Welcome to the Matt Damon Column,
a forum for sharing news among Matt fans.

• Tons of goodies from Felicity:
• There's a pic of a pretty dishevelled Matt and Ben at the Greenlight launch at http://www.sky.com/news/technology/story6.htm I don't know how long the pic will stay on the site.
• The web address for greenlight is ProjectGreenlight.com.
• And on Ben, his film Bounce has been delayed to November 17, nicely timed to be just between BV and ATPH (but it will still be strong competition). Miramax must have more faith in it now after the re-shoots.
• I also found a series of new Pretty Horses pics at www.movies.go.com, or http://movies.go.com/movies/A/alltheprettyhorses_2000/index.html As virtually every pic from that film seems to include a horse and a person, they all look very familiar. But I think some of those are new.
• From a new San Francisco Chronicle article with Penelope: There is one subject, however, that Cruz wants to make sure doesn't get lost in translation: whether she and Damon are romantically linked. She might not have effectively doused that rumor, but Cruz is swift to change the subject to ``Pretty Horses,'' the eagerly awaited adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy best-seller that's set for a Dec. 25 release.
  The film is amazing, she says. ``I just saw it yesterday and I have no words for it.''
• Still on Penelope, isn't it a little strange that she's in the remake of 'Open your eyes', the Spanish movie starring Cruise/Diaz. Original and the remake - is that a record?
• And Billy Bob is denying rumours of a heart attack over the weekend, but he did enter hospital for chest pains.
• And did you like the news that Leo will has signed to a role requiring him to play two brothers. Shades of 'I know this much is true'.

• Some news for you from the Chicago Sun-Times:
  *Matt Damon and Billy Bob Thornton dined at Morton's downtown recently. Damon, who stars in the upcoming screen version of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, and Thornton, who directed the film, were in town taping an upcoming Oprah show.
  (Noted Felicity:
  Are they releasing the film early (despite no trailer or poster yet), or holding it back for two months (due to Matt's absence)? Another Oprah - not bad, is it three in three years? And that obviously means no Oprah for Bagger Vance, where the combination of Matt v Will would have been interesting. It also should mean that a final print is now available. I wonder if Penelope was present as well, but presumably not because she wasn't at the lunch.
• From reel.com, in an interview with the filmmakers of Woman on Top: Q (to both): And how about working with Penelope Cruz?
  Mark Feuerstein : I can't say enough nice things about her. She is amazing. You would think, looking at her, "Well, she can't be smart, funny, and a good actress," but she is all these things and more. She's great at imitations, dancing, partying. And she's a great person, too. She doesn't do it for show. One day when we were shooting in Pellerinho, a small town in Bahia, Brazil, we're hanging out on a street corner and there's this little boy who's dirty, dressed in rags, who is begging. She takes him by the hand and walks him to a sandwich shop and buys him two roast beef sandwiches. There's no one around, writing an article about her, this is just Penelope being herself.

• Premiere has absolutely nothing Matt-related except a small item about Kevin Smith's foray into advertising.
• The New Yorker's fall preview magazine has a new photo from ATPH. It's very posed, with Matt in usual western gear and Penelope in a white dress and veil-thing.
• Maximum Golf last issue (see below) has a fashion story featuring Joel Gresch, who's one of the lead golfers in BV (he's also rather attractive, by the way). In it he's asked about playing golf against Matt and Will, and says something like "they both improved as the movie progressed, but I stopped playing against Matt for money".
• The Talk issue with Ben has quite a bit about Matt, as usual, including a rather sad/embarrassing story about Matt (in company of father and brother) trying to use his fame, rather disastrously. Ben also says things like Matt tries to stay modest, quiet, away from the spotlight because he's afraid it's all going to end. But he also does his usual tricks, saying that he "slept with the writer" of Good Will Hunting.
• Maximum Golf magazine (this month's issue) has a story on BV, and a nice (though familiar) B&W shot of Matt. It doesn't say much, but a press release seems to have received wide attention:
• From Jam:
  Matt Damon injures ribs shooting new movie
  LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Matt Damon took a crack at learning golf and separated his ribs instead.
  The actor, who was learning the sport for the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance, is more familiar with baseball.
  "I couldn't understand golf because the ball doesn't really move -- which is why I swung really hard one day," Damon said in the October/November issue of Maximum Golf magazine. "I swung myself right into the doctor's office."
  Tim Moss, the film's technical director, said Damon didn't have to learn the sport.
  "I said, 'We can do this cosmetically, make you look like a really good player with computer graphics, or I can teach you how to play like I would anyone else,' " Moss said.
  Damon's reply: "I want to be able to play golf with my dad -- and beat him."
  Moss also says in the article (paraphrasing), that while initially the golf training was very difficult, Matt's natural athleticism took over.
• From the Chicago Tribune, in a story about a fundraiser for the Steppenwolf theatre (remember the GQ article last year..) The show was a tribute to the theater company, co-directed by James Burrows and Anna Shapiro. Live speeches, some humorous, some misty-eyed, some both, alternated with onscreen, taped remarks by luminaries including Estelle Parsons, David Schwimmer, Oprah Winfrey, Kevin Bacon, John Turturro, John Lithgow, Matt Damon, Albert Finney, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson and the cast of "Frasier" among others.
• The latest US mag has a story on backstage at the Gore event. Can someone have a look?
• A flipbook (photos and text) of the Bagger Vance trailer is now at www.rottentomatoes.com
• The photo of Matt and Penelope on the bed (ATPH) is at the people.com webpage under the Penelope profile.
  (Note: I couldn't find the photo today - maybe they took it out.)
• Kathryn of Edinburgh wrote:
  This from today's Daily Mail (UK), concerning Doug Liman. It's a review for "Go" but it praises his directorial talents, saying he "demonstrates a good eye for young acting talent and an ear for smart dialogue." This particular reviewer doesn't give good reviews out very often, so I think that's something to look forward to concerning Bourne Identity.

From Felicity:
From Jeanette Wells' column yesterday on msnbc:
Matt Damon�s cover Talk
Sept. 18 � Matt Damon is bucking Miramax�s publicity machine. The actor is starring in �All the Pretty Horses,� a Miramax film coming out in October. And he has been interviewed and photographed for a cover story scheduled for the December/January cover of Talk, the Miramax/Hearst-owned magazine edited by Tina Brown TALK HAS BEEN criticized for being run as a Miramax promotional tool, prominently featuring actors starring in Miramax films. But Damon is also starring in �The Legend of Bagger Vance,� which Dreamworks is bringing out in November. That�s why, a well-placed source says, Miramax head Harvey Weinstein ordered a new Matt Damon cover for Talk.
�Harvey felt that it [the original cover] would promote �Bagger Vance� more than it would his own film, �All the Pretty Horses,� � says one industry insider. �So he ordered another cover shoot � this one with Matt and Penelope Cruz, who co-stars with him in �All the Pretty Horses.� That way, it would clearly be about �All the Pretty Horses.� � The source says that Damon, who has been linked romantically to Cruz, refused. �He already did one shoot and didn�t want to do another,� says the insider. Weinstein�s office had no comment by deadline, but both he and Tina Brown have denied that he tinkers with the magazine�s editorial content and have balked at charges that Talk is used to promote Miramax films. A spokeswoman for Talk declined to comment on the Matt Damon story, saying, �We never discuss our covers in advance, but we�re moving forward with the December/January issue as planned.�

• A reader who saw Penelope on Leno's wrote:
  i saw her on leno on friday .. and nuttin really was mentions about matt until she said that everyday after filming parts of atph that her billy bob matt and the crew would go bowling.. and she learned how to bowl from them.. and then leno said did matt teach u by puting his arm around you. thats all..
  (Thanks for sharing - Leno really does like to kid Matt. )
• Another reader wrote:
  In case you're too busy to get this from yahoo yourself, see attached (A big thanks! However, the pic is in bitmap format and I can't put it up here to share.
  Actor Matt Damon, left, joins actress Lauren Hutton and her date Dominic Cunningham-Reid, as they arrive at Radio City Music Hall for a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in New York, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2000.
• Another article about the event, "Musicians, actors sing DNC priases at benefit", can be viewed here)
• BTW a reader wrote asking if there's photo of Matt from the DNC event with him spotting the Gore-Lieberman button -- If you know of one, please let us know.
• A Big Matt Fan wrote:
  Movieline's new "Oscar Bait" issue is out (October 2000, with George Clooney on the cover). Both ATPH and LBV are featured, although the commentary on both has a sort of "wait and see" attitude towards them. Still, Matt is favorably mentioned. Regarding ATPH: "Past Oscar-nominee Damon should be perfect in the lead, and any chemistry he has with the beautiful and capable Cruz will help a lot." As for LBV: "Good cast here, though. Damon can be counted on to play the dissolute with glamorous self-pity."
  Also in the magazine is a dreamy (though not new) photo of Matt in a piece about role models of the stars. Matt's: Every member of the Boston White Sox.

• Kathryn wrote: Found some pics I've never seen before here:
  http://www.ezuma.com/photos.html?rnd=0916.142440.557-46.928
  The two newest ones are from the Democrat Convention. Is it me, or in these he looks *younger*? Like he did in School Ties?
  (Said photos are shown above, plus one of several that was apparently taken when Matt was spotted in LAX (the Los Angeles Airport).)
• Felicity's finds:
  • Bits of things from the Gore fest:
    From Roger Friedman at foxnews.com
    But the good moments certainly outweighed the iffy ones. A very well-designed set and superb lighting were enough to balance out an invariably marred sound system. And there were many unusual statements from some of the artists. In particular, Matt Damon�s observation that George W. Bush "is like Fredo from The Godfather. And they wouldn�t let him run the family business."
    Backstage, production sources reported the usual egocentric behavior from the stars. Damon, for example, refused to go take his seat in the audience until the lights were down in the theater for fear of mingling with "real people." Instead, he spent quality time with Salma Hayek. (Really, who could blame him?)
  • From the NY Daily News:
    Matt Damon said Bush's election would be "downright scary" and compared the Texas governor to Fredo, the loser brother in "The Godfather."
    "They wouldn't even let that guy run the family business, much less the country," Damon said.
  • Ocean's 11 is scheduled to start shooting in January, so it is very close to the end of Bourne Identity.
  • And it does look as if Daniel Lanois is off ATPH, from sonic.net: In film-music news, Marty Stuart is scoring a second Billy Bob Thornton movie, All the Pretty Horses, starring Matt Damon, according to an artist spokesperson. The movie is tentatively scheduled for a Christmas Day release in the United States. Stuart also is working on the soundtrack to Thornton's "Daddy and Them" project. ...
  • Article on alternet (excerpt): The demonstrators expressed particular alarm over the early age at which advertisers now target kids, mentioning industry reports that proclaim children as young as 18 months psychologically available for marketing. "For little kids, the world is what they see, and they can't distinguish between an ad, a TV show and reality" said Nancy Carlsson-Paige, professor of education at Lesley College and mother of screen actor Matt Damon. Carlsson-Paige cited research showning that until the age of seven, children cannot differentiate between commercials and shows. "All they see is something colorful to watch, so they're desensitized to ads before they even learn to put them into context. That's what we need to get people dialoguing about."
  • Item in the new Vanity Fair on the leading figures in entertainment. Under the Miramax story, there's a few lines on Ripley. It made $81 million in the US and $41 million elsewhere, but is still seen as being a great disappointment to them (no Oscars, not the glory expected).
  • Did anyone watch the Penelope interview on Leno??
  • Other things - There were some items on the after-bash of the Gore event: Matt and Salma Hayek apparently very close at Elaine's (so says the NY Daily News).
  • Production news: www.liveplanet.com is now open, with not much at the moment, but you can sign for updates. On Ben's site you can also purchase a 'Pearl Street productions' T-shirt.
  • And the full Bagger Vance trailer is now available from www.spielberg-dreamworks.com, BV section. It opens in a manner very similar to the book, and shows a lot more than the first trailer (romance scenes, former glories, lots of golf shots going bad). For more info on the film, try: www.movies.go.com
  • There's a new movie mag out in the US, Total Movie, which apparently has a behind the scenes look at BV. I can't access it yet in London.
  • From an article in Time, on dejanews: Perhaps the most enthusiastically received line of the night came from the boyish Matt Damon who equated George Bush with Fredo from the "Godfather" movies. "And they wouldn't even let him run the family business...."
  • And you can win tickets to a Bagger Vance preview on www.golfdigest.com But you do have to answer some golf questions.

• A Big Matt fan sent in this exciting news:
  OCEANS OF STARS FOR REMAKE: The star-studded "Ocean's Eleven" lineup at Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures is on the verge of swelling, not only with the addition of Matt Damon, but also Ralph Fiennes, who is currently toplining "Coriolanus" and "Richard II" Off Broadway at BAM Harvey Theater. Those two are near deals to join George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Alan Arkin in the confirmed star roles for Steven Soderbergh, with other roles casting up quickly.
  Damon would replace Mark Wahlberg. Several other roles are yet to be cast since it looks like neither Joel nor Ethan Coen will be able to step in to replace Owen and Luke Wilson, who will likely move aboard the Wes Anderson-directed "The Royal Tennenbaums" for Disney. Both Damon and Fiennes are CAA-repped.
  Added the Big Matt fan:
  So if Matt does this role, who would he play? Here's description from Aint-It-Cool News when Wahlberg was in the role:
  "Linus Zerga. He's the youngster of the 11, he's a smooth pick pocket and can pull off some amazing slieght of hand. He's not too sure about a game this big, he's a bit nervous about the whole deal."
  Does anyone know when this film is shooting?
• And Val sent in this VCR aler:
  Penelope Cruz is slated to appear on Jay Leno's TONIGHT SHOW this Friday. She is promoting WOMAN ON TOP but I imagine they may talk Matty since he is one of Jay's favorites! Let's hope so anyway!
  Added Val:
  The website for Penelope's movie is delightful--gorgeous pics from the movie, production notes, even postcards! Check it out here

• Interesting observation from a reader, regarding the "Bourne Identity" film that Matt is currently making:
  One small note. The female lead of the novel isn't American but Canadian. She's not just visiting Europe, but attending an economic policy conference. She's independent and analytical. Changing her to European and casting a (relatively) unknown helps put us inside Bourne's amnesia. If they cast a better-known actress we'd have this hurdle to get over: what, he doesn't even recognize Michelle Pfeiffer? Think how the finding of Pvt. Ryan would have played if we hadn't known they were looking for the star of "Good Will Hunting." (What do you mean you can't find Matt Damon? Call Ben Affleck!)
  Here's what to worry about. The novel is a third-rate page-turner that has some people, like the dopey guy at IGN, expecting a Bond film ("bring on the babes"). But Liman says "it's their personalities and emotions that are what's most interesting." If Liman's assessment is on target, and it *is* his film, this can take Matt's career to the next level. But there are marketing problems ahead. Someone needs to find a better film to compare this to, and I don't mean "Patriot Games" or "3 Days of a Condor." Both were pleasant films, but neither was about "personalities and emotions," and neither was much of an actor's challenge.
• Batch of goodies from Felicity:
  • Story in Variety that Mark Wahlberg may have to drop out of Oceans 11 due to delays on Apes, and that Matt may do it instead. Let's hope it's a lot better than the original Sinatra flick, which is dreadful. But what a cast they'll have!
  • The NY Times Sunday edition had a stack of stories, including a story on the films celebs/industry types want to see (very selected cuts here):
  • Rob Morrow (actor)
    I can't wait to see "The Legend of Bagger Vance." I love golf. I believe the story is that Bagger Vance shows up out of nowhere and shows Matt Damon how to find the inner strength to win. In a way, it reminds me of the mysticism in "The Natural."
  • Lili Fini Zanuck (producer)
    "The Legend of Bagger Vance" is also something I want to see. Robert Redford is a wonderful filmmaker who is very sensitive to story and performance. And I want to see Will Smith in a dramatic role.
  • Jon Avnet (director)
    I'd like to see Robert Redford's movie, "The Legend of Bagger Vance." I hate golf, but I love Redford. Bob is such a smart guy that whatever he deals with makes an interesting film. And the cast, with Matt Damon and Will Smith, is very good. I'm also interested in "All the Pretty Horses." I optioned Cormac McCarthy's first novel a long time ago, so I'm curious to see how his book has been adapted for the screen.
  • Debra Zane (casting director)
    I also want to see "All the Pretty Horses." I think Matt Damon is a terrific actor, unlike a lot of others of his age group who call themselves actors. And Lucas Black, who played the boy in "Sling Blade," is a teenager now, and I'm curious to see his work.
  • George Tillman Junior (director)
    I'm also looking forward to "The Legend of Bagger Vance." I'm a big fan of Robert Redford, and Will Smith is just great. I heard it's "The Natural" in golf.

• Kathryn of Edinburgh wrote:
  Found this in today's Daily Mail (UK) Hollywood gossip column:
  A STAR IS BOURNE
  Cameras flash, hot television camera lights illuminate Franka Potente - but she's oblivious to them. That's the mark of the star Ms. Potente is about to become. She's already achieved international recognition thanks to the cult success Run, Lola, Run made with her lover, director Tom Tykwer. Now Franka's about to run a few rungs further up the star ladder when she begins filming with Matt Damon in a big budget Hollywood film, The Bourne Identity, shooting next month in Paris and Prague. She was in Venice for the world premiere of her latest collaboration with Tykwer, The Princess and the Warrior, a compelling contemporary comedy about a petty crook who saves a psychiatric nurse from certain death. Of course, they fall in love. Handsome Benno Furmann plays her on-screen partner. In The Bourne Identity, Franka plays a woman who becomes embroiled with a man on the run. "Matt Damom turns up riddled with bullet holes and a microchip embedded under his skin with numbers for a Swiss bank account. He may be a hired assassin. He kidnaps a local girl - me - and because he has amnesia he can't remember how to drive. So I drive him, trying to escape men who want the microchip," a breathless Franka told me.
  ---
  I don't think they'd consider Edinburgh for a location for this type of film, damn it, lol. I also think that, though it's based on a book, the roles would be more interesting had they been reversed - she kidnaps him, riddled with bullet holes and a microchip embedded in her skin. To my mind that would be more interesting as the more I think about it, the more this sounds (of course with the words "big budget" and "Hollywood") like a Patriot Games-type scenario with the obligatory female. Maybe it's just me.
  I agree with Kathryn - her story would be more interesting and more modern-day.
• More finds from Felicity:
  • From the Daily Yomiuiri(?),
    THE PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES--THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
    By Howard Zinn
    Read by Matt Damon
    Harper Collins, six cassettes, 24 dollars
    The story of America told from the bottom up by the pioneering social historian who is determined to disprove Henry Kissinger's lofty dictum that "history is the memory of states." Zinn trawls through sources that traditional historians used to relegate to the edges to tell this compelling and radical narrative. As Zinn says in a preface in his own voice, before the sonorous tones of Matt Damon take over, he favors "creative history" which fights against the historians' collusion in the oppression and injustice that has accompanied the so-called "march of progress" down the ages. At six hours in length, the endless litany of woe does need to be interspersed with lighter fare, but Zinn's unearthing of sources is fantastically interesting, and this amounts to a devastating indictment of American power structures.
  • A Ben article with lots of Matt references, from the NY Times: Ben Affleck Shocker: I Bargained With Devil for Fame By FRANZ LIDZ Steve Goldstein for The New York Times Ben Affleck: He plays a very lucky man in "Bounce," opening next month.
    HOLLYWOOD -- The door of the Hollywood Hills Cafe opens and Ben Affleck appears like an usher remembered from a 3 a.m. awakening in some all-night moviehouse. You sort of expect him to have a flashlight in his hand as he points you toward the back room, a dim alcove with the faintly menacing air of a Capone-era speakeasy. "If you say the code word," he jokes, "you can go in and they'll serve you gin."
    Mr. Affleck fires up a Camel Light with an elbow-cocked rakishness that William Powell might envy. "There are very draconian smoking laws in Los Angeles," he says, sheepishly. "I hate smoking. It's a terrible thing."
    Dressed in dharma-bum blue denim, eyes daring and mischievous, the 28-year-old actor puffs and puffs and ponders his place in the tabloid pantheon. Since wafting into the public consciousness three years ago in "Good Will Hunting" � a film for which he shared a screenwriting Oscar with his co- star and Little League teammate, Matt Damon � Mr. Affleck has emerged as one of Hollywood's major heart flutters. When his new romantic drama, "Bounce," is released on Oct. 13, cardiologists across the country will be on call.
    The supermarket press has spied Mr. Affleck buying out the condoms in a 7- Eleven in Wisconsin, and affianced him to innumerable actresses, some of whom he has even met. His on-again, off-again entanglement with his "Bounce" co-star, Gwyneth Paltrow � this week off � was the subject of more speculation than the last Mideast peace summit meeting.
    "Tabloid stories are what I imagine patients' diaries are like in lunatic asylums," says Mr. Affleck. "They're always about storming out of rooms and falling in love with 17 different people." He inhales deeply, crushes out his cigarette, shreds a paper napkin. Well aware that being too famous is not the sort of personal problem that elicits much sympathy, Mr. Affleck shrugs: "Those of us who have agreed to this Faustian bargain deserve our drubbings at the hands of the Fourth Estate. We entered into the agreement willingly."
    Mr. Affleck gets drubbed all the time � most recently for cracking that Ms. Paltrow is "actually the funny, down-to-earth fat girl in the beautiful girl's body."
    He sweeps the napkin bits into a pile, lights another Camel, exhales deeply: "I hesitate to elaborate for fear of another pounding at the hands of fat girls offended by the assumption that they are either funny or down-to-earth." Laughing gleefully, he rends another napkin. "I apologize. Fat people can be just as aloof and dull as center-of- the-bell-curve-shaped people."
    A 6-foot-3-inch buffed block of granite with a top-heavy build that leaves his arms hanging wide, Mr. Affleck is hardly aloof and anything but dull. Though he seems like the smart-aleck towel-snapper you avoided in gym class, he is, by Mr. Damon's account, "charismatic, loyal, a fantastic storyteller and a great friend who can laugh even when things go terribly, terribly wrong."
    Mr. Affleck, he says, shares those endearing attributes with Dickie Greenleaf, the doomed playboy in "The Talented Mr. Ripley." "Unlike Dickie, Ben has survived," says Mr. Damon, who played that film's murderous Mr. Ripley.
    "So far."
    Ms. Paltrow demurs. "I know what Matt means," she says. "Ben is affable and charming and people are sort of drawn to him. But to me, the movie character he's closer to is Will Hunting: they're both disarmingly quick, fiercely intelligent and, in some ways, underachievers. Though Ben had almost perfect SAT scores in high school, his grades varied wildly depending on his attendance and level of interest." By his own account, Mr. Affleck was often absent and mostly uninterested.
    "There's a huge chasm between the public and the private Bens," Ms. Paltrow says. "In quiet moments, Jocular Ben transforms into Contemplative Ben. He's not vulnerable right away; it takes ages to get to that part of him. I like him in all his incarnations."
    Born in Berkeley, Calif., Mr. Affleck grew up a block and a half from Mr. Damon in Cambridge, Mass. Perhaps inspired by a television doctor-drama, Chris and Tim Affleck named their sons Ben and Casey. (Casey, also an actor, can be forever grateful his parents weren't Marcus Welby fans.)
    Chris taught school, and Tim performed in the Theater Company of Boston with Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall and Blythe Danner, Ms. Paltrow's mother.
    "James Woods told me that my father got him into acting," Ben says. "He said, `I was at M.I.T. and your dad advised me to go for it.' I called Dad, who said, `The way I remember it, I told him he should finish college.' "
    An aspiring playwright, Tim had briefly dropped out of his Rhode Island high school to make a pilgrimage to Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner.
    "It's a famous family story," Ben says. "My dad drove down to Oxford, Miss., got directions at a general store and knocked on Faulkner's door. When a guy appeared, my dad said, `Hey, are you William Faulkner?' The guy, badly hung over, asked, `Are you a writer?' Dad shook his head no, and Faulkner said, `All right then, come on in.' "
    Tim Affleck's life has also been clouded by alcoholism. He bounced from job to odd job � working construction, mopping floors at Harvard � the same career moves Will Hunting later made. Ben's parents divorced when he was 11, and his mother raised the boys on her own. "Ben had a difficult childhood, but not a nightmarish one," Ms. Paltrow says. "He loves both his parents dearly."
    Ben's father stopped drinking in 1990, and he now works as a counselor at an alcohol- rehabilitation center in California. "The most enduring lesson my father taught me is the degree to which it's possible to change your life and patterns," he says with a humility befitting a lifelong Red Sox fan. "It gives me hope that with the right amount of work and discipline, I can address and remedy some of the things I don't like very much about myself."
    Biz, as his friends called him, sprang half- formed into acting. By 14, he had landed roles in everything from a PBS science series to Burger King commercials. "I pushed to do as much as my mother would let me," he says. "She was worried that I wouldn't become a normal person. She wanted me to be a history teacher."
    Ms. Affleck stashed her son's earnings in a college trust fund. Ben had other ideas for the swag, and, at 15, conned bank tellers into allowing him to sign withdrawal chits. "I spent $200 a week on pizza, beer and video games," he recalls. "I'd intercept the monthly bank statements and hide them under my mattress."
    The scheme unraveled one day when Ms. Affleck changed her son's sheets. "I don't know which was more embarrassing," Mr. Affleck says. "Was it the fact that Mom had discovered the bank statements or that she had changed my sheets?"
    Convinced Ben was a crack addict, she demanded he enter a recovery center. He bargained her down to three weeks in Outward Bound. Mr. Affleck remembers floating down the Colorado River as a raft full of troubled teenagers recited their transgressions. "One said, `I assaulted a cop,' " he says. "Another said, `I dealt weed.' Then it was my turn. I said, `I stole money from myself.' "
    To appease his mother, Mr. Affleck enrolled at the University of Vermont. He quit after one semester and headed west to become an actor. His ascent was not unfettered. Typecast as a lamebrained lummox, he couldn't seem to catch a break. He had lots of small parts in lots of small films, including "School Ties" (Mr. Affleck as a bullying preppy), "Dazed and Confused" (Mr. Affleck as a bullying druggie) and "Mallrats" (Mr. Affleck as a bullying bully).
    He made a modest dash to daylight as the sweet-natured, lesbian-loving cartoonist in the 1997 indie hit "Chasing Amy." "I had to find a way to make people think I could be a leading man," he says. "Otherwise, I'd never get the girl."
    Though he never got Amy, he did get an Academy Award for "Good Will Hunting." The back story has become as much a part of Hollywood lore as Lana Turner and the drugstore: in 1992, Mr. Damon wrote a short story for a class at Harvard, abandoned his studies and moved to a two-bedroom house in Los Angeles. One night Mr. Affleck, having been dumped by his girlfriend, showed up with all his belongings and became part of the couch. Together, they turned the short story into a screenplay, then jeopardized the sale by insisting that only they could play the leads. Castle Rock bought the script and dumped it; Miramax swooped in and made it.
    Mr. Damon played Will Hunting, a mathematics prodigy; Mr. Affleck, his wisecracking sidekick, Chuckie. "We always thought of Chuckie as kind of the Mercutio character," Mr. Affleck says. "He got to do all the fun stuff." The actors' friendship infused the film: their best scenes are boyish badinage.
    "The success of the film changed the way Hollywood looked at Ben," Mr. Damon says. "Suddenly, he was the bronzed god in `Armageddon' who flew into outer space to blow up an asteroid. It was hilarious."
    The joke wasn't lost on Mr. Affleck. "I've made mistakes because I was trying to do something different and interesting," he says. "I don't suffer so much from lazy choices as probably overthinking."
    Ms. Paltrow, who first worked with Mr. Affleck in "Shakespeare in Love," suggests he may not be overthinking as much as underestimating. "Ben doesn't take the roles that would challenge him most," she laments, "nor does he appear in the films that would take him closest to his emotional fabric."
    She isn't afraid to name names. Besides "Armageddon," she fingers "Forces of Nature" and Disney's "Pearl Harbor," a $135 million machine-gun wedding of "From Here to Eternity" and "Saving Private Ryan" that will open in May. "Those films don't push Ben, make him expand as an actor," Ms. Paltrow says. "He's capable of so much more."
    It was Ms. Paltrow who persuaded Mr. Affleck to do "Bounce," a film about a swinging ad executive who gives a man his seat on a flight that later crashes, and then falls in love with the victim's widow. "Gwyneth wrassled him into it," says the director, Don Roos. "She brought Ben the script and read it through with him. I think he only signed on because she wanted him to."
    Mr. Roos may be onto something. "At first, I thought my character was too old for me," Mr. Affleck says. "But Gwyneth made a convincing pitch. She said, `I know you can do this, and I want other people to know you can do this.' "
    Mr. Affleck brings more than a melting smile to the adman, Buddy Amaral. And he achieves a close give-and-take with Ms. Paltrow; he actually listens to his co-star, and he listens with the whole tilt of his body. "In their scenes together, Ben really looks like he's in love with Gwyneth," Mr. Roos coos. "I don't know, maybe it's not love. It's definitely not the way he looks at me."
    Or Mr. Damon, for that matter. "We're just friends," Mr. Affleck says, deadpan. "We root for each other and enjoy each other's successes. It's what makes us great business partners." Among their many joint projects are an Internet screenplay contest and an HBO adaptation of Howard Zinn's contrarian book "A People's History of the United States." "We don't plan to act in it," Mr. Affleck says. "Our role is producorial."
    Producorial?
    "It's like professorial except it requires no accreditation, no intelligence and no actual expertise, which is why we qualify."
    Arching his back and waving languidly toward a waitress, Mr. Affleck exposes a smeary splotch on his right shoulder. "I was 16," he says, blushing. "I got a fake ID, went out and got a tattoo of barbed wire. Then I decided I didn't like the tattoo." He had roses etched over the barbed wire. "I decided I didn't like the roses, either." Hence, the splotch.
    "You get to be my age, there's real pressure � family pressure, peer pressure � to start thinking about marriage, kids and all that stuff," he says. "I want to make sure I take that decision very seriously, and not before I'm ready. Whenever I think something's not to be taken lightly, I just look down at my arm and remember how different my frame of mind was when I got the tattoo."
    He sighs and uncorks a self-deprecating laugh. "I'm truly pleased," he says. "At least I didn't go the Charles Manson tattoo- the-forehead route."

Some days all the news comes at once:
• Fall previews in USA Today:
  (in the Oscar preview section) * The Legend of Bagger Vance (Nov. 3). Based on the 1995 novel, Bagger Vance is about a championship golfer and World War I hero (Matt Damon) who returns home to rekindle a romance with a childhood sweetheart (Charlize Theron) and take on two professional golfers in a tournament. His caddy (Will Smith) -- a mysterious and mystical figure -- teaches him a master golf stroke and the secret to mastering life's challenges. Robert Redford (The Horse Whisperer, Quiz Show) directs. Early polling results: As a director, Redford has proved himself capable of capturing the beauty and spirit of a sport, going back to A River Runs Through It. With the combustible combination of Damon, Smith and Theron, there's powerful Oscar potential on the performance front. And with the country's current fascination with Tiger Woods, a movie about golf could be just the ticket for box office success and Oscar glory.
  ***
  New pic also of Matt and Will on the usatoday page
  (The pic is shown above)
• Matt's declared his political views for the first time, from the NY Daily News:
  Gore's Celebrity Program
  Add Matt Damon and Jessica Lange to the list of celebs who will be at next Thursday's fund-raiser for Al Gore at Radio City Music Hall. Damon and Lange join Julia Roberts, Michael Douglas, John Cusack and Ben Affleck � with others sure to follow.
  And that's in addition to the entertainment, which includes Glenn Frey and Don Henley, Bette Midler, Paul Simon, Jon Bon Jovi, Jimmy Buffet, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Sheryl Crow, Macy Gray, Lenny Kravitz and k.d. lang. And I thought the R&B Foundation gala lasted into the wee hours. I would urge Gore not to plan anything too important for the early-morning hours of Sept. 15.
• And from Mr Showbiz, in an article with Tom Twyker and Franka Potente (shades of Penelope here): Potente too is making her English-language debut � opposite Matt Damon, no less � in the Robert Ludlum thriller The Bourne Identity.
  "Matt is wonderful," she says. Was Franke first on the list as Damon's love interest? "No!" she laughs. "I of course thought they should have immediately wanted me, like I do for everything. But actually, it was a very long process; I auditioned again and again."
  While the movie may mark a major Hollywood move, Potente really won't have to leave Europe. "We begin filming in October in Paris and Prague," she says.
• Here's the text from the reel.com story:
  DreamWorks is opening Robert Redford's Legend of Bagger Vance on November 3, having previously slated it for early August. Word is that the golfing fable, about an otherworldly caddie (Will Smith) improving the game of a would-be pro (Matt Damon), is somewhere between likable and touching. I also heard last summer that it was testing a bit soft and needed some touching up. The delay has given Redford, who's known as an obsessive tinkerer anyway, time to do this.
  When it was a Sony release, Billy Bob Thornton's reputedly three-hour All The Pretty Horses seemed stuck in post-production limbo. Now that Miramax has adopted the 1940s Western for U.S. distribution, I'm hearing that Thornton has agreed to cut it down to 135 minutes or so, and that Horses will now open in December.
• From Variety:
  SHERIDAN OUT: Scratch director Jim Sheridan from "The Notebook," New Line's adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks bestseller. Sheridan has formally moved away from that project, to which he had been aligned for nearly two years, writing a couple of drafts and supervising Jeremy Leven on others. Sheridan is now concentrating on Fox 2000's adaptation of the Wally Lamb novel "I Know This Much is True," which he and Matt Damon became interested in recently as a possible collaboration, with Damon playing dual roles of twin brothers. Sheridan also continues to develop a semiautobiographical tale of his migration from Ireland to New York, which recently came back to him after being put in turnaround by Universal.
• From London's Daily Mail today, two stories of interest:
  A short story on Franka Potente, who's appearing at the Venice Film Festival at the moment (good timing!) Yes, she does look feminine and attractive (if like a darker-haired Elisabeth Shue) outside of her running gear. Doesn't say much, but includes "he kidnaps a local girl", so the girl has obviously changed from being a visiting American to a local (filming in Germany?)
  And, in an article about legendary actress Faye Dunaway, and the young actors she admires (mentions Russell Crowe for his sexiness, Chloe Sevigny, Hilary Swank, Meg Ryan: "That Matt Damon is smart, and I think he's going for the parts Dustin Hoffman went for at his age."
  (Noted Felicity: Isn't that funny in a few ways: Matt's met her before, and said how much he admires her, and hasn't he said before that once he became famous, he got offered all the parts Dustin Hoffman rejected years ago!)
  From all of those stories, we can see that the studio waited for Captain Corelli to finish filming to give the film the full star press push; Matt's making his first public appearance in weeks (months?), Franka Potente is another to have fallen for Matt already; and that Jim Sheridan is now focusing on 'I know this much is true' - great news. It will be interesting to see if the Crowe film 'Beautiful mind' is similar in any ways (apart from the obvious - character with schizophrenia).
• Wonderfully useless trivia from msnbc.com about Bagger Vance:
  For what it�s worth in a fast game of trivia, this film � completed during the closing days of December �was the last Hollywood movie to be made in the 20th century.
• From eonline.com on BV:
  The Experts Say...
  Toby: I want to see a movie about golf even less than I want to see a movie about fly-fishing.
  Adam Rifkin: I'm not a huge golf fan, but it looks like the kind of movie where that doesn't matter. It could be good just because Redford is who he is. And a good period piece with an uplifting story could work.
  Anne Thompson: Redford, who is a superb but not always commercial director, swears the movie has plenty of comedy, which should help at the box office. DreamWorks has its sights on Oscars.
  Chris Gore: It's Redford, so it's bound to be good, but the ads make it look like Driving Mr. Caddyshack
  Our Bottom Line...
  We expect Redford and his strong cast to catch Oscar's eye, even if audiences don't show up.

• My thanks to the reader who wrote thus:
  if u go to eonline.com theres a section about fall movies like the top 11 and one is the legend of bagger vance and when u go there u can look at a preview of his movie its about 1min long..its good though... he looks hot
• And Levi wrote:
  I just launched a "Legend of Bagger Vance" website, please check it out @ http://members.aol.com/lholmes11/bagger.html.
• Felicity wrote:
  A new poster for BV, looking remarkably like a close-up of the old poster, is at www.spielberg-dreamworks.com
  And Jeffrey Wells at reel.com has some small bits on BV and ATPH. He calls BV "likable, touching", but that Redford is continuing to "further tweak" it.

• Serveral readers wrote to kindly let me know that the small pic I showed on my site - one with Matt under a pink hat - is really not Matt after all. Okay, I plead guilty. I still think it looks like Matt. But I have been wrong before :-)
• From our ever-reliable Felicity:
  Not much news again.
  • A strange story in the UK Harper's Bazaar. On the cover it promotes: Sexiest party of the year - Matt Damon, Heath Ledger and Gisele RSVP. Inside it's a rather strange story about a party thrown by models (supposedly) in LA, which attracted a whole crowd of actors, including Matt and Ben. It's really funny because there's one shot of Matt in his Panavision outfit (Panavision cap, slouch gear) in between two gorgeously dressed blonde models, holding a beer. Matt looks like he's walked straight off the street, but having fun.
    From the Las Vegas Sun Friday:
    The MAGIC convention brought some celebrities to Las Vegas this week. On Wednesday night Mike Tyson, rapper Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige, NBA hoopster Ron Harper and various members of the Wu-Tang Clan all showed up at the Harley-Davidson Cafe to celebrate the launch of the new Ruff Ryders urban streetwear line called the Dirty Denim collection. More than 1,100 invited guests packed the house to party.
    Over at the Hard Rock on Tuesday night, Matt Damon, Eddie Furlong, Vince Vaughn and John Favreau flocked to the pool to celebrate fashion-meister Hugo Boss' stylings.
  • An earlier item from www.movies.ign.com re Bourne:
    Bourne to Spy
    Matt Damon to star in big-budget spy flick?
    June 20, 2000
    In disguise and off-key.
    Normally a flick with Matt Damon doesn�t excite us (okay, the Planet of the Apes rumor got us a little excited, but that was the apes). But after reading Damon's new spy flick, that may just have to change. According to the The Hollywood Reporter, Damon is in negotiations with Universal to star in Bourne Identity, based on Robert Ludlum�s spy thriller novel and directed by Doug Liman (Swingers, Go). This movie sounds like a keeper, with the story involving an amnesiac named Bourne whose bullet-ridden body is found flushed out on the Mediterranean Sea. We can barely remember who we are on the best of days without the aid of a caffeine injection, so you can imagine what Bourne will be going through.
    Bourne can�t remember whether he was good or evil, but he does know that he is the target of the CIA, an assassin and a few other folks with guns a-blazing. Whoa. Looks like Matt should have kept right on floating! Damon, as Bourne, will take on several identities to escape danger, and finds help in a yet-to-be-cast female lead (bring on the babes!) Spies, guns, murders, CIA, assassins, at least one hottie and the director of Swingers? Sounds like a good formula to us, and we're looking forward to filming beginning this fall.
  • And if you want another look at the Bourne Identity script review, it's also at the ign site.

Old news: "reviews" of sneak previews of ATPH and Bagger Vance are now on the rottenTomato site:
• Bagger Vance
• All The Pretty Horses
• And an ATPH message posted on the yahoo boards:
  I worked with Matt on this movie. I was the stable-boy in one scene with just Me, Matt, and of course the horse!!! It's gonna be a great movie!!!!

• A big Matt fan reported a nice pic of Matt and Henry Thomas, both on horsebacks, from ATPH, is currently in Entertainment Weekly.
• Felicity again -
  • There's another pic of Matt on a horse (they all start to look the same) in this week's Heat mag, in a small item about Oscar buzz/anticipated movies.
    An item darkhorizons pointed to an ifuse.com interview with Doug Liman, basically confirming Franka Potente's involvement in Bourne Identity and talking about the film. I can't copy it, but here's a summary:
    * starts shooting in a month and a half
    * Liman interviewed a number of actresses before choosing her - says she "brought a multitude of emotions and energies to the table"
    * Liman says it will be " a very big studio film. But the script is smart as s***. We're shooting all over the world but the action is very character-based. It's about two people on the lam, and it's their personalities and emotions that are what's most interesting."
    * Writes the author of the piece "after a read-through, we can confirm the quality of the script... Damon's character is an intriguing creation - a man whose whole life is washed out, yet every person he comes across wants to kill him. He's paranoid and confused and in grave danger - and we're compelled by him. The script is interesting in that it's full of action, yet the lead characters are fully developed, rare in action movies these days. The paranoia and chaos of the story line suits Liman's style well, with its use of neon colours and handheld cameras."
    * He says he'll incorporate his own style, despite it being a Paramount movie (Billy Bob flashback).
  • And who won at blackjack? From the NY Post:
    Mr. chips
    NOT since Frank Sinatra prowled Las Vegas have we heard a tale of titanic tipping to compare with what Ben Affleck did last weekend. A source tells PAGE SIX that after Affleck won a whopping $140,000 playing blackjack at the Hard Rock with buddy Matt Damon, he promptly gave away all his earnings to casino's staffers. "He tipped out all of his chips to waitresses, dealers, concierges, bell guys - it was amazing," says our spy. "Some people were getting $5,000, some people were getting more." The affable actor is currently in Europe finishing "Pearl Harbor," which also stars supermodel James King.

As usual, Felicity brought in the big news:
Potente clocks 'Bourne Identity'
German actress Franka Potente ("Run Lola Run") has been cast as the female lead opposite Matt Damon in Universal Pictures' "The Bourne Identity" for director Doug Liman. The project is slated to start shooting in October in Paris and Prague, Czech Republic. Based on the first of Robert Ludlum's spy thriller trilogy, "Bourne" follows the mysterious Bourne, who awakens in a doctor's office with amnesia after his bullet-ridden body is flushed out of the Mediterranean Sea. The spy's buried past leads him to CIA connections, a world of murderous conspirators and a would-be assassin who wants him dead. Bourne must assume an identity to match wits with his enemy, and no one can help him except the woman (Potente) who once wanted to escape from him.
*** What's funny is that Potente's last role was with Penelope Cruz in Blow. We probably all saw 'Run Lola Run', but we've got no idea if she can act, or what she's going to be like as a female lead. As described by Variety: Potente runs with Damon in "Bourne"
Updated 12:52 AM ET August 28, 2000
By Michael Fleming
NEW YORK (Variety) - Hot off her potent performance in "Run Lola Run," Franka Potente will be on the run again, this time with Matt Damon in "The Bourne Identity," director Doug Liman's adaptation of the Robert Ludlum bestseller.
The Universal project concerns a man who washes ashore bullet-riddled and without his memory, racing to elude assassins and recover from his amnesia. Potente's character is kidnapped by Bourne but warms to him, even though he fears he may have been an assassin before. While on the run, they develop a love relationship reminiscent of the one in "Three Days of the Condor."
Shooting begins in Paris and Prague at the end of October.
Since breaking out in the German thriller "Run Lola Run" as the redhead who races through the city streets to find $20,000 in 20 minutes to save her boyfriend, Potente has starred in the Ted Demme-directed New Line drama "Blow" as the gold-digging girlfriend of drug dealer George Jung (Johnny Depp) and reteamed with "Run Lola Run" director Tom Tykwer in "The Princess and the Warrior."

Click on a column

Local boys making 'Good' a Boston Herald article from the GWH days
The Advocate (12/99) interview by Brendan Lemon.
Some of my personal favorite pictures of Matt
The Talented Mr.Ripley page
The All the Pretty Horses page
The Bagger Vance page
Matt at Fenway Park for the 1999 Major League Baseball All Stars
The Details magazine article, as appeared in the London Telegraph.
Janel Maslin's NY Times Review of GWH , in which she called Matt "very much the supernova".
An article about pre-GWH videos of Matt Damon/
Archive of Past Matt Columns

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