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

• Cass wrote:
  I've translated an article from (a newspaper "Clarin" in Argentina):
  Matt Damon (and Casey Affleck) are going to film in Salta
  Matt Damon and Gus Van Sant, the star and the director od Good Will Hunting are goint to come to Salta (Argentina) to make a film starting 8 th. of june. The movie will be called Jerry, and has to be finished in 20 days, in order to be ready before the actor's strike in Hollywood. The film is going to cost 7 millions dollars. About the plot, we know it's about the adventures of two friends in a desert. The other star will be Casey Affleck, Ben's brother and Damon's old friend.
  
• Kelly wrote:
  Has anyone sent in any more information about a Matt Damon cameo in Pearl Harbor? I went and saw the movie but didn't see Matt anywhere.
  (No, No more word on it. If Matt does show up in it, it must have been hard to spot.)
• I received this note from the writer who interviewed Matt:
  I recently saw on your site that you had posted the interview I had wrote entitled "Behind the Scenes With Matt Damon." It's fine that Allison submitted my article to your site, but i was wondering if you could change me from being "one of four grandsons to Saul Zaentz" to just his great nephew (which I really am.) If you want to put, my father, Paul Zaentz, is also a producer who has worked on 'The English Patient," ""At Play In The Fields of The Lord," etc. and also "The Talented Mr. Ripley", where on the set I first met Matt.
  I also wanted to say that if you haven't met him, Matt is one of the nicest people I have encountered, not only as a celebrtiy, but as a human being. He is a very generous, down to earth person who is easy to get along with and I had a great time chatting with him on the set.
• Val as well as a couple others (thank you all!) sent in this news article :
  Hollywood turf wars break out. Excerpt:
  Patrick Whitesell's departure from CAA in February fanned the flames of rivalry, as did the accompanying defections of Whitesell clients Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore and Matt Damon. What enticed them is the same carrot Endeavor dangled in front of many top agents and clients perceived to be dissatisfied with CAA: an alternative to that agency's greatest strength and most prominent liability -- its sheer size.
• And a followup note from the Big Matt Fan:
  Anyone see that IFC commercial Matt did a few years ago with Edward Norton? In it, Norton tells Matt something along the lines of, "That's the problem with CAA. They steer you away from all the art projects." At the time, Matt was with CAA. Norton was with Endeavor.
  I think Matt followed Whitesell out of loyalty. He was, after all, the guy who got "Good Will Hunting" sold at a time when Matt and Ben were unknown both as writers and actors. I don't know if Endeavor will be better or worse for Matt. As the article notes, there are advantages to belonging to a major agency like CAA. However, Endeavor certainly seems to be making a name for itself.
• Reggie and a few others also sent in this article:
  Anderson Jones reports on Ben's potential solo writing career at eonline.com.
• And thank you to Brain (email name) for this note:
  Hi here are some school ties stills off ebay. Matt in a few of them.
  Also it was in a magazine,today saying : German tourists stopped at a gas station and asked a guy whether he knew where any famous peoples houses were. The guy said he doesn't know the area very well, and the tourists left. The guy turned out to be none other than Matt Damon!

• Sent in by the Big Matt Fan:
  AP Entertainment
  Damon Keeps Low Profile in Greece
  MYKONOS, Greece (AP) -- Matt Damon plays a man with amnesia in his next movie, but he's not forgotten about his star power.
  Damon and the rest of the cast of ''The Bourne Identity'' are trying to keep a low profile on the holiday island of Mykonos to avoid a crush of fans. Still, word leaked out and photos of the Oscar winner appeared in celebrity pages of Greek newspapers Wednesday.
  The movie is based on a Robert Ludlum novel about an international terrorist who is shot in the head and loses his memory. The movie also stars Julia Stiles and Clive Owen.
  (Several others also sent in this same item - thanks.)
  Damon won an Oscar with his best friend Ben Affleck for the screenplay of 1997's ''Good Will Hunting.''
  Here's a small blurb from Dark Horizon.
  The Bourne Identity: The Greek press reports that Matt Damon and Franka Portente have been on the Greek island of Mykonos for a 5-day stint on this film version of Ludlum's spy thrller.

• And from Felicity:
  Remember the eonline movie scoop story at the time of the Greenlight party (March?) which said that Matt had one week of re-shoots left for Bourne in Paris. Somehow it's been moved to Greece (and on a major tourist island close to the start of summer), but it was planned.
  Greek newspapers look to be a nightmare to translate, but watch www.athensnews.gr(weekly updates, nothing there at the moment).
  (H)ere's something to check out - national English newspapers: http://www.greece.gr/GENERAL/newsroom.htm.
  I still can't find anything from the Greek papers, but here's a snippet on Jerry from Ben, taken from an interview with a London paper:
  As for the promised follow-up writerly effort, Affleck has written nothing since. "The window you have as an actor is narrow," he says. "As a consequence of struggling to be an actor for so many years, you feel this compulsion to automatically keep working. Although I was reading over something that my brother Casey and Matt Damon are working on and it got me all interested in writing again."

• Daniel Holmes wrote:
  I'm having a contest to win an autographed color 8 X 10 photo of Matt Damon. Runners up will win a copy of "Talented Mr. Ripley" on VHS. Just visit http://members.aol.com/lholmes11/mdamon.htmlto enter.
  Thanks,

• And, in response to the question "Why Greece?", the Big Matt Fan wrote:
  Bourne is fished out of the Mediterranean near the beginning of the film, so it makes sense to shoot on a Greek island. Thoughts on this latest news:
  1) Are they doing re-shoots? Not a great sign at this late date.
  2) Could they be doing publicity shots? In the book, Bourne and the doctor are the only major characters at that point. However, the article says the "cast" was there.
  3) This is news? Though I'm always glad to read more about Matt, this bit of celebrity spotting seems a rather trivial matter for the news wire. Could this be some advance publicity? Or is this really just a slow day in entertainment news?
  4) Love to see the photos, though. Wouldn't you?
  What do you think?
  BTW: Here's the cover of the latest edition of the book (see right).

• As we suspected, Matt could be there in an obscure cameo. One review said: The bright note in the film, for me anyway, were the number of cameos. Including Matt Damon. Who plays a young private about to ship out to Normandy.
• Also, some posters on the View Askew web-board is upset that someone on KROQ radio called Ben the less talented friend of Matt Damon.
• If anyone wants it, the chat with Ben Affleck is now available as a transcript at here.
  One question of relevance, which confirms the Argentina report:
  nicholebowers: What's your brother Casey up to?
  ben_affleck_chat: Casey is doing Oceans 11 right now alongside such little-known actors as
  ben_affleck_chat: Julia Roberts
  ben_affleck_chat: Brad Pitt
  ben_affleck_chat: and Matt Damon.
  ben_affleck_chat: And George Clooney.
  ben_affleck_chat: And he and Matt are going to go do a movie with Gus Van Sant.
  ben_affleck_chat: They're shooting in Argentina in a couple of weeks.
  ben_affleck_chat: The movie is tentatively called "The Jerry" or "The Big Jerry".
  And:
  thejizosh: Ben, whats up with affleck.com??
  ben_affleck_chat: Ran into some server problems
  ben_affleck_chat: so we took it down while building liveplanet.
  ben_affleck_chat: There's some weird thing on there now.
  ben_affleck_chat: it's not me.
  ben_affleck_chat: I don't know how they squatted on there.
  ben_affleck_chat: It'll be back up in a month or two.
  ben_affleck_chat: It's some weird gay Matt Damon thing.
  ben_affleck_chat: I left it up there b/c I thought it was funny.
  

Click on a link

Still photos from Good Will Hunting.
USA Weekly November 2000 article, "Ace of Clubs" yy Craigh Barboza.
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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