Matt Damon
Matt Damon's light-up-the-room grin, camera-grabbing good looks, cocky
blue-collar charm and ferocious concentration all conspire to make him
a rougher-hewn, grittier Tom Cruise. He's Cruise by way of Jimmy
Cagney. With a gaze inner-lit by Boston bar neon and a stride quick with the rhythm of work boots down ethnic neighborhood streets, his screen
persona shows darker, more openly ambiguous undercurrents
than Cruise's, butit's toughened and strengthened by a similar inborn
wisdom. Damon seeems to realize how much his authenticity owes to the
angst, urgency and insular humor of the Old Neighborhood. No matter the
actual truth about his birth and upbringing, the camera reads him as the
hunky Dead End Kid that the homecoming queen from the good side of the
town wants to take to the prom.
It's a boon to Damon's career mythology that he got plucked out of relative
obscurity and dropped into the Cinderella spot by Francis Ford Coppola. The director who delivered to us the young Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and James Caan
could have had his pick of the litter to play The Rainmaker's idealistic,
up-by-the-bootstraps young attorney, but he chose a rookie, and Damon came
through for him with an assured and unforced performance. Especially remarkable
for an actor so new and raring to go was how Damon knew precisely when to take
a backseat in his scenes with older pros like Jon Voight and Teresa Wright.
But it was Damon's own creation, Good Will Hunting, that brought him into focus
as an actor and a star. How rare and refreshing that Damon and his lifelong
buddy, Ben Affleck, created a script that neither condescends to, nor
canonizes, working stiffs. What's more, try to name other actors of any
age or era who've had the talent and perspective to write themselves roles
that cut to the core of what makes them unique. The camera loves Damon's
fresh-faced Americanism enough to practically share a BarcaLounger and a
Bud with him, but his rle invited the lens to probe the emotional
black-and-blues under the kid's bravado, to observe the rage under the
essential niceness.
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Damon's Will hadn't yet reached the screen when Steven Spielberg
chose him to play the soldier Tom Hanks goes looking for in Saving Private Ryan. Speilberg had probably responded to the emaciated, drug-addled,
guilt-wracked Gulf War grunt Damon played in Courage Under Fire. In
fact, the sprung demons that danced behind Damon's gaze in that performance
may have been what convinced Spielberg that this young actor would be able
to pump life into the woefully underwritten role of Ryan. As it turned out,
the director was only half right, but playing the object of the harrowing
search in Saving Private Ryan nevertheless hined up Damon's
golden-boy status.
Anything coming after the double play of Good Will Hunting and
Saving Private Ryan would have been anti-climatic for Damon. The
respectable but self-inflated Rounders didn't hurt him or help him.
His soul seemed life-times too young to play a gambling addict, but his choice
of a rle that would have been, in another era, prime sirloin for Roert
Ryan or John Garfield showed energy and desire, qualities that are
characteristics of his approach to his career. Two other crucial qualities
Damon has are decisiveness and a taste for risk, both of which are evident
in his upcoming projects. In Kevin Smith's nose-thumbing parody of
established religion, Dogma , he and Ben Affleck will play fallen
angels to Alanis Morissette's God. Here, one suspects, is a movie that
has to be awfully good not to be just plain awful, but Damon jumped at the
chance to do it. The silker, pansexual sociopath he'll play in
The Talented Mr. Ripley is a daunting stretch, but one suspects
all it took was a long look at director Anthony Minghella's work on
The English Patient before he leapt in. Nor did he hesitate over
the opportunity to be directed by Billy Bob Thornton in the part of a Holden
Caulfield-meets-Gary Cooper cowboy in All The Pretty Horses.
Damon's willingness to mix the arty, the classy, the daring and
the mainstream in his choice of roles shows a remarably balanced approach to the
game of career longevity. That and the sheer quantity of work he's eager
to do sets him aprt from most of Young Hollywood, which tends toward a
paralyzing love-hate relationship with the commercial realities of film-making.
Having brought off the miracle of getting the moviegoing world to fall in love
with him, Damon is now ambitious enought to want to show how much of him
there is. The best indication of the depth that will keep him in front of us
for the long term is his determination to deal in the greater purposes of
acting: he's intent on showing us who he is as a way of showing us who we are.
(My note: Well written article. I like the insightful assessment of Matt: "Cruise by way of Cagney"; Matt's performance in "The Rainmaker"; why he was so good in GWH; the takes on both "Ryan" and "Rounders"; as well as what sets Matt apart - these are all dead-on. One minor disagreement: I am not so sure that Matt would have taken on Dogma had it not been for Kevin Smith - Matt felt indebted to Smith, who was instrumental in bringing GWH to the attention of Harvey Weinstein of Miramax; the rest is history.)
A set of five small pictures accompany the title page of the article, each from a film of one the subjects. Matt's pic is the one with him and Gretchen Mol facing each other in "Rounders". And then next to the title page is a full page pic of Matt, one we have seen before: A full-faced take of a grinning Matt on dark background. On full display are his pearly whites, his cupid lips, and his dimples. He is looking slightly downward, and two fingers of his lifted hand are touching his chin. The large, gleaming face of his watch and the leather watch band stand out in the right bottom corner of the photo.
The article goes on to present four others. The interesting thing, as one reader of this site wrote, is that at least three are/were directly involved with Matt as boy or girl friends, and, furthermore, in all but one of the description of these four the writer refers to Matt. My take: This writer is very high On Matt. Understanably, right?
Here are my take on the rest of the article, in the order as they appear in the article:
Winona Ryder: Interestingly this is the only one where Matt is not mentioned, even in a sentence like this "One has to wonder where Ryder might find her (Spencer) Tracy [Winnona is compared to Kathy Hepburn in the article]. Could it be Matthew McConaughey? Ben Affleck? Edward Norton? Tom Cruise?" The sentence cries out for Matt! The omission seems significant to me.
Leonardo DiCaprio
The writer started by saying that there's been resentment towards DiCaprio
since the huge success of Titanic and went on to defend Leo by
citing his perfornaces in This Boy's Life ("flat out stole the
movie from Robert De Niro"), "Gilbert Grapes, Basketball Diaries.
Then he made this statement which is a put-down on Matt: "He let both
The Talented Mr. Ripley and All the Pretty Horses go to
Matt Damon." It's been widely rumored that Matt only got the "Horses"
role when Leo sat on the fence, holding out for his $20M asking price,
for too long; this, however, has been firmly denied by Billy Bob Thorton
(see my Pretty Horses page). Furthermore, in the article on Matt which
appeared last year in Details, it was said that Minghella does
not deny that Tom Cruise was the only other actor considered for the
Ripley role.
The writer's take on DiCaprio is ambiguous. The last paragraph seems to
question his choice of recent roles, and the conclusion seems to be that
on the trail of Titanic's success, Leo will have a hard time balancing
between his giant price tag and good roles.
Ben Affleck
As can be expected, this narrative is sprinkled with Matt's reference
throughout. Ben is compared to Steve McQueen, and the writer points
out that Ben seems to thrive on the "variety" in the roles that he
take on. In the final paragraph, this is what is said:
Claire Danes
Here Matt is mentioned briefly with Danes' role in The Rainmaker.
A great article all in all. Good to see that Matt is given top billing in an ensemble article like this (and also in the USA Today article which appeared on 2/12/99 as well). Matt is shaping up to be the leading man among the younger actors (yes, I realize there are others like Ed Norton, but they are not written up in the media).
Let's keep our fingers crossed.