Matt Damon has been on quite a journey as of late
The blockbuster star criss-crossed the globe in recent weeks for high-profile stops to promote his starring turn as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey, which is dominating the box office and earning Oscar buzz. But he just ducked into a much more intimate place — the Criterion Closet — for a walk down memory lane to revisit some classic films
“Hey, this is Matt Damon. I’m in the Criterion Closet. There’s just an incredible collection here, and I’m just going to randomly grab some stuff and say what comes to mind,” he said in kicking off what has become a beloved stop for movie stars and auteurs on their promo rounds. He first picked up Purple Noon, a 1960s crime thriller film directed by René Clément and based on Patricia Highsmith’s classic novel The Talented Mr. Ripley
Damon toplined Anthony Minghella’s 1999 version, and said that he never watched Purple Noon because he didn’t want to, nor did Minghella want him to, so as not to color their own adaptation. “The movie that [Anthony] did have me see for Ripley was actually Knife in the Water. It was just to get a sense of the aesthetic and the boat work we were going to do. But I remember it being wonderful,” Damon noted
He then picked up Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, which won four Academy Awards. “I like Traffic for a very special reason. So I’ve done, I think, 10 movies with Steven Soderbergh. I absolutely adore him. I love working with him for so many reasons. I mean, he cuts in camera. He is the editor, he’s the director, he’s the cinematographer, and he’s the camera operator. And he cuts the work you do the day you shoot it and he sends it to you so you can watch the movie develop as it’s going. When he won the Oscar for directing this movie, he kind of scoffed at the idea that he would do anything like it ever again,” he said.
Damon, who added that it’s a “remarkable movie” featuring an “absolutely out of this world” performance from Oscar winner Benicio del Toro, said, “I’m taking it as a reminder to when things go really well in your life creatively, never protect your beachhead, and that’s a conversation that I’ve had with Soderbergh many, many times. You want to keep pushing. You do not want to just do the same thing over and over and over.”
Damon then picked up an “impossible to find” movie with You Can Count on Me, directed by his good friend and onetime collaborator Kenneth Lonergan. “This was my introduction to Kenny Lonergan. Casey Affleck and I went and did a play in London, one of Kenny’s plays. I ended up producing Manchester by the Seathat Casey was in, and that all happened because I saw this [movie] about 27 years ago,” Damon explained. “It’s just a beautiful, beautiful little movie. I’ve been looking forward to showing it to my kids for years. I’ve even called Kenny and he’s like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know [where to find it]. I can’t find it either.’”
Damon turned his attention to Gus Van Sant by picking up Drugstore Cowboy, which he said was the first movie by the filmmaker that he’d ever seen. “I saw it in the Harvard Square Theater, which no longer exists. Matt Dillon quite famously said to Gus that he would never talk to him again after he saw the rough cut, and that was why Gus was nervous to show us the rough cut of Goodwill Hunting. It’s a phenomenal movie and Matt Dillon’s amazing,” he said. “And they obviously made up once the movie came out and was a wild success.”
He obviously went on to work with Van Sant, who directed Good Will Hunting. The 1997 film, penned by Damon and best friend Ben Affleck, won them Oscars for best screenplay. Damon then spent some more time on Van Sant’s filmography by picking up My Own Private Idaho starring River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves
“River Phoenix has this amazing monologue at a campfire. When I got to know Gus, it was the first thing I asked him. I asked him about that scene and how it came to be,” Damon revealed. “Gus told me this incredible story about River coming to work and they had a different scene scripted. And River said, ‘No, I have an idea.’ And Gus just let him do whatever. He just trusted his actor. There’s a great lesson in collaboration and in trusting the people that you work with and being confident in what you can do, but believing in what they can do too.”
Damon also dished on Carl Franklin’s One False Move (a film both he and Affleck love), No Country for Old Men(and how he modeled his True Grit accent after Tommy Lee Jones’ work in the film), Double Indemnityand more. See Damon’s full Criterion Closet stop below
