Exclusive Matt Damon Interview
We talk The Informant, Green Zone and Bourne 4...
BY Nov 12th 2009 8:08AMFILED UNDER: Features
Oscar at 27. Box office of $2bn. Best mates with Brad’n’George. Yet he remains one of the most likeable guys around. Now Matt Damon is playing a corporate crook in The Informant!
Then there’s a Liberace biopic for Soderbergh and a little matter of a fourth outing for Jason Bourne. So, he’s good-looking, generous and gifted… How do you like them apples?
The Informant! is a project you and Steven Soderbergh have had in development for a long time. What’s the history of it?
He actually offered me the movie in 2001. I was doing the fourth round of reshoots on the first Bourne movie. I was in a hotel room in Paris.
I had two movies that had come out that had tanked and Bourne had all the signals of being a disaster, because we shot so many times and it was delayed like a year coming out. The phone had stopped ringing completely. And you could really feel it.
In Hollywood, by any measure, I was cold – cold as ice. And Steven was coming off his Oscar for Traffic and two of his movies were Best Picture nominees in the same year. By Hollywood standards, he was as hot as you could get.
And it was in that climate that he called me.
What did he say? “I’d like you to play a rotund ’90s white-collar crook?”
He was really excited and he said, “I’ve found something for us to do together.” I said, “What do you mean?” I literally hadn’t had a phone call in nine months.
He said, “This thing’s called The Informant!. I’m faxing you the first 80 pages. I’ve just read it. It’s great.” And I said, “OK…” And I was genuinely confused.
I said, “Do you want me to write it?” I thought he wanted me to adapt it. And he said, “No! Scott Burns will write it. You’ll star and I’ll direct!”
I was dumbfounded. I went home and read it and thought, “This is one of those great roles that comes along every seven or eight years.”
Next: The Informant!
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