Matt Damon is still looking for his identity as the third and most likely final film of the Bourne franchise kicks off. Picking up right where the action of the second movie left off, The Bourne Ultimatum once again puts its star through the wringer as Damon continues to kick some butt while trying to get to the truth about his past.
Matt Damon Press Conference
What did you learn from years of playing an amnesiac killer?
“In terms of playing the character, it’s been seven years really for me, the movies have come out over the course of five, but it’s been seven years of my life. There hasn’t been a role that’s had a bigger impact on my life, maybe Good Will Hunting did because it pulled Ben [Affleck] and I out of total obscurity. But in terms of having an impact on my career…
Just as an example, between Supremacy and this one, Bourne Ultimatum, there were three movies that I really wanted to do, because I loved the scripts to three movies in particular. All of these movies were on the face of them going to be absolute box office misses and they were Syriana, which was a very complicated movie. George [Clooney] and I cut all our money so we could do it. The Departed, which now looking back obviously was this big hit and it won all the awards. But at the time if you took a Scorsese movie, his movies classically don’t make a lot of money, even the masterpieces. Goodfellas, Raging Bull, they don’t actually make a lot of money at the box office. It’s this incredible experience because you’re working with him, which is why he can get any actor he wants. Everyone will cut their fee and go and work with Marty. But in terms of looking at your career, you go, ‘Well, okay, so that’s number two. That’ll be two movies in a row that I’m in that don’t perform at the box office.’
And then I fell in love with the script called The Good Shepherd, and everyone went, ‘Look, this is a tiny, little bull’s eye you’re aiming at here.’ You look at it and you go, ‘It’s a very tense, cerebral, historical epic about the birth of the Intelligence Service in America. It’s not Spider-Man 3. But I didn’t hesitate because I loved all the scripts. They were movies that I desperately wanted to do, and I knew that I had The Bourne Ultimatum off in the middle distance, and that there was going to be an audience that was built in for that. So it really just allowed me creatively freedom to make all these movies, which each individually, I’m just so happy – I’m proud of each of those movies, they all did very well. Some of them did incredibly well and they were all reviewed really well, so they all just made a big impact on my career.
So that’s like an ancillary way that the Bourne character has completely changed my life. Starting with the first one, where nobody had offered me a movie in six months. I was in London doing a play in the West End and the movie opened, and by that Monday I had 20 offers. I would have been 32 years-old, or 31 years-old, the rose colored lenses came off. I went, ‘Okay, I get it. If you’re in a hit you have a career, and if you’re not it doesn’t matter.’ They might think you’re a real nice guy; they’re not hanging a movie on you.”
What’s your favorite action sequence in this movie?
“Well, I always liked the Tangier sequence and the running along the roof because it’s just Bourne absolutely a hundred miles an hour flat out. I always liked him grabbing the things, all the things we came up with when we were on the real location. That’s the fun stuff because you get a bunch of guys together and you’re going, ‘All right, what would be the smart thing to do here?’ We’d kind of figure out those sequences, and when they cut them together and they actually work it’s really a good feeling. Although Paul came up with Waterloo, that was all Paul’s design and what would it be like to have a guy leading a complete novice through [there] to try to allude. And that was all Paul and I love that sequence, too.”
Is this film more timely now than the first one?
“Well, all the movies I think are very much of the time. The first one is very much a 2002. It’s a post 9/11, all of the fear, all of the paranoia, everything in there. What I love about them is that you’ll be able to look back and know the second one is 2004. Things are starting to turn in Iraq and now this kind of American guy, this iconic American figure is going and apologizing and atoning for his misdeeds, for things that he’s done. He’s taking responsibility. Now you have the movie ending where Bourne is pulling the gun and putting it to the head of the person who lied to him, who said, ‘This is what you’re going to be doing. You’re going to be saving American lives,’ and Bourne’s saying, ‘I see now that you led me into something under false pretences, and now I understand that and I’m not going to do that anymore.’
Each movie is very much a reflection of the time in which it’s made. …There’s somebody who’s an American who’s killed without a trial, so all of these things are just little kind of nods to the world that we’re living in right now. I like that about them. They feel relevant. Bourne has a lot of integrity. I do think he’s a very kind of American character. I like that about him, his thoughtfulness, his intelligence. The fact that he’s trying to do the right thing, doesn’t always do the right thing or his misled, but is trying to do the right thing. So those things I think are great.”
Page 2: Audiences, Action, and the Backstory
