from the silence from the night comes a distant lullabye cry, remember that first cry your brother standing by and loved both loved beloved sons of mine sing a lullabye mother is close by innocent eyes such innocent eyes envy stole your brother's life came home murdered peace of mind left you nightmares on the pillow sleep now soul, surrendering your sould the heart of you not whole for love but love what toll cast into the dark branded with the mark, of shame of Cain from the garden of God's light to a wilderness of night sleep now sleep now.
Boston Herald, 2/1
Inside Track
he nearly clipped Matt's career
by Gayle Lee and Laura Raposa
Looking back, Boston actor David Brezniak realizes the advice he
gave a young Matt Damon was Shear Madness: ``This is a tough business,
kid,'' he said. ``And you'll never win an Academy Award.''
Ha!
Brezniak, who joined scores of fellow ``Shear Madness''
cast members last night at a 20th anniversary bash at Legal Sea
Foods, said Matt's dad, Kent Damon - who was a buddy of his - begged
him to talk his young son out of an acting career many years ago.
``Kent said, `My kid is crazy about show business. You've got to
talk him out of it,' '' said Brezniak, who has appeared off and on as
the long-running whodunit's resident detective.
``Kent said to Matt, `You want to end up like Dave?' ''
Heaven forbid.
Because, of course, Matt did win an Academy Award -
for writing the screenplay to ``Good Will Hunting.''
And he's likely to get a second Best Actor nomination for
``The Talented Mr. Ripley'' when the Academy makes
its big announcement later this month.
``But he wasn't the only one. I talked to lots of kids about
show business over the years,'' said Brezniak. ``Of course,
only one of them won an Oscar.''
Tough break, Dave!
1/30/2000
Thu 3 8:00 PM (PST) The Good Old Boys TNN Sat 5 2:10 AM (PST) Entertainers KABCNote, these times are all Pacific Standard Time.
JOAN: I am here with the amazing Mr. Ripley, Matt Damon. How good to see you! MATT: Hi! Thanks! Good to see you, too. JOAN: (Pointing to the tuxedo) This is getting a lot of wear. MATT: (Laughing) Yeah! I know. Well, it's still free, so that's O.K.. JOAN: Your work is getting better and better and better. Were you ever worried, and I don't mean this the wrong way, that you were going to be a one-shot wonder? MATT: No. Yeah. Well, that's actually a very good question. I think a lot of pressure is brought to bear on you after... JOAN: Because your first one was such a success... MATT: So Ben and I both worry about that, I think. JOAN: Not now. MATT: No, no. We just both keep kind of working as hard as we can. We both like to do it so... JOAN: The Amazing Mr. Ripley was a fabulous movie. How did you do the research, I mean, to be a sociopath? To be charming and lovely. Did you actually read books or did you just kind of listen to the director? MATT: I listened to the director. He wrote a great script and it was the kind of role that just doesn't come around often, and because the script was so fantastic I just talked to him a lot. JOAN: Is there going to be a sequel? MATT: No, no. JOAN: Little joke! Little joke! Nice to see you. MATT: All right. Good to see you. JOAN: And congratulations!I saw the articles in EW and People, too. I was also gratified to see that in their Box Office Winners and Losers article, Ripley is considered a definite winner.
1/23/2000
(Pacific Standard Time) Sun 23 8:30 AM John Grisham's `The Rainmaker' HBO Sun 23 6:30 PM John Grisham's `The Rainmaker' HBO Mon 24 12:00 PM Making of `The Rainmaker' HBO Mon 24 11:35 PM JAY LENO NBC Fri 28 1:30 PM Making of `Saving Private Ryan' HBO Fri 28 2:00 PM John Grisham's `The Rainmaker' HBO Fri 28 8:00 PM Saving Private Ryan HBO
From [email protected] Fri Jan 21 07:20:48 PST 2000 Article: 194740 of rec.arts.movies.current-films Subject: Re: THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.current-filmsYes, I say excellent movie! Beautifully set and shot, great performances (except Gwyneth, not much to work with) and a strange but palpable suspense. It's not the kind of suspense where you wonder who will get it, or what will happen, but more about what lengths and depths Damon's character will go to to preserve his lies. The film also is a lot more linear and accessible than Minghella's other highly acclaimed effort, The English Patient. I was really intrigued by the way the movie made Damon's character into a protagonist, albeit an amoral one. I was really routing (sic) for him at times. But the movie also does a great job of building a sense of frustration, rather than tension, in the suspensful theme. Everytime Damon digs himself one foot deeper, I couldn't help thinking what he could have done to avoid or mitigate the situation.
"You want to play the American?" You wear your trousers with a coat of arms on the behind......... a small coppola (typical Sicilian cap) with its peak lifted up you go swinging for Tuleto(it must be a place, I guess..) as a bully,since you want people to notice you ! you want to play the American, the American... listen to me, what's the use of it? you want to live fashionably, but if you drink "whisky and Soda", then you feel dizzy you dance "rock'n' roll"; you play" baseball".but the money for Camel,who's gonna give it to you?? Mamma's bag... You want to play the American,American,but you were born in Italy!!! listen to me there's nothing to do...Okay Neapolitan you want to play the American you want to play the American How can you know the one who loves you if you speak with her half American?? when you're making love under the moon,how can it cross your mind and say"I love you"??? you want to play the American you want to play the American
You dance to rock & roll and play baseball,
sure, but when you need money for Camels,
where do you go? to Mamma's pocketbook.
So you want to make like an American,
but you were born in Italy.
Seems to me there's nothing to be done.
(OK, you're Neapolitan anyway.)"
That reference to being Neapolitan is an extra joke --
you're not even a regular Italian.
The reference to Mamma's pocketbook says you
can't afford to be American.
The second verse is more obscure but does mention that "you talk half-American, when you make love under the moon and at the high point say 'I love you.'"
Puorte 'e cazune cu nu stemma arreto...
Na cuppulella cu 'a visiera aizata...
Passe scampanianno pe' Tuleto, comm'a nu guappo, pe' te f� guard�!...
Tu vuo' f� ll'americano, 'mericano, 'mericano...
Siente a me chi t''o ffa f�?
Tu vuoi vivere alla moda,
ma se bevi "Whisky and Soda",
po' te siente 'e disturb�...
Tu abballe 'o "Rock and Roll",
tu giochi a "Base Ball..."
Ma 'e solde p''e Ccamel, chi te li d�?
La borsetta di mamm�!?
Tu vu�' f� ll'americano, mericano, mericano,
ma si' nato in Italy!
Siente a me: Nun ce sta niente 'a f�...
Okay, Napolitan!
Tu vu�' f� ll'american! Tu vu�' f� ll'american!
Comme te p� cap� chi te v�' bene,
si tu lle parle miezo americano?
Quanno se fa ll'ammore sott''a luna,
comme te vene 'ncapa 'e d� "I love you"?
Tu vuo' f� ll'americano, 'mericano, 'mericano...
.......................
Nisa - Carosone
1/14/2000
The IMDB reviews have gotten more and more favorable on Matt's performance. I have a sense that this is so with the movie-loving people in general. I don't hear anymore about who's more gorgeous than whom (and maybe I just don't look for that kind of talk), but the praise on Matt's acting seems to be getting louder each day.
I also heard that Ripley is still doing well, at #2 in the B.O. yesterday.
In the latest Movieline - a b&w pic (not new, but nice) of Matt is in there. There's also a blurb about Bagger Vance. And in a rather spicy interview of James Wood, guess who he named as an actress that has caught his eyes? None other than Ms. Ryder, said to have a "supernatural beauty" by Mr. Wood. Watch out, Matty!
1/12/2000
Monday, January 3, 2000
Anything goes ... for the talented Mr. Damon
By Bob Strauss, Film Writer
Apparently, Matt Damon will do anything to be a movie star.
We already sort of knew that. The 29-year-old, Boston-bred actor is justly
famous for co-writing the Oscar-winning screenplay "Good Will Hunting" with
his high school buddy Ben Affleck and insisting on starring in the subsequent
hit movie. Before that, during the struggling-actor years, he starved himself
to what resembled living death for a small but memorable role as a drug
addict in "Courage Under Fire."
But for his latest, Golden Globe Award-nominated title performance as "The
Talented Mr. Ripley," Damon went beyond the call of duty. The diet this time
took off 25 pounds; not as severe as that "Courage" crash, except that he had
to maintain it in, of all the tempting places on earth, Italy.
"Oh my God, poor Matt," says Gwyneth Paltrow, the actor's friend and "Ripley"
co-star. "You don't understand, it was so sad. Matt is on this diet and we're
all in Italy eating pizza and pasta and bruschetta and, like, all this stuff.
All he has is a steamed chicken breast and vegetables every night, and that's
it."
But that wasn't all.
"We made merciless fun of him for the three days that we shot the first beach
scene," Paltrow reveals. "Not only was Matt so skinny and in a wool,
lime-green Speedo, but they had painted his body this grayish-white. We all
looked so tan and healthy, I just said, 'Matt, you are the bravest person I
have ever seen in my life!' He was just, 'I was sort of the golden boy, I had
this great career and now, this is the end of it.' "
Not hardly. With Oscar buzzing about "Ripley" and two prestigious items in
the can for the new year (Billy Bob Thornton's adaptation of Cormac
McCarthy's acclaimed "All the Pretty Horses" and Robert Redford's period golf
parable "The Legend of Bagger Vance," with Will Smith), Damon's career seems
more secure than ever.
But playing the deceptively waifish, eager-to-please Ripley -- a poor young
man who falls in with a crowd of wealthy American expatriates in 1950s Italy
and proves capable of lying, changing identities and much worse in order to
maintain his new-found status -- was, according to Damon, a humbling reality
check.
"It's certainly a feeling of having your nose pressed against the window, or
going to the park and just watching all of the other kids play," he says,
comparing Ripley's desire for the good life to his own pre-stardom
experience. "That's a tough time, and it's something that hundreds of
thousands of people are out there doing today, feeling that their talent is
not being recognized by the industry, having all of this creative energy and
nowhere to put it."
While Damon has capitalized on his window of opportunity to work nonstop for
the last several years in one exciting film project after another (Steven
Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," "Rounders" with Edward Norton, the
controversial and surprisingly popular religious satire "Dogma"), Ripley
applies his newfound talent for elaborate deception and split-second cover-up
tactics to much more nefarious ends.
But Damon's substantial accomplishment in the film, which was adapted and
directed by "The English Patient's" Oscar-winning Anthony Minghella from a
classic crime novel by Patricia Highsmith, is to keep the calculating
sociopath both vulnerable and sympathetic.
"Being constantly aware of what Ripley knows, and what he knows other people
know, was the real meat of the thing," Damon says. "You can see the wheels
turning, and that's the fun of watching him do this juggling act. Yet he
feels remorse at the same time for what's happened and, I guess, the way this
kind of purgatory is imminent for him. I think the audience can see where
he's heading sooner than he can.
"I always felt that if Anthony put the camera in the right place, then the
audience would understand why Ripley is doing what he's doing. Then the power
of it becomes implicating the audience at the end, like watching them go, 'Oh
man, I was really rooting for that guy. What does that say about me?' That's
really what you want people to come away with, along with the basic argument
of self-annhilation: At what cost does it come to put on somebody else's
skin?"
While acknowledging the parallels between his own, self-made Cinderella
success and Ripley's, Damon is quick to point out a key difference.
"Thank God, in terms of getting wherever I've gotten, that I didn't do it at
somebody else's expense," he says. "That would be the most terrifying thing,
and it's not at all hard to do in this business. There are certainly people
who, in some pursuit of something that they project happiness onto, end up
just stepping on people to get there. I can't imagine the emptiness of the
moment when it's achieved that way."
To help keep the surreal effect of burgeoning superstardom manageable, Damon
stays closely connected to longtime friends and family, and nurtures the bond
with Affleck, the pal he knows best who is going through essentially the same
thing he is. They recently produced their first film together, a romantic
comedy starring Denise Richards called "The Third Wheel." Damon has also done
a pretty effective job of keeping his two-year romance with actress Winona
Ryder out of the media spotlight; an uncharacteristic but necessary step,
he's found.
"I still talk, obviously, about my personal life with the people who I'm
close with and I trust," explains Damon, whose breakup with "Good Will"
co-star Minnie Driver became a tabloid circus. "It was a quick change; I
realized, once that happened a couple of years ago, how not to go about it."
While some changes have been made, and the nonstop process of wearing someone
else's skin in a breakless work pattern could conceivably prove unhealthy,
Damon isn't all that different now from the kid who would do anything to get
into the movie game. The actor's motivation, in fact, remains exactly the
same.
"All of my drive comes from my love of movies," he says. "I knew it wasn't
easy from the first time I worked on one. I knew that the hours were long and
that it was this hard, strange orchestration of 100 different people doing 20
different jobs with 20 different visions coming together to make one. It
seems incredible that any movie's good, but I've just always loved them and I
don't mind working hard on them. It's what I enjoy doing about this."
Just got these off the Associated Press site: 1. "Stuart Little," Sony, $16 million, 2,900 locations, $5,525 average, $79.4 million, three weeks. 2. "The Talented Mr. Ripley," Paramount, $12.4 million, 2,309 locations, $5,365 average, $39.8 million, two weeks. 3. "Toy Story 2," Disney, $12.3 million, 3,102 locations, $3,979 average, $208.8 million, seven weeks. 4. "The Green Mile," Warner Bros., $11.8 million, 2,875 locations, $4,096 average, $76.7 million, four weeks. 5. "Any Given Sunday," Warner Bros., $11.7 million, 2,505 locations, $4,654 average, $45.8 million, two weeks Yes, though Ripley had about the same numbers as in the estimate, note that it's SECOND instead of fifth. Good going!
Sun Jan 2 02:30A E!- Entertainment Television Sun Jan 2 02:00P E!- Entertainment Television Tue Jan 4 12:30P E!- Entertainment Television Fri Jan 7 08:00A E!- Entertainment Television Mon Jan 10 02:30P E!- Entertainment Television Wed Jan 12 01:00P E!- Entertainment TelevisionAnd there's another Mr Ripley special on VH1, the show is called Hollywood and Vine, and it'll play on Wed Jan 5 07:30P VH1- Video Hits 1
Don't forget that E! is supposed to show Ripley behind-the-scene this Sunday 1-2-2000.
Wrote Felicity:
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| URL: | http://mattdamon.cjb.net |
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