so far). Matt also appeared on the talk show Enough Rope with Andrew Denton, and the transcript will be available shortly here. It's a very popular national show, and Denton is a highly respected interviewer.
The first interview was from AAP - excerpts below, including a mention that Matt also brought his brother to Australia.

Matt Damon down under

By Jonathon Moran

Hollywood actor Matt Damon loved Australia so much the first time around, he has brought his family this time. Damon flew into Sydney yesterday to promote his latest film - The Bourne Supremacy - which opens nationally later this week.

"To be perfectly honest, I had a really good time last time I was here and I wanted to come back," the 33-year-old Oscar-winning actor said.

"Without going too much into detail about my personal life, I brought a bunch of people with me this time cause I wanted to show them Australia, too. So I was able to combine a work trip with some extra free days and so I am going to run around with my family a bit here."

As well as his brother, Damon is travelling with his girlfriend Luciana Barroso and her mother. The actor first visited Australia exactly two years ago, taking in the sights of Sydney and including an almost compulsory celebrity hike up the Harbour Bridge.

"At the time I was 31-years-old and I had gone 31 years without ever checking this place out and I just remember thinking, I want to get my brother down here. We took a little tour of the harbour yesterday and it was great. There is a lot of enthusiasm from the Damon camp for this place."

Damon, who has worked with some of Hollywood's best directors, including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, said he would like to work with a number of Australian directors and actors.

"Peter Weir is obviously the first person to come to be mind and Baz Luhrmann," he said. "There are a bunch of your actors too ... Kate (Blanchett), Naomi Watts and Nicole (Kidman). You guys have no shortage of great actors coming out."

Damon's credits have included Saving Private Ryan, The Rainmaker, Ocean's Eleven, Good Will Hunting and The Talented Mr Ripley. He has three projects coming up, The Brothers Grimm with Heath Ledger, Syriana and The Departed.

"I am enjoying it and I don't have kids yet so I figure this is the time to run at it like this," he said of his busy schedule.

And he also wouldn't mind making a film in Australia.

"I am open to doing one anywhere," he said. "I am pretty much a material whore so if there's a good script and a good director, I will do it."
A similar interview was at the Daily Telegraph.

Damon's Australian affair

By Natacha Butler

Matt Damon may have trouble remembering who he is in The Bourne Supremacy but the Hollywood superstar has not forgotten how much he likes Sydney and is eager to show it off. Two years ago the 33-year-old was in town promoting The Bourne Identity and made the most of his stay, climbing the Harbour Bridge and jogging in the botanical gardens.

This time around the heartthrob is plugging the movie's sequel and hopes to take in the sights with his girlfriend Luciana Barroso and her mother.

"I had a really good time last time I was here," Damon says dressed in a casual navy polo shirt and jeans.

"So I'm combining a work trip with some extra days", he beams.

Damon beams a lot. A huge, flashy, grin is the 33-year-old's most noticeable accessory and teamed with his affable charm it's easy to see why he's been melting hearts since he played Will Hunting in Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting in 1997.

The Bourne series is a trilogy but Damon says he has not committed to starring in a third movie.

It may not be long, though, before the busy actor finds himself behind the camera. Damon, who says he would love to work with Australian directors Peter Weir and Baz Luhrmann, reveals he has ambitions to direct a film of his own in the future.

"Probably something very small at first", he says wistfully.

Despite having won a Best Screenwriting Oscar for Good Will Hunting and proving himself to be that rare combination of box office drawcard and highly respected actor, self-effacing Damon is the last to suggest he could become a dab hand at directing.

"I may not have any talent for it whatsoever", he laughs, flashing those trademark, pearly white teeth.

There goes Damon beaming again.
Matt will be on the cover of the new magazine Vitals, which will be on stands 30 August. Details here.
The Brothers Grimm has been further delayed until November 2005. It finished filming in November 2003 after an arduous shoot, and there are continuing problems ('creative differences') between director Terry Gilliam and Bob and Harvey Weinstein of Miramax. Source: Dark Horizons.
The Bourne Supremacy passed $150 million at the US box office over the weekend, and it is also performing well internationally - details from Variety:

"The Bourne Supremacy" invaded Asia, capturing an estimated $1.2 million on 140 screens in South Korea (50% bigger than the bow of "Bourne Identity"), $800,000 on 60 in Taiwan (10% below the predecessor) and a fair $300,000 on 27 in Hong Kong, where it was surprisingly beaten by "Garfield." Matt Damon starrer fell by a moderate 35% in the U.K., pocketing a projected $1.5 million, bringing the 10-day market tally to a hearty $11.2 million, just a few days away from surpassing "Identity's" final gross of $12.4 million. Early in its foreign adventures, "Supremacy" has garnered $13.6 million in five territories.

8/22/2004

Here's the first report of Matt in Australia from Monday's Daily Telegraph - no photos yet. The picture below is of Matt and Lucy in Rome a few weeks ago.

Damon's visit a family affair

Hollywood star Matt Damon confirmed his nice guy reputation yesterday, touching down in Sydney with not only his girlfriend Luciana Barroso in tow but also her mother.

It seems the popular Damon makes a habit of making sure his international trips are family affairs. On his last visit here two years ago Damon brought along the mother of then-girlfriend Odessa Whitmire. The heart-throb has also taken his own mother to the Oscars.

Arriving for the premiere of his latest movie The Bourne Supremacy, a chatty Damon was happy to make time for fans at the airport before heading out on Sydney Harbour for an afternoon cruise and a stroll through the Botanic Gardens.

A spokeswoman for the actor said he was a "very respectful young man. It's very important to him that he have her family with him," she said. "That's just who he is."

It has been a long wait for Damon, who won fans and the hearts of female admirers with his easy charm, to return to Australia.

The Bourne Supremacy - the sequel to his 2002 smash hit The Bourne Identity - is doing great at the box office in America, raking in more than $142 million in a few weeks.

Damon will be on the red carpet at 6pm today to launch the movie. Organisers expect hundreds of fans will turn out to catch a glimpse of Damon at Sydney's Bondi Junction.
Some quotes from an interview with Matt in Sunday's Courier-Mail (not available online):

The first thing much-travelled actor Matt Damon does when he wakes up most mornings is check the phone beside his hotel-room bed but not for calls he might have slept through.

"Somebody asked me the other day, 'When you travel around from city to city do you ever forget what city you're in?',"' the affable Damon said recently.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, it's worse than that. I forget what country.' So when I wake up I have to look at the country code on the phone to see -- 'Oh, 39, OK, I'm in Italy'.'

"It's always a kind of bizarre way to start your day, but you have to get your bearings. But, you know, once you get through breakfast it's pretty clear where you are.'"

Movies such as The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), The Bourne Identity (2002), its sequel The Bourne Supremacy, the still-to-be-released The Brothers Grimm and Ocean's Twelve and even a turn in the theatre during a career lull have kept him flying in and out of so many countries that he had to apply for an expanded passport.

To top it off, his girlfriend, interior designer Luciana Barroso, is Argentinian. Damon is still trying to fit in a visit there.

The Bourne Supremacy alone took Damon from Moscow's Red Square to some of the most sophisticated areas of Berlin to the crowded marketplaces of Goa, on the southwestern coast of India.

"It's been amazing and this is the time of my life to do it," Damon said. "Just in the past year I've lived in Prague, Berlin, India, Amsterdam and Rome, so it's been incredible. But I think maybe when I have kids some day I'll slow down.''

Damon, in fact, does have a child in his life -- the exotic-looking Barroso's five-year-old daughter from a previous relationship -- but baulked at being regarded as a stepfather.

"Without talking too much about her because she's five and she didn't sign up for this, what I would say is that I am definitely not playing daddy,'' he said.

"She's got a great father, you know? The two of them split, but they're great parents in their own right. When my parents split, and they are both great parents, my mother had a man in her life for 16 years and that guy was a very positive influence in my life without ever trying to be my father, so I have some experience of that kind of dynamic and so far it seems to be going well."

He politely but neatly sidestepped commenting specifically on his relationship with Barroso.

"Whenever I've been in a relationship, whether it's with a friend or a girlfriend, generally they're going to have qualities that, you know, make life more fun, happier, easier. At the end of the day it's like a choice you are making every day to be with somebody and there's no reason to do it unless they're bringing that light into your life.'

8/21/2004

The Sydney premiere of The Bourne Supremacy will be held at Greater Union Cinemas, Bondi Junction, from 6.00pm Monday.

Matt will be appearing on Enough Rope with Andrew Denton on Monday, Rove on Tuesday and probably The Panel on Wednesday. Here's the Rove summary, and the Enough Rope transcript will be online by Tuesday.

Now he's established his Bourne Identity, Hollywood superstar Matt Damon is working on pushing The Bourne Supremacy. And with talent, looks and charisma like this guy has, he's not gonna have any trouble with that. Matt returns to the ROVELIVE studio to chat with Rove about his new Bourne film and whatever else comes up.
A sighting from Saturday's NY Post:

A tired-looking Matt Damon, sporting a baseball cap and jeans, gulping down a Sea Monster fruit shake while waiting for his large coffee with skim milk at Starbucks at Lafayette Street and Astor Place...
A small item in this week's Us magazine, which went something like:

Matt Damon's Daddy Practice

Sure Brad Pitt's wife visited him on the set of Ocean's Twelve, but it was Matt Damon who was the envy of the cast of crew. He had girlfriend Luciana Barroso with him all the time. A friend said he wants her with him all the time and she is. She even broght her daughter along. When they were in Italy they took her out for spaghetti and Matt taught her how to twirl it on her fork. She thought Matt was really funny.
And an item from In Touch magazine, thanks to a reader:

Can Matt tame his new wild woman?

Matt Damon's new girlfriend, Luciana Barroso, is a party girl with a wild past, say her friends from the Miami nightclub where she works. "If he can't control her, no one can," says a pal who worked with her at the hot nightspot Crobar. "He needs to keep a tight rein on her or she will be out every night." The friend adds that Luciana likes the party and nightclub scene in Miami and "always has a lot going on in her personal life, but she hasn't got a mean bone in her body."

Matt has dated Hollywood starlets with partying ways before - remember when he was with Winona Ryder? - and pals say he's enamored wtih lovely Luciana, who has a daughter from a previous marriage.
Matt will be doing a voice-over for a commercial directed by Doug Liman and written by Darren Aronofsky for MoveOn PAC - details here.
Matt's in the first still released for Ocean's Twelve as part of Premiere magazine's fall issue - pictured here.
Bourne Supremacy came top of the British box office in its first week, although the initial estimates had it second to I, Robot. Confirmation here.

8/17/2004

Another actor in Syriana is Tim Blake Nelson, who was filming in the Austin area a few weeks ago.
An interview with Matt from the Sun-Herald in Australia.
A quote from Matt's interview in the Australian TV Week magazine:

You shot this movie in Russia, Germany, India, Italy and London. Did you ever imagine having such a jetsetting life when you were growing up in Boston?

I was flying back from Italy recently, after shooting Ocean's Twelve with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and I was leafing through my passport on the plane and saw over 50 stamps in it, and I realised how many chances I've had to see the world. When we shot in Russia, I called my dad from Red Square (in Moscow) and said, "Can you believe it?"
From the credits section of the September issue of Arena magazine, where photographer David Slijper talks about photographing Matt in Rome for the accompanying article:

"Matt turned up on his own; no entourage, not even a personal assistant in tow," says Slijper. "He was about 100 times less uptight than your average celebrity; a really charming and relaxed guy."
Another good interview (with great photos) was in The Mail On Sunday (a UK newspaper), dated 25 July, by David Eimer. A number of unsourced quotes from recent publications can be sourced back to this article, including the "Child killed by idiots" paparazzi story, quotes about Lucy picking up on the 'weirdness' in his life, the 'I am a little broody' story. And a few new quotes are below - the first on how much things have changed since winning the Oscar:

'I feel wiser because I've been traveling a lot, and my primary relationships are in a good place.'

Damon will also star alongside Clooney in his next film, the political thriller Syriana. 'We do actively look for things to all work on together,' he admits. 'If you're going to make a movie, it's fun to make it with friends.' But unlike Clooney, who has a house in Italy, he isn't planning on buying a home in Europe.

'There's no need when I can freeload off George. He's pretty good about letting me stay. Sometimes I just show up without telling him. He loves it out there and with good reason. It's a beautiful, relaxing place.'

He's excited about following Syriana with The Informant, which will be the third time he's been directed by Steven Soderbergh. 'I think it's the best role I've had a chance to play since Ripley. I play a corporate whistleblower who turns out to have his own agenda.'

8/15/2004

Not much news around at the moment. Ocean's Twelve has finished filming in LA and Matt has returned to NY. The Bourne Supremacy has become the fifth highest grossing film of summer and opened to strong reviews in the UK. Syriana continues to film in Washington before moving to Baltimore but Matt is unlikely to film at either location, and must be primarily filming in either Geneva or Morocco.
A sighting from Sunday's NY Post.

Matt Damon talking politics at the bar of Joe's Pub during a performance by trip-hop band Astaire.
A Bourne Ultimatum update from Frank Marshall when talking to Army Archerd of Variety:

While watching the Games on TV, he'll also be enjoying the box office of "The Bourne Supremacy," which was rushed to screen and "completed with day and night work by a terrific team and brought in at $80 million -- lean and mean." Meetings with a happy Universal will start soon on "The Bourne Ultimatum," but there is no story or script as yet. The book's yarn is outdated, he reminds.
Paul Greengrass has done the bulk of the publicity in the UK, where Matt has done no original interviews. Some quotes from Paul's interviews with cineworld and Sunday Herald.

How was working with Matt Damon?
Matt's a great guy. I had dinner with him in Prague a year ago, while he was making "Brothers Grimm" for Terry Gilliam, and I knew after that I wanted to work with him. He's got plenty of opinions and we come from the same place politically.

Now that "The Bourne Supremacy" is a big hit, will you stay in Hollywood?
To be honest, I don't know what I want to do and I don't want to decide just now because this has been such a gruelling process, just on the level of travel and the speed at which it's been done. So I'm off on holiday to Suffolk.

"I didn't think anyone would try to f*** me up," says Greengrass, "but you fear you might lose your way and adopt the foliage of the environment you're in. That was a bit of an obsession for me, and the first time I saw the finished print I was so f***ing stressed. But as I watched the film I thought yeah, it looks like mine. It looks like the sort of film that the bloke who made Bloody Sunday would make if he went to Hollywood and did a thriller."
An article about the two Kiwi actors in Bourne is here, including:

The fight scene in Germany between Csokas and Damon resembled a pub fight, not the typical choreographed Hollywood joust. Greengrass did not want stuntmen involved, so it was down to just Damon and Marton Csokas, with the scene taking two weeks to prepare and five days to shoot.

"It was exciting at the beginning and exhausting at the end," Csokas says.

At a recent press conference in the US, Damon told journalists how he ended up with a fat lip and an injured back during the tussle with the much taller Csokas, who at 1.91m wouldn't look out of place at the back of an All Black lineout.

"He got the best of me," the rather stout Damon, just 1.77m, conceded. "I got whacked in the face once."

Csokas chuckles about this as well. Damon, apparently, dished out plenty of bruises and cuts.

"He hit me plenty of times, by the way," Csokas laughs. "But Matt's a warrior. He did put his back out, went away, got an injection and then came back that afternoon and got straight back into it. It was a tough scene to shoot, but we had a lot of fun. We fooled around, which created a relaxed environment."
Sarah wrote to say that Matt's also interviewed in the UK's Total Film and Film Review magazines.

8/11/2004

Photos of Matt leaving The Ivy restaurant in LA with Doug Liman on 9 August are below. A simple meal or planning for The Bourne Ultimatum?
Details of Syriana filming are at the Washington Times and the Washington Post - some excerpts from the latter:

Shooting began yesterday on "Syriana," a geopolitical thriller, starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, in front of Cardozo Senior High School, with co-star Jeffrey Wright, a Southeast Washington native, jogging on a sidewalk.

"Syriana" publicist Rob Harris declined to say whether Clooney or Damon will be in the city or whether parts of the movie will be shot in any areas of heightened security downtown. He hinted that shots of the Capitol dome or the White House might make the final cut.

Harris said the crew has filmed north of Austin and will make stops in Baltimore, Europe and Morocco. He declined to discuss specifics, except to say the film is scheduled to be released next year.
Some quotes from an AP story on potential actors for the next Superman movie - here.

Matt Damon was mentioned as a potential Man of Steel when Peterson was developing "Superman Vs. Batman," but "The Bourne Supremacy" star was as surprised as anyone to hear that news. "That shocked me completely. I always thought of Superman looking like Christopher Reeve ... That's not me at all," Damon told The AP recently.

A "Superman" movie could be a surefire smash - akin to "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2" - but Damon said that alone would not be enough to persuade him.

"I would not be interested just because it was a comic book or because I thought it would be a big hit. I would do it - I would do anything - if you told me there was a great director and a great script attached. If Kenny Lonergan (screenwriter of 2000's intimate sibling drama "You Can Count On Me") wrote the script and ("Traffic" Oscar-winner Steven) Soderbergh were directing, and it was 'Superman,' yeah I'd do it.'"

8/10/2004

Some quotes from a recent article, focusing on Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass, in the LA Times:

Damon joked that outside of "holding his hand" he did nothing to facilitate Greengrass' Hollywood debut. He knew the first day of their five-month shoot that he was going to enjoy working with the director. Shooting took place in a crowded tunnel in Moscow and Damon's character had been hurt. The script called for Bourne to walk through oodles of extras, touch where he had been hurt and check his hand for blood. Before shooting the scene Damon asked Steadicam operator Klemens Becker about the frame line because he wanted to make sure the audience would notice when he pulled his hand back to check for blood.

"'No, just do it naturally,' " Damon says Greengrass told him. " 'We'll go down. Klemens, move down for that shot. Go down and catch it.' It was huge to have a director who was putting you first and saying, 'Be as natural and real and honest as you can and it's our job to capture it rather than yours to adjust for the sake of my shot.' That's the thing an actor wants to hear."

That's high praise from Damon. The list of directors he has worked with reads like a Who's Who: Anthony Minghella ("The Talented Mr. Ripley"), Gus Van Sant ("Good Will Hunting," "Gerry" and "Finding Forrester"), Steven Soderbergh ("Ocean's Eleven"), Robert Redford ("The Legend of Bagger Vance"), Steven Spielberg ("Saving Private Ryan"), Francis Ford Coppola ("The Rainmaker") and Ed Zwick ("Courage Under Fire").

Comparisons to Van Sant

Damon says Greengrass is most like Van Sant. Greengrass is much more communicative (he and Damon talked for hours on and off the set about what the director was trying to accomplish) than Van Sant but the two are similar in that they both prefer to watch what their actors are doing and figure out how to encapsulate it rather than come in with a specific idea and not stray.

The actor wasn't contractually obligated to make this second film nor is he should there be a third installment. Damon chose to participate based on his satisfaction with the script and everything else. For the first go-round he trained feverishly and ended up in the best shape he's ever been in during his 33 years. For "Supremacy," there was little time to prepare. He'd been working in Europe since January 2003 and now, more than a year later, he'd not returned to the United States for more than a week at a time.

"I really miss my home and New York," said Damon, who is shooting Soderbergh's "Ocean's Twelve" and will next team with the same director on "The Informant." Last year while filming "The Brothers Grimm" with Heath Ledger in Prague, Damon turned a basement room in the Barrandov Studios into a gym and boxed every day to regain his fighting shape for "Bourne." Here in Berlin, he was seen jogging through the park during production. He's done most of his own stunts and fighting in the sequel, managing to avoid injuries except for pulling a muscle during a foot chase up the stairs at a train station.

He's 70% of the movie but wasn't on a star trip. Damon invited the cast and crew to his rented penthouse apartment in Berlin's sophisticated Mitte district to watch his New England Patriots win the Super Bowl, which began here at midnight.
Matt may appear on Jane Pauley's new talk show - details here.
Another familiar interview at icnewcastle.co.uk.
From a MSNBC article on good guy actors playing villain roles - thanks to Laura.

Matt Damon in "The Talented Mr. Ripley"

This example might be considered somewhat problematic because Damon's career doesn't have a ton of credits, like the others, so it's hard to pigeonhole him as a lifelong good guy. And he is the protagonist of the film, despite his homicidal ways. Still, it's tough not to call the well-scrubbed, baby-faced Damon a bad guy after what he does to the characters played by Jude Law and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, "The Talented Mr. Ripley" portrays Damon's Tom as a sympathetic sociopath, not an easy task. But when compared against many of Damon's other noteworthy roles in movies like "Good Will Hunting," "The Legend of Bagger Vance" and the two "Bourne" releases, his Tom Ripley looks every bit as "bad" on his resume' as Frank does on Henry Fonda's.
Quotes from an Australian TV Guide interview with Kristin Kreuk about Eurotrip:

Why did you take on the role in Eurotrip?
It was a small role, so I had no responsibility. It was a comedy, it was shooting in Prague and I had a scene with Matt Damon!

What was that like?
Fun! We lip-synched, and I danced, and we made out, and that was it.

Did you do many retakes of the make-out scene?
A fair amount of takes, but it was... Yes, Prague was wonderful!

Were you nervous about the scenes with Matt?
Luckily, I wasn't. He was really sweet. He's a smart guy - really, really smart and funny.
Another no doubt false story from the National Enquirer:

Damon to the Rescue!

In LA wrapping scenes for "Ocean's Twelve," Matt Damon jogged through a park and found a young woman passed out cold on a secluded path! Matt quickly checked her pulse, then revived her by sprinkling water from his sports jug on her face and hands. Turned out she'd become dehydrated and fainted in the searing heat. Matt gave her sips of water and suggested she phone someone to help her home. Her eyes suddenly focusing on "The Bourne Supremacy" star, she said incredulously: "Are you Matt Damon?... Now I know I'm in a dream!" She phoned a galpal on her cell phone and put Matt on "so she wouldn't think I made the whole thing up." Matt waited until the pal showed up 15 minutes later -- with several girlfriends in tow -- and good-naturedly posed for pics and signed autographs.

8/07/2004

Matt is interviewed by director/friend Kevin Smith in the September isse of UK magazine Arena. The cover is at right, and all scans are already available at the newsaskew.com site. An interview with Matt (LA press junket only) is also in the UK and Australian issues of Empire magazine. Many thanks to Sarah for the alert.
Hahna at the HeathBaby forum has partly translated a Czech article about problems with The Brothers Grimm.

The article stated that Terry Gilliam has provided Dimension with his final cut for the film, with completed CGI, but that the studio has not given their approval, and are making their own version, in the words of Gilliam, so 'they can try and make it a better film themselves.' Gilliam also says he did not speak to either Harvey or Bob Weinstein for nine months after they fired his original cinematographer Nicola Pecorini early in the shoot.
Entertainment Weekly's latest issue suggests a few current actors who can replace the future stars in coming years. Matt's compared to Denzel Washington(!), along with Jamie Foxx and Mekhi Phifer. Their strange reasoning:

Matt Damon

WHY He's one serious dude, and now he's got a bona fide action franchise.
WHY NOT But do audiences pay to see Damon or Bourne? Avoiding overexposure is one thing; he remains a Ripleyesque enigma.
A photo of Matt leaving the Whiskey Bar in LA on Thursday is at right - from isifa.

8/06/2004

The full text of the Boston Magazine interview is now online at their site, including:

What also helps Damon fade out of things is that he doesn't really look the part of a movie star. He's attractive in a wholesome, fresh-faced New England kind of way. His 5-foot-11 frame is compact and muscular after months of playing action-figure superspy Jason Bourne. A day or so's worth of scruff hardens his otherwise boyish face. But when he smiles that famous smile, with those almost perfectly straight teeth (up close, one bottom tooth is thankfully just out of alignment), his look transforms altogether, from serious and standoffish to carefree and engaged. When we sit down, he's wearing a navy polo shirt, jeans, and a commemorative Fenway baseball cap. He's exceedingly polite and unassuming, even a little reserved. He doesn't mean to be aloof; he's just too smart to open up. He's done this before, many times, and he knows how to protect himself. There are no assistants, no bodyguards. Damon is the kind of guy you might see sipping a beer on his front porch. And that's how he hopes you'll think of him, too.

But I expected to see the funny side of Matt Damon. The goofy, all-around good guy. The boyish Matt who giggled with real amazement through an Oscar acceptance speech. The mischievous Matt who torments Harvard Square smart-asses in Good Will Hunting. The wry Matt who turned in a hilarious performance as a straight man pretending to be a gay man trying to win a spot on a choir trip to Europe on the television show Will & Grace. The cheesy Matt who likes the Starland Vocal Band's 1970s hit "Afternoon Delight" enough to weave mentions of it into interviews and onto movie soundtracks. The Matt who did an unbilled cameo as a lead singer of a garage rock band in the teen throwaway Eurotrip. It's a side of Damon's personality that makes you want to be in on the joke.

This morning in Rome, behind the sunglasses (which he wears because it's sunny, not because he's a star hiding behind shades and a pulled-down-way-too-low hat), there is the first, slightest hint of laugh lines around his blue eyes. Matt Damon is serious, mellow, relaxed. Grown up.
A typically negative British interview with Matt is at The Independent, including:

The likeable and thoughtful Greengrass, incidentally, tells me the following day that he is mightily impressed with Damon, both for his acting and his integrity. "He did [the film] for the same reason that I did - doing something in the mainstream that is intelligent," says Greengrass. "He is a very interesting man. He thinks a lot about what he is doing."
From a Heath Ledger interview at filmstew:

For The Brothers Grimm, Ledger tried to apply a different approach to developing the character he plays in director Terry Gilliam's blend of fantasy and reality between the real world and that of the Grimm's fairy tales. "Terry just unlocks this thing inside of you," Ledger says. "He gives you the license to be eccentric and he's a mad genius and we'd all follow him anywhere, and we did, certainly, on this."

"Originally, I think the studios were expecting The Brothers Grimm with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger to be a very serious movie about two heroes," the actor continues. "And instead of playing it like two heroes, we played it like two scared girls."

The actor relished the fact that the film's $80 million budget did not get in the way of many opportunities to indulge in ridiculous slapstick humor. "No one else would let you do that but Terry. Terry just lets you run wild. So, I was super lucky and super grateful to work with him on that."
Thanks to Jeff for another article about Matt in Boise - here.
More details of Matt's visit to Australia: he'll travel to Melbourne on 24 August (probably to appear on Rove, The Panel and Bert), and stay for three days.

8/05/2004

Matt's coming back to Australia! As part of the international promotion for The Bourne Supremacy Matt will attend a premiere at the new Greater Union cinemas in Bondi Junction (Sydney) on 23 August. He is also likely to attend a screening at the Deauville Film Festival in France, held from 3 to 12 September this year.

8/04/2004

The Bourne Supremacy passed $100 million on Monday, and its total is now $101,976,990.
For everyone complaining about the shaky camerawork in Bourne, here's the justification from the film's editors.
The Lance Armstrong biopic rumors probably started with the quote in this interview from a few weeks back at the Star Tribune.

"Bourne" wasn't the only thing that had the actor excited during an interview Wednesday. Damon had been exhilarated watching Lance Armstrong's push up the Tour de France's mountainous l'Alpe d'Huez. "It's a time trial, and they released them in descending order. Lance went last because he's in first place. Ivan Basso, who was in second place, went right before him, two minutes ahead of him. And he caught Basso, passed him, just blew by him up the mountain! Unbelievable, the guy." Damon was especially stoked because he's slated to play Armstrong in a film based on Armstrong's battle with cancer. "I'm going to have to get on a bike and lose 25 pounds," he chuckled.

But it was the film's moral as much as its derring-do that appealed to him. "Generally, once the budget goes north of a certain number, they simplify the characters. The good guy's got to wear a white hat, and the bad guy's got to twist his mustache." But Damon said he and the filmmakers didn't want to make a sequel "unless the story was bolder than a rehashing of the first one. We said, 'Here's the story we're thinking of. I'm going to shoot a woman in the face who's completely innocent, and in Act 3 I'm going to go apologize to her daughter.' And they [the studio] went, OK."

Damon, who briefly considered a return to screenwriting after the one-two flops "The Legend of Bagger Vance" and "All the Pretty Horses," has several films in the release pipeline. "Ocean's Twelve," due out this fall, takes the casino thieves to Europe for a contest with a snooty master thief to determine the world's greatest high-tech burglar. It was a complete change of pace and tone from "Bourne," he said. "It really takes the pressure off. In this case it's really nice to sit on the set and see Brad Pitt and George Clooney and Julia Roberts. The bull's-eye is not on my forehead."

8/02/2004

A new description of Syriana from Variety:

Dagmara Dominczyk ("The Count of Monte Cristo") has been cast in Stephen Gaghan's "Syriana" for Warner Bros.

Thesp joins George Clooney, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet and Chris Cooper in the Section Eight political thriller about a privatized security force sent to a Middle Eastern country to orchestrate a coup.

Pic, based on former CIA operative Robert Baer's memoir "See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism," begins filming today in Texas. Upcoming locations include Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; Morocco; and Geneva.
Another mention in the Boston Globe:

Oscar winner Chris Cooper and his wife, Marianne Leone Cooper, are always off someplace. Chris Cooper, who turned up at various DNC events, is headed to Texas to film "Syriana" with George Clooney and Matt Damon. Mostly on hiatus since "Seabiscuit," Cooper said there are few quality scripts out there. "Everybody's writing in a state of fear," he said.
Here's the story of one fan's interest in Matt from the San Francisco Chronicle by Eileen Bordy. Thanks for the site mention Eileen. And thanks to Patty for a link.
Bourne Supremacy made an estimated $23.4 million over the weekend for a total of $98.1 million in ten days.
The first part of the Boston Magazine interview with Matt is now online.

Matt Damon Grows Up
By Kim Atkinson

Before Matt Damon shows up on a rooftop balcony at Rome's Hotel de Russie, before he sits down and tells me about growing up in Cambridge, his as-yet-unborn kids, and what he thinks about the whole Bennifer thing, before all of that, there are the paparazzi. They're everywhere. They're camped out in front of the Pantheon where a crew is shooting scenes for Ocean's Twelve. They're casing the Colosseum, where some of the stars have dropped by to sightsee on their days off. This age-old city is in an uncharacteristically starstruck frenzy over the movie. The Romans can't get enough. The photographers have moved to the roped-off square in front of the Pantheon (it's a truly strange and modern thing, to see paparazzi in front of the ancient Roman temple) after waiting all night outside the hotel near the Piazza del Popolo where George, Brad, Julia, Matt, and the rest of the Ocean's Twelve gang are staying. (Yesterday, the stars foiled any chance for a picture by staying in and partying on the hotel's private balcony.)

For a regular guy from Cambridge who became an international movie star and now works hard to maintain the image of a regular guy from Cambridge, the attention must be nerve-racking. Damon takes advantage of every minute away from the media hordes in an attempt to hang on to what passes for regular: Just before our interview, he sits in the Hotel de Russie's courtyard, relaxing around an umbrella-shaded table with a dozen or so very American-looking pals and the very exotic-looking Luciana Barroso, a 28-year-old former bartender Damon met in Miami last year, who has been seen by his side ever since. Her five-year-old daughter from a previous marriage is perched on Damon's lap, arms around his neck. The girl has his undivided attention. Together, they look very much like a family, and Damon looks perfectly comfortable in the role of a dad.

"Normally, I don't get that much attention," Damon says of the paparazzi when we finally meet. "I think it's because of the nature of the Ocean's movies and the sight of all of us together in all these different places. They think that sells their magazine, so that's why I'll be in them for these couple of months. But normally, I'm not. Normally, I kind of fade out of that."

This is especially true lately. Damon has spent the better part of the past year staying off the celebrity-machine's radar screen, wrapped up in the back-to-back filming of The Bourne Supremacy and next spring's Terry Gilliam�helmed fantasy, The Brothers Grimm. He's kept himself out of the gossip columns, dodging the spotlight in favor of less flashy pursuits, even forming a bowling league in Berlin with the Bourne film crew -- in sharp contrast to that other famous actor from Cambridge.

8/01/2004

More comments from the OC Register interview in a subsequent column by Barry Koltnow:

Question: How does a big movie star like Matt Damon end up doing a sitcom ("Will & Grace"), a voice-over at the end of a movie he's not in ("The Majestic") and a tiny cameo as a punk rocker with a shaved head and multiple tattoos in a low-budget comedy ("Eurotrip")?

Professor Barrywood: That is exactly the question the professor asked Damon when the actor visited town a few weeks ago. It just doesn't make sense why he would waste his time on projects like this.

Well, it does make sense when one realizes how loyal Damon is to his friends.

He said he did the episode of "Will & Grace," in which he played a straight man pretending to be a gay man so he can get into the Gay Men's Chorus and win a free trip to Europe, because one of the show's stars - Sean Hayes - is a friend.

"Sean called me up one day and asked me if I wanted to do it, and it sounded like fun," Damon said. As for "The Majestic," Damon said he turned down the role that Jim Carrey eventually played, and then felt bad about the decision because the director, Frank Darabont, is a friend. So, when the director asked him if he would mind volunteering his voice (when Carrey is reading the letter on the train from the war hero), Damon didn't hesitate.

And then there's "Eurotrip," which wasn't a very good movie. Damon shocked the dozen or so people who actually paid money to see this movie when he appeared in the last scene singing "Scotty Doesn't Know." The professor did a double take because he couldn't believe his eyes.

"I went to college with the three directors," Damon explained with a laugh. "They asked me to do it, and I did it. They're my friends from college; what else could I do?"

With friends like Matt Damon, who needs Ben Affleck?
Don Cheadle's official site includes some comments about the making of Ocean's Twelve. Meanwhile, actor Robbie Coltrane mentions his part in the film (which involves Matt) here.
An uncle of Matt's is attempting to become the oldest person to swim the English channel - here.
A quote from a recent interview with Matt in Teen People.

You never took a second language in school?

I took Spanish and got pretty good at it, but I haven't spoken it since I was 17. So in the next couple of years I'd like to go to school in Mexico, Costa Rica or Spain and learn it completely.
Here's the beginning of the recent Entertainment Weekly interview/cover story:

It's a doomsday-gray January morning in Berlin, where the sidewalks are covered in ice and the temperature is hovering at 1 degree Celsius. But the streets feel positively balmy compared with the Alexanderplatz subway station, where shivering rush-hour workers are racing for their trains. Lost in their own thoughts--of a beach in Tahiti, if they're lucky--they miss the occasional posted signs that say "Bourne Supremacy," meant to direct the film crew to the correct platform. They ignore the dozens of men, dressed in Aspen-ready ski bibs, posed behind cameras. And if they occasionally glance up at the person the cameras are aimed at, it's only because he's wearing fuzzy earmuffs so dorky it looks like his mama's still dressing him for the playground.

The cameras begin to roll, the earmuffs come off, and a teeth-chattering Matt Damon rearranges his open features into the gaunt glare of Jason Bourne, the title character of 2002's The Bourne Identity, and now, its sequel. For five hours, no one stops to stare. Then three teenage girls, adrenally primed for excitement, finally catch the scent. At last, the shriek.

We know that Matt Damon is a movie star. We know this because if it gets $15 million paychecks like a star, and carries a franchise like a star, it must be a star. Now, if only someone would tell him that, maybe he'd learn to send out a frequency audible to pedestrians. He might even go back to his trailer and defrost, instead of stuffing heat packs in his gloves and stubbornly remaining on the platform, fraternizing with the crew and going over script notes with producer Frank Marshall and director Paul Greengrass. But that's not how Damon wants it. What Damon wants is to be seen as a beer-drinking, baseball-watching guy from Boston who just happens to be making interesting choices, even if they don't always work. And at least none of them, unlike those of his famous best friend, involve a trayful of Harry Winston diamonds.

And the final section of the interview:

Four days later, Damon is back in New York for another 24 hours. He's finished filming Ocean's Twelve in Rome, and he's pausing here to loop dialogue for Supremacy before heading up to Boston to spend the July 4 weekend with his family. Wearing the same orange T-shirt and jeans as days earlier, Damon collapses at an outdoor table of a downtown restaurant and launches into an apologetic explanation of why he's an hour late (which has already been prefaced by two phone calls of apologies and explanation). He was due at the dubbing stage in midtown, but the car that was supposed to take him never came. So he hailed a cab and went to the address he'd been given, only to find there was no one there. Because he's never gotten around to owning a cell phone, he went next door to Kinko's and asked to borrow their phone to find out where he was supposed to be, and then, because they were nice enough to let them use their phone, he ran and bought them all coffee before going to the proper address, which made him even later to the dubbing, which made him even later for this date. Might he have skipped the coffee? "Nah," he says. "But I am rethinking the cell phone."

Two glasses of red wine, three courses, and several cigarettes later, Damon seems sated, and at home. He even removes his sunglasses, allowing passersby to gaze openly at him. For a beat, absolutely nothing. And then, as if on cue, a car with out-of-state plates screeches to a halt, and the driver begins gesturing wildly. Damon takes a deep breath and approaches. After several moments of what looks like a passionate interchange, Damon steps back to the curb and announces with an impish grin, "They wanted to know how to get to the theater." The driver rolls down his window, again calling out thanks. Damon waves back and begins to head for home, but now there's a saunter to his step. It's a beautiful summer day, and there's not a dark cloud in the sky.
A summary of Friday's Regis and Kelly show by a reader:

It was a good appearance. Matt looked good and was very relaxed and laughing. (He always seems to be comfortable on this particular show. He even said during the interview that he loves "coming here.") Of course, they started with baseball. Regis asked Matt what's going on with Red Sox and if they are still in the league. The Red Sox are about eight games out of first place. Matt jokingly teased Regis about how it always turns ugly when they talk baseball. Kelly asked Matt if living in NYC has had any effect on his loyalty. Does he root for the Yankees or Mets even a little? Matt said, "Hell No." NYC is home now, and he loves the city, but he is loyal to the Boston teams.

Then Regis asked about Ben. Matt said Ben was doing well and is now the California state poker champ. Matt said he was proud of Ben and that Ben had beat some serious players in the tournament. Matt says he plays poker, but not that well.

They talked about how Matt is Mr. Location and has been traveling around the globe for months. They asked him when he was going to give up that lifestyle and settle down. Matt said one day he'd go for the house in the suburbs and the family, but not now. Then Regis asked if he was dating anyone. Matt said yes. Regis asked if it was anyone we would know. Matt said, "I'll tell you later." Then Matt said she's not in the business, so Regis wouldn't know her. And Matt said she's a civilian. Regis asked if it was easier dating civilians than celebs and Matt said it was easier because you get less press attention.

Then they came back and talked about the movie. Matt talked about the locations. India in the summer and Moscow in the winter. He said the weather was always extreme. Then they showed a clip of the movie. Then Regis started talking about the editing and camera work and how it was so great and deserved an Academy Award. Then they showed a clip of the car chase to illustrate the fine camera work and Matt talked about doing the scene.

At the time the interview was taped, Matt was going to finish off his part in Oceans. He says the whole film should wrap August 15 and be out in December.