Everyone knows the story. Matt Damon and his longtime best friend Ben Affleck, two struggling young Hollywood hopefuls, were propelled onto the A-list when their endearing Good Will Hunting the Best Screenplay Academy Award in 1997. In an effort to give other artists a shot at fame, the two friends started Project Greenlight, a screenwriting/directing contest with an attached TV series on HBO that followed the winning contestant as he turned his dream into reality.
Knowing that much about Damon made us want to get to know him better, so when Hollywood.com recently got the chance to shoot the breeze with him at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, we just had to know more about the choices he’s made in his career and his long-standing friendship and partnership with Affleck.
When did you decide you could do this acting thing and make a living at it?
Damon: Being in L.A. or New York with Ben and going out on auditions. Maybe we didn’t get the part, but we would get close. The main thing is I would get good feedback. It took baby steps for me to slowly convince myself I was in the right line of work, even if I couldn’t pay the bills.
You were in college and then you dropped out senior year, right?
Damon: Actually, I dropped out a couple of times. Whenever I got a job, I’d basically leave school but then would come back. I think I’m on an extended leave now. I haven’t officially dropped-out–it’s my back-up plan. At least that’s what my mother thinks.
You’ve been friends with actor Ben Affleck for how long?
Damon: We met when I was 10 and he was 8. I’m 32 now, so we’ve known each other 22 years.
When you guys were in high school, were girls all over you like they are now?
Damon: I wish I could say yes. But Ben and I were two of the geekier kids you’ve ever seen. I mean we were into drama. Go look at the kids in school who are into drama. Would you give them the time of day?
The two of you have worked together many times, but your first film together, School Ties, turned out to be your breakthrough film.
Damon: For both of us actually. We got enough money to move to L.A. and started to go on a lot of auditions. [School Ties] was a huge break for both of us–the first feature film for both of us.
Besides you and Ben, there were a few other young up and comers in Ties, including Brendan Fraser, Cole Hauser and Chris O’Donnell. Was it true all of you at that time were up for the lead role in Scent of a Woman [starring Oscar winner Al Pacino]?
Damon: Yep, but, of course, Chris won out. He had the best agent at the time. And he was the only guy out of the eight of us who had the script. I mean when you go into an audition, it’s always better to have read the script beforehand and have an idea of the character, rather than walking in and give a cold reading. Obviously, this script was gold to us. So one night [during the School Ties filming] I went up to Chris and said, “Hey, I know you’re shooting tomorrow, need to get up early, but I’m off tomorrow. Could I read the script?” And he said no. Which I guess was smart ’cause he got the part. But I still give him a hard time about that.
What role didn’t you get that you really wanted?
Damon: Scent of a Woman! I also really wanted the role in Primal Fear, which went to my good friend Edward Norton. Honestly, in a lot of these cases, when it’s a role you were up for but it goes to someone else and in the end and it’s an amazing performance, like Edward‘s was, then you have to say it went to the right actor. There is really a certain amount of respect we all have.
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Have there been any roles you turned down that you wished you hadn’t?
Damon: Not yet. There have been movies that have come out that I wished I had been a part of but I wasn’t offered them. I’ve been [he pauses] right so far, you know what I mean? There have been some movies I’ve chosen to do that in retrospect I might not have done. I’ve really taken on things on a project-to-project basis and have never been genre specific. And I look at things independently. Like The Bourne Identity. I’d never done an action picture before, and I thought this one was smart. He didn’t need a lot of gadgetry like James Bond, but had to think his way out of situations. I read the script kinda the way I hope people saw the movie. Intrigued by what was going to happen next.
Everyone in Hollywood is pretty hip to what a good screenplay is because they are few and far between. By and large there are mostly big budget movies, just trying to sell a concept to an audience and package it with as many big stars as possible. It’s rare to find a script with a great role and with a great director attached that’s really well written. What’s hard about those is that I’m in line behind Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks and such. It’s about calling those people up and saying, “Look, this script is terrible…you don’t want to do that.”
Will there be a sequel to The Bourne Identity?
Damon: Maybe if they wrote a good script. I think a lot of sequels get made because they want to milk the cash cow. But I don’t really want to do that. We’ll make it only if we can make it better.
You’ve worked with a lot of great people, but who would you like to work with that you haven’t had the chance to yet?
Damon: Wow. If you asked most actors, they would tell you Marlon Brando is one of the greatest actors this country has ever produced. It would be great to work with him, but unfortunately he doesn’t work too often anymore. I remember when Ed [Norton] did The Score with [Robert] De Niro and Brando. I read the script and said, “Dude, this script sucks, what are you doing?” and he’s like “Yeah, but it’s De Niro and Brando! I get to do scenes with De Niro and Brando! We’ll fix the script along the way, man.”
What was your favorite movie to work on?
Damon: Probably Good Will Hunting. It took about six years, from the time Ben and I came up with the kernel of an idea, sat down to write it, followed the process all the way through until the film came out. It was such as huge chunk of our lives and we had so much riding on it, it made a big impact in our lives. But if we are talking which movie I did that was just pure fun? Has to be Ocean’s Eleven.
Now that you’ve won an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting, are there any more stories you and Ben want to write?
Damon: I think in large part we wrote Will because we wanted to get work as actors. And now that’s happened, which is great. The last five years have been amazing. The one downside is that it’s been a logistic impossibility to write. Ben and I have seen less of each other in the last five years than we have in the last 20. But we miss it. I just did a day’s work on Kevin Smith‘s new movie [Jersey Girl], which Ben has the lead role in. And we were talking about it. We both really miss it and want to write again, but I think the first one was a lot about sitting around with nothing to do, being unemployed and bouncing ideas off of each other. It would require us to have a set amount of time, with nothing on our plates to do it. Hopefully, in the future it’ll happen again.
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What was the Oscar experience like?
Damon: The year before [we won] we were shooting Good Will Hunting and we watched the Oscars together. Me, Ben, [director] Gus Van Sant, Cole Hauser. We were drinking beer and had a pool going, five bucks apiece. [We were] tearing up our ballots and throwing them at each other. [It’s] the strangest experience to go from that setting–sitting in your living room in your sweat pants–to being in the front row at the Oscars, it was a little overwhelming in a lot of ways. What was cool was, we had our moms with us, but our dads were there too. My brother flew in with his wife. It was a family night on this grand stage. The ceremony was a blip; it went fast. What was fun was afterwards. I had friends from high school, real friends of mine, who flew out on their own dime–and they don’t have a lot of money–and showed up in tuxedos. I mean, my friends can’t get it together to go get a six-pack and there they are, walking into this room all dressed up, and I didn’t even know they were coming. I remember that well. Going from unemployed actors to this, we skipped every letter of the alphabet. And we really haven’t been back since.
What advice would you give aspiring screenwriters?
Damon: That’s a question Ben and I got asked a lot after Will and it’s one of the main reasons we created the Project Greenlight contest. Ben and I were young and we couldn’t get jobs, but we felt we had something worthwhile to say. We thought we were good enough to be working in the business but didn’t have an idea on how to crack it. To illustrate how hard it can be, when we were doing radio commercials for Greenlight, we called up studios we had worked with, didn’t tell them who we were and tried to pitch them Good Will Hunting. And they hung up on us. They told us they wouldn’t take unsolicited material without an agent. So we called our agent, again not telling them who we were, and [we were] told they couldn’t take unsolicited material without a lawyer. So we called our lawyer and they said, we don’t know who you are–you need an agent to get a lawyer. How silly it all is, and how hard. I don’t really know the right answer only to say you just have to keep at it. If someone comes up to me and says they want to be an actor, I say don’t do it. If they listen to me, then they really aren’t made for the business. You have to have the willingness to be rejected so often, and the drive to keep going. You have to feel compelled.
What’s next up for you?
Damon: I’m doing a comedy with the Farrelly brothers [There’s Something About Mary; Dumb & Dumber]. It’s about conjoined twins, with my better half being played by Greg Kinnear. He looks older than me but the rationale is that I have 90 percent of the liver, so he is aging faster than me. Yeah, it’s a comedy, but it has a lot of heart.
