Matt Damon

Emmanuel Itier: You’ve said it before but I just want to hear you say it again: the third installment may be the best one yet, and that you’re not going to be playing Jason Bourne ever again? And secondly, what did you learn from three years of playing this cold and efficient amnesiac killer?

Matt Damon: Starting with the easy one, huh? Well, I made that comment at Cannes when we were about nine months into shooting the movie, and I just went, “I’m never doing this again.” But I think, in terms of another one, the story of this guy’s search for his identity is over because he’s got all the answers, so there’s no way we could kind of trot out the same character, and so much of what makes him interesting is that internal struggle that was happening for him. “Am I a good guy? Am I a bad guy? What is the secret behind my identity? What am I blocking out? Why am I remembering these disturbing images?” So all of that kind of that internal, propulsive mechanism that drives the character is not there. So if there was to be another one, then it would have to be a complete reconfiguration, you know? Where do you go from there? For me, I kind of feel like the story that we set out to tell has now been told. I love the character, and if Paul Greengrass calls me in ten years and says, “Now we can do it because it’s been ten years and I have a way to bring him back,” then there’s a world in which I could go, “Well yeah, absolutely.” You know we could get the band back together if there was a great idea behind it. But in terms of now and this story, that part is… I mean, the story’s been told. I mean, if we came out with a fourth one and suddenly I got bonked on the head, you guys would be like, are you kidding me? Actually, I was talking to a journalist yesterday who suggested that we could do the fourth one about Bourne losing his keys for the entire movie. “Where are my keys?” So that kind of illustrates how out of story we are at this point, in terms of what was good about these first three. And in terms of playing the character, it’s been seven years really, for me. The movies have come out over the course of five, but it’s been seven years of my life kind of coming back to this. And there hasn’t been a role that’s had a bigger impact on my life. Maybe Good Will Hunting did because it pulled Ben and I out of total obscurity, but in terms of having an impact on my career, just as an example, between Supremacy and this one, Bourne Ultimatum, there were three movies that I really wanted to do. I loved the scripts to three movies in particular–all of these movies were on the face of them going to be absolutely box office misses. And there was Syriana, which is a very complicated movie, and we were making George and I cut all our money so we could do it. And The Departed, which now, looking back, obviously it was this big hit and it won all the awards, but at the time, if you took a Scorsese movie, his movies don’t classically make a lot of money. Even the masterpieces–Goodfellas, Raging Bull–they don’t actually make a lot of money at the box office. It’s this incredible experience because you’re working with him, which is why he can get any actor that he wants. Everyone will cut their fee and go and work with Marty. But in terms of looking at your career, you go, “Oh, okay, so that’s number two and so that’ll be two movies in a row that I’m in that don’t perform at the box office.” And then I fell in love with script called The Good Shepherd. And everyone went, “This is a tiny little bulls-eye that you’re aiming at here,” and you look at it and it’s a very dense, cerebral, historical epic about the birth of the intelligence service in America. I mean, it’s not Spider Man 3, but I didn’t hesitate because I loved all the scripts, and they were movies that I desperately wanted to do. And I knew that I had The Bourne Ultimatum off in the middle distance and that there was going to be an audience built in for that, so it really just allowed me the creative freedom to make all these movies, and I’m just so proud of each of those movies. They all did very well, some of them did incredibly well, and they were all reviewed really well, so they all just made a big impact on my career, so that’s an ancillary way that the Bourne character has completely changed my life, starting with the first one, where nobody had offered me a movie in six months and I was in London doing a play on the West End. And the movie opened and by that Monday I had 20 offers, and so that was where I would have been 32 or 31 years old it was like the rose colored lenses came off and I went, “Okay, I get it. If you’re in a hit, you have a career, and if you’re not, it doesn’t matter. They might think you’re a real nice guy. They’re not hanging a movie on you.”

EI: Audiences love you in the Bourne movies when you’re kicking ass and crashing cars. How does it feel to be that kind of crowd pleaser?

MD: It feels so good, I can’t even tell you. In fact, you guys were the second audience to see the movie, so none of us have seen it with an audience. So two nights ago, when the first press screening happened, we were all getting Blackberried during the movie. You know, they’re cheering at Waterloo. And this was because nobody… we didn’t know. We came down to the wire as we always do on these Bourne movies, that we didn’t even get a test in. So we each had little DVDs–we showed it on televisions. I showed it to my wife. I showed it to my brother. He was like, “Yeah, cool.” And so we’d had these little friends and family screenings. Paul showed it to 25 people. People in the business that we know that make movies and, you know, “Are we missing anything guys? Can you help us out?” Collecting notes as quickly as we could and trying to get them into the edit and then getting it out. So two audiences have seen the movies, of which you guys are the second. Last night we were at dinner and we got the Blackberries all started going off at the same time, and we heard that it was a crowd pleaser. It was Paul and George Nolfi, the writer, me, Joan and David Straithairn, and Julia, and so we just told Amanda to expect a hung-over group coming in the next day, because that’s when the champagne started coming out.

EI: Is this film more timely than the first one? And you’re writing a new script with Ben Affleck. How’s that going?

MD: All the movies are very much of the time that they are made. The first one is very much a 2002–it’s post 9/11. All the paranoia, everything–that’s in there. What I love is that you’ll be able to look back and know the second one is 2004. Things are starting to turn in Iraq, and this American guy, this iconic American figure, is going and apologizing and atoning for his misdeeds, for things that he’s done. He’s taking responsibility. Now you have the movie ending where Bourne is pulling the gun and putting it to the head of the person who lied to him, who said, “This is what you’re going to be doing. You’re going to be saving American lives,” and Bourne’s saying, “I see now that you’ve lead me into something under false pretenses. And now I understand that and I’m not going to do that anymore.” And so each movie is a reflection of the time in which it is made. We obviously have all the images of water-boarding, of somebody getting shot in the corner of the room and Bourne doesn’t even know what he did. He asks what did he do? And he’s told that we’ve been through that, you can’t know that. So this is somebody, an American who’s killed without a trial, and so all these things are just nods to the kind of world we’re living in right now. And I like that about them. They feel relevant. Bourne has a lot of integrity. I do think he’s a very American character. I like that about him–his thoughtfulness, his intelligence, the fact that he’s trying to do the right thing. He doesn’t always do the right thing or he’s misled, but he is trying to do the right thing. So those things I think are great. In terms of my hetero life mate, as Kevin Smith once said in one of this movies, we’re not working on a script right now, but we’re talking about a bunch of different things. And his career has gone in this new and exciting direction because I’ve seen the movie that he directed and it is really good. It’s fantastic. And the performances are great. Every actor is going to want to work with him after they see this thing. And it´s coming out in October and it’s done, he’s finished. So they’re just waiting for the proper release date to bring it out. I think they’re doing it around the time The Departed came out. I think that’s when it´s coming out. So he’s gone from being an actor to being a director. Now being someone that can give me a job, so our whole relationship’s completely changed.

EI: So you’ll be directed by him?

MD: I would love to. So now that’s a new dynamic that our partnership can have. We can do a movie that we act in, or I act in and he directs, or something that we co-direct, or something that we co-write and co-direct. There are so many different possibilities now because he’s gone and done this really great movie. So it’s exciting and now we’re starting to talk about that stuff. It’s been ten years since that last one, and we both put our heads down and worked pretty hard for the past ten years, and now we’ve woken up with careers and families and all the things that we wanted, so I think that hopefully the next ten years will be about doing better work–maybe doing a little less of it, but doing better stuff and doing work together.

EI: What was your favorite action sequence from the movie? And were there any scenes in the mall that didn’t make it into the movie?

MD: I’ll do the second part first. Joanie and I have shot, over the course of the last two movies, probably eight scenes (we were laughing about this at dinner last night) that Joan Allen and I have shot. Probably three or four in Supremacy and three or four in this one. It’s a weird thing. It’s such a fluid… it’s a really weird process, and we’ll end up doing scenes and we’ll just be sitting there shooting the scene going, well, this will never be in the movie. This doesn’t work at all. But a lot of that we don’t know until we get them up on their feet and so, as a result, Joan and I have done a number of scenes, all of which you could make a DVD within the same scenes in all these different locations, and finally what we ended up with was that quick scene outside the hospital in New York where I give her the thing, so it’s kind of a good indicator. It’s the amount of attrition, like the attrition rate. Our ratio of scenes shot to scenes that make the movie are like that, probably about eight to one. I mean, that’s what happens when you start without a script.

EI: And your favorite action sequence in the movie?

MD: I always like the Tangiers sequence and the running along the roof because it’s just Bourne absolutely 100 miles an hour flat out. And grabbing the things and all the things that we kind of came up with when we were on the real location. That’s the fun stuff because you get a bunch of guys together and they’re going, “All right, well, what would be the smart thing to do here?” And we kind of figure out those sequences, and when we cut them together and they actually work, it’s really a good feeling–although Paul came up with Waterloo. That was all Paul’s kind of design and what would it be like to have a guy leading a complete novice to try to allude, and that’s all Paul and I love that sequence too. And the car chase too. I like that.

EI: One of the things about this movie franchise that’s so exciting is the intelligence of it all. When you first started out, you were more of a robotic character, and as we deconstruct you, we see the emotion as we find out what he did. Did you have to deal with the back story?

MD: Thank you. What did you say? Yeah, well, we always kind of had a feeling about where the Bourne character came from and that he would have been trained and that he would have had a military background. Presumably he was tapped from one of these programs as a good candidate and showed language skills. We had a loose idea of what that back-story was. We didn’t want to pin anything too far down because obviously, making all three movies, we never really knew. But we definitely knew enough that I could do all the physical stuff and get ready so that the character was hopefully believable. And in terms of narration, I’m going to narrate a movie called Running the Sahara, which we produced. It’s about these three ultra marathoners. It’s a documentary. They ran across the Sahara Desert last year–about 50 miles everyday. Yeah, three guys from three different countries, and it’s a movie about that expedition and also what happened to them on the run and how they became aware of a lot of issues, particularly the water crisis in Africa. So that’s going to be at the Toronto Film Festival this year.

EI: Did you get hurt at all doing any of the stuff in that fighting scene? And secondly, what’s your update on fatherhood? When we talked to you last time, you just had a little tiny baby. What’s going on now?

MD: Well, the fighting stuff, yeah, there was a huge… in the first movie, I was 29 and the last one I was 36, and I definitely felt my age, and particularly because of that big fight scene in Tangiers. Joey, the other actor, the guy that I’m fighting, is like 23 years old and when the first movie came out, he was in high school. So he was so happy that he was like, “Man, I’m in a Bourne fight. This is great.” And he’s in really good shape and he’s already like a much better athlete than me. So I was like, “Oh man, Joey, you’re killing me. You got to slow down.” And so I think it took probably a couple extra days. It probably cost the studio a couple extra days because I’m a little older now.

EI: Did he really go for you?

MD: No. I mean, he just was so excited. I mean, I couldn’t possibly defend myself against him. I’d be like, “Dude, just three moves at a time. Come on, man.” So he was a good sport about it, though. He did a great job.

EI: And being a dad?

MD: Being a dad is still great. It’s just amazing. I mean, these stages just go by at such… I mean it’s like it’s incredibly fast, you know? I mean, the little discoveries every day. So much is happening and so much changes in the first year that… I mean, she’s walking around now. She’s 13 months old, so it’s just amazing. It happens at warp speed. I see why people, when parents see little babies, they get that thing, they go, “I want another one,” because the stages all just fly past and if you’re with her every day, which I’m lucky enough to be, you know it’s only if you’re taking pictures, or it’s only if you haven’t seen people for a couple months that you even realize, because it’s happening in front of you. You don’t even see it.

EI: Is she talking?

MD: Well, I try to figure out what it is. I mean, right now she kind of sounds like a crow. She kind of goes like, “Eh! Eh!” Like that. And points at things. And this morning she pointed at the ceiling and there’s nothing on the ceiling and just went, “Eh!” Like that. And I was like, “Well, that’s the ceiling.” And she went [Laughs]. And I was like, “Now I don’t know what’s funny about that.” I just don’t know. So I’m trying to figure out what’s going on in her head. Like sometimes she goes, “Eh!” And you go, “Oh, you want some milk?” And she goes [Laughs], you know? And you go, alright, she was thirsty. That’s good she communicated. But then sometimes she just has these things that I just have no idea what she’s thinking, so I’m working on that.

EI: Matt, you talked about coming to this film without a script. Considering what Paul does in his non-Hollywood blockbuster films is improv, documentary-style things, does that make it easier? And what kind of relationship do you have with him in shaping as it goes along?

MD: Yeah, he’s the guy that I’d do that with because he’s so great at that. And he’s also a terrific writer. I mean, he wrote United 93′ he wrote Bloody Sunday–he’s a really good writer and he does a significant amount of the work on these movies too, which any director does. I mean, you have to take ownership. You’re telling a story, even if someone else has written it. You have to tell the story in a way that makes sense for you so every director working, every director worth his salt, is a pretty good writer too. You know they never take credit for it. I mean, unless it’s just them doing it, but generally that’s what the writer’s there for. And we were lucky enough to have George Nolfi on set with us every day, so George kept out ahead of us. He would literally be in his hotel room working on the pages for the next day while we were working on the pages he’d given us for this day, and we were making our tweaks and in the real location going, “Okay, well, let’s change this to that because that thing’s over there.” And so it’s just not an advisable way to make a movie. You couldn’t teach that in film school and send people out there. But it works for Paul. And there’s something about the chaos and the alchemy of Frank Marshall and Paul Greengrass, and in this case, we had three different guys working on the script, Tony Gilroy, Scott Burns and George Nolfi, who were on at different stages and who are three of the best writers working today. And so it’s like you get this big mix and then you get the actors in there, but they’ve all gone down to the 11th hour. We literally haven’t known until two nights ago, so it should come with a stint. It’s not an advisable way to work if you want to live a long life.

EI: The Bourne films have been very successful. Would you consider doing another role whether four, five or six movies with that character? And second of all, you’re at the point in your career now where you can do anything you want, so what do you want to be known for at the end of the day?

MD: So, with the Bourne character, would I do three more Bourne movies, do you mean?

EI: Another character.

MD: I’m trying to only do franchises. That’s my new thing. In fact, the guys who wrote Oceans 13 wrote the movie Rounders, and I said to them (because Rounders was a bomb when it came out but now it’s done really well on video), “You guys are writing the wrong sequel. We should be doing Rounders II.” So no, I´m open to each case with both Bourne, and I know that Ludlum had written three books, but I signed up for one. And they were okay with that. And then when I signed up for the second one, I didn’t sign up for the third. I only signed up for one again because I wanted to make sure that it went well and I still liked doing it. And so I’ve done it, and the Oceans movies have just… Steven calls and goes, “We’re doing another one.” And I go, “Okay, I’m in.” But there was never an eye for either of them being franchises. I don’t think that way. And so I’m open to any good movie. If I enjoy the experience and I love the people I’m working with, and I feel like there’s a chance to make a good movie, I’ll make it if it’s a sequel or if it’s not. The other question?

EI: At the end of the day, what do you want to be known for?

MD: Well, the career that I think Ben and I look at, well, Clooney is definitely doing it right now and Clint Eastwood–those are the careers where you know guys, they’re acting, they’re writing, they’re directing, and they’re doing it on their terms. I mean, I think that’s the biggest. I love making movies and I love everything about it. I love writing and I love acting, and I really want to direct. And I’ve been taking these last ten years to really carefully study these directors that I’ve been working with, and I’ve worked with a lot of really good ones at this point, and so I feel like I’m ready to do it. And that, to me, would be the greatest–to have a long career. It’s so hard to have a long career in this business. I’m still here after ten years. And we’re all probably a little amazed by that. So at this point, I just want to try and just be smart about the work that I’m doing and try to have integrity about the choices I make, and that’s it.

EI: What are you doing next?

MD: Well, I’m hoping to do this Green Zone movie that Paul’s doing, but I don’t know. I’m doing The Informant with Steven Soderbergh that we’ve been trying to do for years, starting April 15th, because we have the strike coming.

EI: Trying to get everything done before that?

MD: Trying to get everything done before. And so Steven knew that I wanted to do Paul’s movie so he moved all the way up. So he’d basically go from April 15th to June 30th, and the strike starts the next day. So if Paul can get me in before April 15th on the Green Zone movie, then I can do it.

EI: The strike is definitely happening?

MD: Well if not, apparently, from what I hear, it’s going to be a de facto strike, like the studios are doing all of their whole production slate they’re doing in the first half of the year.

EI: On the assumption that… ?

MD: On the assumption that there is a strike. It also gives them leverage against the unions because then they say like, “Well, we don’t need movies anyway. We’ll just take the next six months off.”

EI: And the [Darren] Aronofsky boxing film?

MD: Yeah, the full script isn’t it yet, so it’s just another thing that’s kind of out there, yeah.

EI: Who else would you like to work with?

MD: There are a lot of people.

EI: One name?

MD: Clint.

EI: Are you doing the commentary for the DVD on this?

MD: Maybe, if Paul invites me, yeah. Paul said he wanted to do it with me. The question would be if we can get together to sit and watch it and do it. I’d love to do it with Paul. I don’t think it would be very serious if we did it together.