Matt Damon is on the cover of this month's GQ magazine. As part of his article, the magazine got Matt's famous friends to tell stories about him. Here are some of the highlights:
On Prince:
Julia Stiles (co-star, ‘Bourne’ films): After The Bourne Ultimatum came out, there was a premiere in London. Prince actually came to it, then got tickets for the cast to come see him [perform]. We were summoned into a room to meet him [after the show]. Matt said, “So you live in Minnesota? I hear you live in Minnesota.”
Damon: Prince said, “I live inside my own heart, Matt Damon.”
On best friend Ben Affleck:
Tina Fey (creator, ‘30 Rock’): People would be like, “[Matt and Ben] are so cute!” And I'd be like, “They're J.Crew sweaters. When you see all the colors next to each other, they look cute, but when you get one home, you're like, ‘Damn, I just got an orange sweater.’ ” But now that is withdrawn. In person, Matt holds up.
Damon: Ben is the orange sweater.
Ben Affleck (co-writer, ‘Good Will Hunting’; best friend): The quality that has allowed Matt to
maintain the illusion that he is Mr. Nice Guy is that he found a young TV actor who was just a pretty face and made friends with him so he would always look good by comparison. Matt is very media-savvy and manipulative in that way. He's like a mix of [O. J. Simpson defense-team members] Bob Shapiro and Alan Dershowitz.
Kevin Smith (writer and director, ‘Dogma,’ ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’; co-executive producer, ‘Good Will Hunting’): Matt made pretty thoughtful choices about what roles he wanted to play and the directors he wanted to work with after Good Will Hunting, which made Ben's more commercial choices easier to put down for some folks. The assignation was that Matt chose to be a serious actor in films, while Ben chose to star in movies. That script flipped when Matt was Bourne and Ben became a filmmaker.
On "I'm Fucking Matt Damon":
Jimmy Kimmel (host, ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’; nemesis): [The video “I'm Fucking Matt Damon”] was supposed to be a present for my 40th birthday. Just to make sure the punch in the stomach hit a kidney.
Silverman: [When the show premiered,] Jimmy was literally getting guests like the man with the longest arm hair. So as a joke, he would say at the end of the night, “Sorry, Matt Damon. We ran out of time,” because Matt Damon was the biggest movie star he could think of.
Damon: We had done The Bourne Ultimatum [spoof] with [Kimmel sidekick] Guillermo [as Jason Bourne]. Like, now Jimmy's kicking me out of my own movies? And we all were just like, “How do we keep this thing alive?” And the guy who directed that called with this idea that Sarah had given him.
Silverman: Matt came in, learned the song in a closet of the hotel we had, and then we had three hours with him to shoot because he had his daughter's Halloween pageant at noon.
Damon: It happened really fast, and then suddenly I was in the car. I was like, “Holy fuck, I'm going to a parent-teacher conference. I can't do shit like this anymore.”
Ben Affleck: As soon as I saw “I'm Fucking Matt Damon,” I knew I would be doing “I'm Fucking Ben Affleck.” So I called Jimmy, and they were already putting it together. Having Josh Groban yelling out, “I'm fucking Beeeeen. I'm fucking Ben Affleck!” remains a high point of my career and life.
The whole article has some really good stories. Read the full piece at GQ.
No comments:
Post a Comment