Film critic John Powers

DATE January 17, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Matt Damon discusses his role in the new movie "The
Bourne Identity" and his career
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev in for Terry Gross.

The film "The Bourne Identity" is due out in video and DVD next week. It
stars Matt Damon. Damon has starred in such films as "The Rainmaker," "Saving
Private Ryan," "The Talented Mr. Ripley," "All the Pretty Horses" and "Good
Will Hunting," for which he also won best screenplay Oscar which he shared
with his longtime friend Ben Affleck. Terry spoke with Matt Damon last June
after "The Bourne Identity" was released. The film is based on a spy novel by
Robert Ludlum. As the film opens, Damon's character is adrift in the
Mediterranean Sea where he is rescued by a fisherman. He has amnesia and has
no recollection of what happened to him or who he is. His only clues are a
couple of bullets in his back and a Swiss bank account number surgically
implanted in his hip. He goes to the Swiss bank and finds his safe deposit
box, which contains lots of cash, a gun and several passports with his photos
but different names. In this scene, he's explaining his bewilderment to a
woman who's helping him find his way.

(Soundbite of "The Bourne Identity")

Mr. MATT DAMON (As Jason Bourne): I can tell you the license plate numbers
of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and
the guy sitting up at the counter weighs 215 pounds and knows how to handle
himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck
outside. And at this altitude, I can run flat-out for a half-mile before my
hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not
know who I am?

BOGAEV: Since the character of Jason Bourne doesn't know who he is and isn't
very talkative, Matt Damon had to rely on Bourne's physical bearing to get
into character. Damon trained in boxing and martial arts in preparation.
Terry asked him about the process.

Mr. DAMON: You know, I try to get at least three months of prep time to just
try to live the life that the character that I'm playing lives, and I'm really
selfish about that time, and it's like my time, and it's usually the best part
of the experience, is the research, because nobody else is around, and I'm
kind of allowed to go as far afield as I want to, and it changes with every
project.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Well, you had to get bigger and stronger for this movie and look like you were
comfortable with guns and beating people up and so on. But for other movies,
you've had to diminish a little bit. Like for "The Talented Mr. Ripley," you
got thinner...

Mr. DAMON: Right.

GROSS: ...and had to look more physically uncomfortable in your body.

Mr. DAMON: Right.

GROSS: And for "Courage Under Fire," you had to lose a lot of weight and look
unhealthy. Is it ever alienating to see your body as an instrument that
you're constantly having to change?

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. Yeah. It can be frustrating, because all that work that
goes into it, you know, as I was saying, it's, you know, something that I love
to do, but it's also really lonely, especially when you're doing things like
losing, you know, weight like that. And that was actually, I think, something
that--kind of going back to that time I like to take before a movie, that's
something that really helps me, because I think, you know, the situation like
"Ripley," where I was running a lot and not eating a lot and was physically
uncomfortable, combined with the fact that I was playing piano, and by nature,
I'm not a musician. It was very frustrating and very lonely to be sitting
there and playing the piano for all those hours for months. It affected the
way that I sat. It affected the way that I walked. And it really affected
kind of, I think, you know, emotionally, the way that I was really starved for
kind of human connection, which is very much at the center of that character,
the acceptance that he's longing for, and I think in some way, like just those
months of preparing and of doing those things that he would have done really
informed the performance.

GROSS: You know, I read that for "Courage Under Fire," when you had to lose
weight, you not only starved yourself, but you used laxatives. Now that
can't be very healthy.

Mr. DAMON: Actually, laxatives I used after I started eating again, because I
did it unsupervised, and so all I was doing was I would run 13 miles every day
and I would eat chicken and egg whites and vegetables and one to two baked
potatoes every day for my carbohydrates. But I would run six and a half miles
in the morning and then six and a half at night. And by the end of it, when
my body really started kind of eating itself, like eventually your muscle
just--you're consuming muscle at the end. There's no fat left, really, to
consume. And I was just so tired, I just remember I would wake up in the
morning, I would sit up in my bed--we were in Austin, Texas, shooting--and I
would immediately fall back over because I would get faint. So that was how I
was working out at the end.

I mean, it was stupid and it was unsupervised. And, you know, look, I mean, I
was low down on the totem pole. The studio wasn't going to spend, you know,
1,500 bucks for me to have a trainer. I mean--but I also knew that it was a
chance for me to get more work if I played the role. If I was honest and true
in the role, then somebody would take notice, anybody, you know?

GROSS: Did Robert De Niro create this thing, where, like, after "Raging
Bull," you had to put on weight or take off weight or physically change in
some amazing way?

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. I'm sure he--I mean, I grew up, you know, with that, seeing
"Raging Bull" and loving that performance in that movie. And, you know, I was
25 when I did "Courage Under Fire," and it was, you know, the young man's kind
of swagger in saying, `Look, you know, this is what I'm willing to do.'

GROSS: Right.

Mr. DAMON: `This is what I'll put my body through. This is what'--because
the people that you really, you know, idolize did it, too. And it's also this
kind of weird--you know, living out in Los Angeles and not being able to get
acting work, you know, it's a weird way of saying, you know, `No matter what
happens, nobody's ever going to tell me that there's anybody out here with
more discipline or who will give up more, you know, who will sacrifice more
for their job than me.' And I don't know. We kind of cling to it...

GROSS: So what'd you get for it?

Mr. DAMON: What's that?

GROSS: What'd you get for it, for all the sacrifice?

Mr. DAMON: Sick. I got sick. And, you know, eventually when I went back to
Boston, yeah, the doctor put me on two different kinds of medication, and he
said I'd really done some bad things to my body. He checked me out and the
first thing he said was, `The only good thing I can tell you is that your
heart didn't shrink.'

GROSS: Jeez.

Mr. DAMON: And then he told me I could never do it again.

GROSS: That's an option? Whoa.

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. Well, your heart's a muscle, so if I'd kept up with it,
you know, obviously that's--I mean, that's what happens to people with
anorexia and, you know, eventually their bodies just shut down. But, you
know, my big master plan of having people take notice, the movie came out and
I was on this medication, and the reviews for "Courage Under Fire" came out,
and none of them mentioned me at all. And that was when I just said, `You
know what? This is ridiculous, you know,' but it was heartbreaking for me.
It was really heartbreaking.

GROSS: Matt Damon is my guest, and he's starring in the new movie "The Bourne
Identity," which is based on the Robert Ludlum spy novel.

As we mentioned, you studied martial arts for the movie and gunplay and all
that, and you do a lot of fighting in this...

Mr. DAMON: Right, right.

GROSS: ...a lot of self-defense and offense as well. Now I read that your
mother, who's a child developmental psychologist--do I have that right?

Mr. DAMON: Right, a professor of early childhood development.

GROSS: Now I read that she has always been opposed to, like, war toys and
playing with guns and things like that.

Mr. DAMON: Very much so, yeah.

GROSS: So what was it like for you having been brought up in that kind of
environment, where you're discouraged from playing with guns? And now
professionally, what you have to do is pretend like you're really good at
fighting.

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. I know. It's an interesting--you know, my mom saw the
movie the other day, and, you know, it's definitely not her type of movie. I
mean, I don't think she's ever seen an action movie, so I don't think she
could compare it to anything. But what gets her--actually, one of our family
friends came walking up to her after and jokingly said, `That's what you get
for not letting your kids play with guns.' But seriously, you know, in terms
of movies, she's most upset about the rating system, and...

GROSS: Oh, that it's sex and not violence or...

Mr. DAMON: That it's--yeah. Well, the entertainment violence, what they call
the entertainment violence, and then there's no one to really, you know,
police it, because, obviously, the exhibitors aren't going to turn away people
who are showing up with money, and the studios want as many people to see it
as possible. So it's hard to create, it's hard to figure out a way to
legislate against, you know, kids seeing stuff that they shouldn't see.

GROSS: Now you met Ben Affleck when you were about 10. Did he want to act,
too? I mean, was the desire to act part of the basis of your friendship?

Mr. DAMON: Definitely. Well, he was acting. He was known in Cambridge as
the professional actor, because he was on this PBS series called "The Voyage
of the Mimi," which was an educational TV show...

GROSS: Right. I know that.

Mr. DAMON: ...that was on PBS, and they used it as a tool in schools. And
we lived two blocks from each other, but we really became friends in high
school, when he got to high school. So I was 15 or 16 when he got there, and
he was 14. And then we fashioned--yeah--a very, very deep bond, and a lot of
it was based on what we both wanted to do. I mean, it's a weird thing looking
back, in meeting 16-year-olds or meeting 14-year-olds, you know, at the age of
31 and going, `God, that was what'--he and I were flying to New York together
at that age because my parents didn't support the idea that I would do this
professionally at that age. They didn't say that I couldn't do it. They
never did things like that, but they said they wouldn't pay for me to go to
New York to audition for things. And so I did a local commercial in Boston.
Ben and I went and got cast in a local commercial in Boston.

GROSS: Wait, I'm going to interject. I think it was a TJ Maxx commercial.

Mr. DAMON: Yeah, it was. It was.

GROSS: You get the max for the minimum at TJ Maxx.

Mr. DAMON: The max for the minimum at TJ Maxx. And we got cut out of the
commercial, but we still got paid.

GROSS: Did you have to sing or try on coats or what?

Mr. DAMON: No. I forget. I think we were sitting in a cafeteria table, and
a pretty girl walked by and we had to look at her and then look at each other,
like, `Isn't it great to be back in school?' or something like that. It was
like a back-to-school ad.

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. DAMON: But we opened up a bank account and put the money in, and we
called it like, you know, our business bank account. But the money was for
trips to New York, you know, on the old Pan Am shuttle or on the train or on
the bus.

GROSS: So what'd you do on that first trip to New York?

Mr. DAMON: First trip to New York, first time I went to New York with Ben
was to meet his agent. He had, you know, an agent, a little ma-and-pa agency
in New York that I remember it like it was yesterday, flying to New York and
getting to New York and being overwhelmed, and Ben was really the leader in
that, 'cause I'd never been to New York. I'd never been there for one, and
I'd never been many places without parental supervision. So to be walking
around the streets of New York, you know, with your best friend, yeah, we just
felt like the kings of the world and then went in, and I remember being very
nervous in meeting with this agent, and they signed me, you know, which
luckily, it didn't amount to anything over the next two years that I was
represented by them. I don't think--you know, I probably had three or four
auditions, but I felt like, you know, I had people in New York, you know, and
so I think that calmed me down and allowed me to kind of focus on school and
more important, in retrospect, social things that had a far bigger influence
on the actor that I am now.

GROSS: So you got an agent and you felt like really hot stuff?

Mr. DAMON: Yeah.

GROSS: Yeah. Did you brag a lot to your friends?

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. Ben and I just were probably so aloof when we were
then--you know, we used to have what we called business lunches, and we would
sit there and, I mean, say things--you know, we would just sit down and go,
`So how's business?' you know? We didn't have anything to talk about, but I
think it was just, you know, a few years of sitting there and, you know,
having these kind of faux serious lunches, you know? You know, I guess we
just talked about some day, we'll get good roles and, you know, we're not
going to be sitting in this cafeteria forever.

GROSS: You ended up going to Harvard.

Mr. DAMON: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: You grew up in Cambridge. That wasn't far to go...

Mr. DAMON: Right.

GROSS: ...far to go intellectually but not geographically.

Mr. DAMON: Right.

GROSS: And then you left, I think, during or before your senior year...

Mr. DAMON: Yeah.

GROSS: ...to work.

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. I left a few times. I left in the second semester of my
sophomore year to do a TNT movie, and then I came back and then left to do
"School Ties" and then came back again and then left to do a movie called
"Geronimo." "Geronimo"...

GROSS: I'm one of the few people who saw that.

Mr. DAMON: Oh, you're the one. Yeah. Which was a great experience. And...

GROSS: A Walter Hill film.

Mr. DAMON: Walter Hill, yeah, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. DAMON: And that was a great experience. I mean, I got to work with
Duvall and, you know, Gene Hackman. I didn't really get to work with Gene
Hackman, but, you know, I shook his hand, and he said, `What's your name?' and
I said, `Matt Damon,' and he said, `Mark, great to meet you.'

GROSS: One of the first theatrically released films that you were in was
"Mystic Pizza," in which you had, I think, one line.

Mr. DAMON: One line.

GROSS: Do you remember the line?

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. It was, `Mom, you want my green stuff?'

GROSS: Right. OK. So now there are many different ways you could say that.

Mr. DAMON: Yeah.

GROSS: I'm sure you wanted to make as big an impression as possible with that
one line. What did you do to prepare for this one line or to figure out
exactly what your line reading was going to be, to try to make it count as
much as possible?

Mr. DAMON: You know, we were eating lobster in this scene. And it was
supposed to be Julia Roberts was coming back to dinner to meet, you know, her
rich boyfriend's family. And I was her rich boyfriend's little brother. And
we're all eating this big lobster dinner. And it's just the family making
small talk at the beginning of the scene. And I say, `Mom, you want my green
stuff?' meaning the tomalley in the lobster. And the line was actually, `Mom,
do you want my black stuff?'--the line in the original script was, `Mom, you
want my black stuff?' And I remember I probably said, `Mom, do you want my
black stuff?' in my room about, you know, a thousand times before I drove down
to "Mystic" with my mother. And when I got there, they had, you know, changed
the line to, `Mom, you want my green stuff?' And I remember being thrown for
a second. And then I went, `Wait a minute. This doesn't change anything.'

So, yeah, I just remember that experience being like just the rose-colored
lenses just couldn't have been more on--I mean, it was three nights I was
surrounded by these cameras and this crew, that was really nice, and all these
actors. And I just remember thinking, `My God, if I could ever do this'--it
just was overwhelming.

BOGAEV: Matt Damon talking with Terry Gross last summer. He stars in the
film "The Bourne Identity" which comes out on video and DVD next week. We'll
hear more of their conversation after the break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: Let's get back to Terry's interview with Matt Damon. In 1998, Damon
and his longtime friend Ben Affleck won an Oscar for their screenplay for
"Good Will Hunting." Damon was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in
the film as Will, a young man from South Boston who works as a janitor at
Harvard but is able to solve seemingly unsolvable math problems left on a
blackboard. Will grew up in foster homes and has a rap sheet. When he's
jailed for instigating a fight, a professor who sees Will's genius bails him
out on the condition that he gets some counseling. Will's psychologist is
played by Robin Williams. In this scene, Will is in the psychologist's office
when a painting catches his eye, a painting made by the psychologist.

(Soundbite from "Good Will Hunting")

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) The linear and impressionistic mix makes a very muddled
composition. It's also a Winslow Homer rip-off except you got Whitey(ph)
rowing a boat there.

Mr. ROBIN WILLIAMS: Oh, it's a hard one. It wasn't very good.

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) That's not really what concerns me, though.

Mr. WILLIAMS: What concerns you?

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) It's the coloring.

Mr. WILLIAMS: You know what the real bitch of it is? It's paint by number.

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) Is it color by number?--because the colors are
fascinating to me.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Are they really? What about that?

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) I think you're about one step away from cutting your
(censored) ear off.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Really?

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) Oh, yeah.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Think I should move to the South of France, change my name to
Vincent?

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) You ever heard the saying, `Any port in a storm'?

Mr. WILLIAMS: Yeah.

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) Yeah, maybe that means you.

Mr. WILLIAMS: In what way?

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) Maybe you're in the middle of a storm, a big (censored)
storm. The sky's falling on your head, the waves are crashing over your
little boat, the oars are about to snap. You just piss in your pants, you're
crying for the harbor. So maybe you do what you've got to do to get out. You
know, maybe you became a psychologist.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Bingo. That's it. Let me do my job now. We still have a
meeting. Come on.

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) Maybe you married the wrong woman.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Maybe you should watch your mouth. Why don't you write that,
chief, all right?

Mr. DAMON: (As Will) That's it, isn't it? You married the wrong woman.
What happened? What? Did she leave you or did she, you know, (whistles) bang
some other guy?

Mr. WILLIAMS: If you ever disrespect my wife again, I will end you. I will
(censored) end you.

GROSS: Let's get to "Good Will Hunting." The movie, I think, is based on a
play that you wrote when you were still a student at Harvard. What was the
original play like?

Mr. DAMON: I wrote it--actually, it was a play writing course that this guy,
Anthony Kubiak, taught at Harvard, which is a terrific course, and I wrote it
as a screenplay, you know, in screenplay format. And the original one was 41
pages long and, you know, it just had the beginnings of a story. And it
had--what survived of it was--the one scene that survived from that was the
first time that I meet Robin Williams' character in that movie when he
eventually grabs me by the neck and throws me up against the wall because I
say something about his wife. And that scene was verbatim as I wrote in
Anthony Kubiak's class. But nothing else survived.

But the teacher encouraged me when I finished the class, he gave me an A, and
it was, you know, one of the first times I got an A at Harvard. And I didn't
care what I got in the class. I had had such a good time in the class. And
he gave me an A, and next to it, he wrote on the paper, he wrote, you know,
`You should really keep going with this. This really seems like it could be
leading somewhere,' and encouraged me to do it. And so a few months later,
for spring break I went to Los Angeles to audition, actually, for "Geronimo:
An American Legend," and stayed with Ben, and brought the, you know,
work-in-progress thing with me and showed him. And he loved it, and he said,
`This is great. You know, let's--you know, we should do something with this.'
And so we agreed, you know? Neither of us knew which way to go with it,
though, so a little later on I did "Geronimo" and then moved in--Ben and I got
a place in LA with Casey, his brother.

And we were there for like a year before--you know, and this thing was just
sitting on the shelf 'cause neither of us could think of what to do. And
then one night we were literally sitting around talking. It was probably 1 in
the morning. And it just started--I think Ben was the first one. He started
saying something, and the way that things normally work with us is one person
says a little thing, the next person, and it just starts to rapidly--which is
why, you know, we're utterly useless without each other. At least we have
been so far. But it happened really in a--it kind of tumbled out and the
script came really, really quickly.

BOGAEV: Matt Damon. He starred in the film "The Bourne Identity" which is
due out in video and DVD next week. I'm Barbara Bogaev and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev, in for Terry Gross.

Let's return to Terry's interview with Matt Damon.

GROSS: I want to ask you about "The Talented Mr. Ripley." You were really
just terrific in that film, and you were playing somebody who doesn't have any
of the things he wants: friends, a lover, interesting work, interesting life,
travel, money...

Mr. DAMON: Right.

GROSS: ...none of that. And through a little bit of deception, or perhaps a
lot of deception, he's able to kind of change his life and become part of
this, like, charmed circle of wealthy people...

Mr. DAMON: Right.

GROSS: ...revolving particularly around this one couple played by Jude Law
and...

Mr. DAMON: Right.

GROSS: ...Gwyneth Paltrow. And the first time you meet them, you're meeting
them--Is it in Italy?

Mr. DAMON: Yeah.

GROSS: And you're on the Mediterranean on a beach, and they're all, like,
bronzed and beautiful and you've just arrived from...

Mr. DAMON: New York City.

GROSS: Yeah. And you're pale and kind of scrawny. This is one of the...

Mr. DAMON: Right.

GROSS: ...roles you lost weight for. And the first time you meet them, you
were in your bathing suit and you just look so wrong.

Mr. DAMON: Right.

GROSS: You look so out of place. And it sets the tone beautifully for
everything that's to follow, this physically uncomfortable, out-of-the-place,
wrong-looking person. Can you talk a little bit just about that scene even?

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. It was right for--it was just right. I mean, it was right
there in the script when I read it, and it made total sense. And we wanted,
obviously when Ripley starts to try to take over Dickie's identity, for him to
try to look more and more like him, so the bigger gap you can leave at the
beginning, you know, the better that's going to come across. And also we just
loved the awkwardness of it.

You know, the green bathing suit that I wore was, you know, maybe a little bit
kind of over-the-top. There was a scene, though, that Anthony Minghella
scripted just in case he felt we needed it, where they show me buying the
bathing suit. I see him on the beach, and so I buy the bathing suit, and
that's the only one they have, which is how I ended up with that bathing suit,
just in case it seemed too kind of goofy that I would have a lime green, you
know, bathing suit. But, you know, Anthony looked at the movie and didn't
feel like we needed it. And so there's Ripley kind of showing up as pale--I
mean, they painted me alabaster for that. They...

GROSS: Oh, really?

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean...

GROSS: You got painted pale.

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. And I already was pale. I had stayed out of the sun for,
you know, months and months, and I was as pale as I could be. But they, you
know, even put more kind of gook all over me.

GROSS: What did you do internally to get into the character of somebody who
wants so desperately to live this life that he has no access to that he
finally ends up not only deceiving but killing for it?

Mr. DAMON: It's just that I can really relate. I really related to that
character in a lot of ways. I really related to that.

GROSS: In what way?

Mr. DAMON: I don't know. I've had that feeling, you know, in my life of
wanting to belong somewhere and not belonging, and especially kind of in, you
know, adolescence and teen-age years. I mean, those are--you feel that with
such pain and, you know...

GROSS: Yeah. But you already had an agent in New York...

Mr. DAMON: Yeah, right. That's right.

GROSS: ...that you could brag about to your friends.

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. God. So, yeah, I mean, there was a lot to him, to that
character, that I just really related to and loved. And, yeah, I felt--I
still feel bad for that character. I got really mad the first time I saw the
movie, actually, with the final music.

GROSS: Why?

Mr. DAMON: 'Cause there was a scene where I'm walking with Gwyneth and I have
a razor in my pocket, and the music that--you know, which--it's perfect for
the movie, it's right for the movie, but because Anthony was my kind of, you
know, partner in crime the whole time we were shooting it, every time
something--you know, we would ask some--you know, we'd say,`Well, should
Ripley'--I mean, I'd say, `So I'm going to kill Freddie with this statue?'
And he'd go, `Of course you're going to kill Freddie. Freddie's coming and
you have--Freddie's accusing you of doing--how dare he? He has a lot of
nerve.'

You know, he was very much my ally, you know, when we were shooting it because
that was what got me ready for every scene, was the fact that what I'm doing
makes total sense.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. DAMON: This is--of course I'm going to do this, and this makes--you know,
so Anthony was a very good kind of sounding board for the Ripley rationale.
But, of course, at the end of the day he's the director of the movie, so when
he goes to put the music over the scene where I'm walking towards Gwyneth with
a razor blade, he's not defending Ripley. He's got this kind of Hitchcockian
music over it. And so when I saw it, I was like, you know, how--you know...

GROSS: `He told me I was justified.'

Mr. DAMON: Yeah, exactly. `How dare you? You're supposed to be my friend.'

GROSS: What was it like for you when you first became--when you first started
acting in movies with big stars in it and then you became a big star yourself,
and suddenly all the people who you admired when you were young, who seemed so
out of reach, who lived either in the television box or on the big screen,
were colleagues of yours or friends of yours or people you had access to? Was
it awkward at first to be in that circle, to be in that situation where people
who were always just these, like, movie figures were now actually
three-dimensional people and you were working with them or you were talking
with them?

Mr. DAMON: Yeah. Yeah. That was weird. I mean, the only time I really run
into other people, you know, that I've grown up watching or whatever is at,
like, a ceremony or, you know, an event or something.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. DAMON: You know, I haven't really run into too many people, although I
have an assistant and I guess, you know, two years ago for Christmas--I guess
I have a habit of talking about Morgan Freeman a lot 'cause I really respect
Morgan Freeman.

GROSS: Oh, he's great. Yeah.

Mr. DAMON: So this is going to sound really silly, but for Christmas a couple
of years ago she gave me, as a Christmas gift, dinner with Morgan Freeman.
She called Morgan Freeman's assistant and I guess he thought it was funny, and
so they kind of agreed. And it was like a, you know, make-a-wish dinner or
something where I was like Chris Farley on the old "Chris Farley Show" on
"Saturday Night Live," like, `Remember that time in that movie when you did
that thing? That was awesome.' But for the most part, the most I get to know
people is working with them.

And I've been incredibly lucky, incredibly lucky to--starting with--back with
Duvall, and how good he was to me and how--and he didn't have to do that.
And, you know, the guy is a living legend, you know, and he tolerated my
questions. And I did "Courage Under Fire" with Denzel Washington, and he was
really nice to me. And, yeah, "Rainmaker." I mean, God, you know, Danny
DeVito. Mickey Rourke was great to me. Mickey Rourke sat me down the first
time I met him, kind of forcefully, and said, `Don't screw this up. Don't do
what I did.'

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. DAMON: `I was a jerk to people. I'--you know...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. DAMON: ...he said, `Appreciate what you have and be polite to everybody
you meet, and don't ever screw this up.' It was pretty, you know, affecting.

GROSS: Matt Damon, thank you so much.

Mr. DAMON: All right. Thanks for having me.

BOGAEV: Matt Damon speaking with Terry Gross last summer. He stars in the
film "The Bourne Identity," which comes out on DVD and video next week.

From the soundtrack of the film "The Talented Mr. Ripley," here's Matt Damon
doing his best to sound like Chet Baker.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. DAMON: (Singing) But don't change a hair for me. Not if you care for me.
Stay, little valentine. Stay. Each day is Valentine's Day.

BOGAEV: This is FRESH AIR.

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Interview: John Ridley discusses the film and Internet versions
of "Undercover Brother," and his novel
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

Last summer, writer John Ridley had a new movie, "Undercover Brother," and a
new novel, "A Conversation with the Mann" about an African-American comic
trying to make it in the '60s. He opens for the Rat Pack in Vegas and becomes
the first black comic on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Ridley's movie, "Undercover
Brother," which is now out on video and DVD, affectionately satirizes the
black action films of the '70s and takes on some of the preconceptions that
blacks and whites have of each other today. The film is adapted from a
Web-based animation created by Ridley. He co-wrote the screenplay. Terry
spoke with John Ridley last summer.

The film stars Eddie Griffin as an action hero stuck in the '70s with his gold
Cadillac, leather suit, platform shoes and huge Afro. He teams up with a
group called The Brotherhood that's fighting a white villain known as The Man.
The Man has devised a plot to prevent a popular African-American politician
from becoming president. Here's Undercover Brother making his first
appearance at The Brotherhood after learning about this political conspiracy.

(Soundbite of "Undercover Brother")

Mr. EDDIE GRIFFIN: So the conspiracies we believed for all these years are
really true? The NBA really instituted the three-point shot to give white
boys a chance?

Unidentified Actor #1: Absolutely.

Mr. GRIFFIN: So the entertainment industry really is out to get Spike Lee?
Is that right?

Unidentified Actor #2: Come on, man. Even Cher got an Oscar. Cher!

Mr. GRIFFIN: And O.J. really didn't do it?

Unidentified Actor #3: Let's--let's just move on, shall we?

TERRY GROSS, host:

John Ridley, welcome back to FRESH AIR. When adapting "Undercover Brother"
for a movie, did you change the humor at all, thinking `Well, it has to reach
a much larger audience, so more people have to get the jokes, so that the
references in the jokes have to be different'?

Mr. JOHN RIDLEY (Screenwriter, "Undercover Brother"): Well, I didn't want to.
I avoided it as much as humanly possible. Any time you write a script, there
are any number of changes that take place on a conceptual level or because of
budget or time constraints. But for me, I felt like--and I do still feel like
that in our society right now, in terms of entertainment, there isn't a lot of
entertainment that's very pointed or very political. You know, I look at this
film and, in some ways, I think it's great that we're talking about race, that
we're joking about race, that we're saying it's not such a big deal. But you
look back at, like, films, say, like "Blazing Saddles" or television shows
like "All in the Family," where race was always a topic, it was always joked
about, it was frank and it was satirical at the same time, and we just don't
see that much anymore. And I think in some ways, it's kind of disappointing.
I think a lot of ways, television and films, they really don't confront things
that are political issues in a humorous, insightful way. But I think a lot of
times, it's better to go at a topic with humor. It relaxes people and people
can deal with it a little bit better when it's not so serious.

GROSS: "Undercover Brother" is, in part, an homage to the black action films
of the '70s. Which were the ones that were big when you were coming of age?

Mr. RIDLEY: Well, when I was coming of age, there were, I guess, two groups.
There were the really bad blaxploitation films, films like "Blacula" and
"Scream, Blacula, Scream!" I actually remember going to see "Scream, Blacula,
Scream!" with my dad because I just loved the title so much, especially--you
know, "Blacula" is such a wonderful title. It's so evocative. How can you
not enjoy that? But I also remember--and I remember especially seeing some
really quality black films like "Sounder," "Bingo Long and the Traveling
All-Stars."

"The Man" I remember seeing, a very powerful film. My parents really wanted
me to see that. It was about the first black man to become president of the
United States of America. James Earl Jones was the star of it, and an
incredibly powerful film in terms of the issues that it dealt with. There was
a black man, and it was George Sanford Brown, who's this radical, ends up
shooting a politician in South Africa during apartheid. He escapes to the
United States and he asks James Earl Jones, the black president, for asylum,
and at the end of the film, James Earl Jones sends this black guy back to
South Africa to face his crimes. Now that's incredibly powerful for a
blaxploitation film, which is supposed to be a very strong statement about
blackness, not letting George Sanford Brown stay in the United States, but
saying, `You have to go back and face your crimes.' I thought that was an
incredible statement and a very brave one because it took a chance of perhaps
alienating its very audience, a black audience, but saying, `You know what?
We have to do what's right. And no matter how much we're oppressed or people
put us down, we still have to stand up to a higher moral ground.' It was a
great film.

GROSS: John Ridley, your new novel is about the character--what this comic
faces as an African-American in show business. Tell us a little bit about the
character of Jackie Mann.

Mr. RIDLEY: Well, Jackie Mann is a guy who's really in search of self. He
lives during the--he's born in the 1930s during the Depression, and has his
rise to what prominence he has in the middle 1950s. And Jackie is a guy who
doesn't want to be treated as most black people are treated at that time. And
he gets it in his head that, you know, black people who are celebrities, who
are athletes are much more accepted by white society. He sees them on
television, he sees them at sporting events, he sees white people around them
and then near them, as he likes to put it, `within touching distance of each
other,' which is sort of the highest level of acceptance in his mind for black
Americans.

And so he sets out on this journey. He says, at the very beginning of this
book, `I just want to be famous. I want to be famous so that I can be
accepted.' But his quest for fame ends up chipping away at himself, at what
he is, at how he thinks about himself, at how he's perceived by people who are
close to him and his friends and his family. And the question becomes:
What's more important: to be accepted by the community at large, but have no
self-esteem, or is it better to feel good about yourself, to believe in
yourself, but have to live a life of struggle because other people look down
on the choices that you make in life? And that's Jackie's quest.

GROSS: I'm going to ask you to do a reading from the early part of the book,
and this is when the comic, Jackie Mann, is talking about the early days of
Vegas when he's performing there.

Mr. RIDLEY: (Reading) `It was 1959, and the only difference between Las
Vegas, Nevada, and Birmingham, Alabama, was that down South they posted signs
telling a black man where he couldn't go and what he couldn't do, "Whites
only," "Coloreds not allowed." In Vegas, you had to figure that out on your
own. You figured it out quick style. Stay off the Strip. Stay in the
Westside. Stay the hell away from their casinos. It didn't matter how well
you did in the showroom. It didn't matter how much the audience laughed or
clapped, or how many bows you took. Out there, it was still 1959, and out
there, blacks weren't welcome, not to stay overnight, not to eat, not to
gamble.

`More than anything in the world, I wanted to gamble. Not for the jazz of
laying a bet or the sake of wagering money. What I wanted was to stand at a
table with all those people--suited men, ladies in their best dresses, living
high and living fast and living cocktail society. I wanted to see them do a
Red Sea part as I made my way to the roulette table and listen to all their
star-struck bits, "Great job tonight, Jackie," "Heck of a show, Jackie. Don't
know when I cracked up as much," "Would you mind saying hello to the missus,
Jackie? She's such a big fan of yours. It would mean so much." I wanted
them to fawn and gush and throw me their love, same as they threw it at me
when I was performing, when I was standing three feet above them. I wanted
them to accept me. Accept me? They couldn't even see me.

`I got paid nearly a grand a week. I got pulled back on stage to do more time
by the biggest stars alive. I got standings O's. And when it was all over, I
got sent out the back door. You know what went out the back door? Trash went
out the back. Stinking garbage and rotting food and black comics got sent
straight to the alley, never mind how well they'd just done in the showroom.'

GROSS: That's John Ridley reading from his new novel "A Conversation with the
Mann" about a fictional stand-up comic named Jackie Mann.

You must have heard great stories about the early days of Vegas, and
particularly interesting what it was like for African-American comics then
when the place was still pretty segregated.

Mr. RIDLEY: Yeah. It was amazing, because in Vegas during its early days, it
became such a mecca for live stage entertainment. I mean, everybody went
there from the biggest acts to the wildest acts, like Louis Prima. Even Noel
Coward did an amazing run at The Desert Inn.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. RIDLEY: I mean, he was this very genteel, very sophisticated playwright
who just, I mean, did incredible box office there. So everybody played there.
And certainly, the biggest black stars--Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey was there,
Harry Belafonte, but they could not stay in the casinos. There was a part of
town called Westside. It was just a very rundown part of Vegas where all the
black entertainers had to go and stay at a boarding house that was really kind
of a rundown boarding house. And not only was it rundown, but the woman who
ran it actually charged the black entertainers more than they would have had
to pay if they could have stayed on the Strip. So you even had black people
back then taking advantage of the segregation.

But there was one story--I think it was Nat King Cole who went out--was
actually allowed to stay in a casino at one point, but was not allowed to
fraternize with a lot of the white patrons there. And one day he just said,
`You know, to heck with it. I'm going swimming in the swimming pool.' He
jumped in the swimming pool. You know, in his mind he said, `You know what?
I'm integrating the pool. I don't care what anybody says.' And after that,
the white patrons--they complained and they had to drain the entire pool,
took all the water out of the pool, after Nat King Cole went in it, and filled
it up again with water because the whites who were staying at the casinos back
at this time did not want to go into a pool--did not want to share the water
with a black man.

GROSS: It must have been interesting for you to write about this era when
comics were aspiring to, you know, play these big nightclubs, like The Copa,
and, you know, there were clubs in the East Coast and the West Coast and
Florida that were these big, glamorous places. I mean, now if you're a comic,
you're likely to spend years on the comedy club circuit. But, you know, there
was a sense of glamour then. Are you sorry at all that you missed that or do
you not feel like you would have fit into that kind of glamour scene anyways?

Mr. RIDLEY: Well, it's very weird because I certainly miss--I feel like I
missed out on something because you read about these places, you hear stories
about it. You hear other entertainers talk about this age where, you know,
men and women--they actually got dressed up. They went out. It was a big
night for them. It wasn't just, `Oh, I'm going to put on blue jeans and a
sweater and go to a club,' or something. It was a big night, you know, for
parents--for adults to get away from their kids for awhile, to have a really
good meal, to have a couple of cocktails and sit back and either listen to a
huge comic, a very famous comic, or someone like Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin,
or to see Martin and Lewis on stage.

And we look back--or certainly, I look back on that time as being a wonderful
time. But at the same time, you know, certainly if I was a black guy back
then, you know, I couldn't get into these clubs. I wouldn't be seated at
these clubs. There was no way I could go in and see this entertainment no
matter how badly I wanted to.

BOGAEV: John Ridley is the author of "A Conversation with the Mann." He
co-wrote the screenplay for the film "Undercover Brother." The film is
adapted from a Web-based animation created by Ridley. It's now out on video
and DVD. Ridley is currently working on a remake of the film "Foxy Brown,"
starring Halle Berry. He has a new novel called "The Drift."

Coming up, a review of the new film "The Hours." This is FRESH AIR.

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Review: New film "The Hours"
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

The new film "The Hours" is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by
Michael Cunningham. It's directed by Stephen Daldry, whose last film was the
Oscar-nominated "Billy Elliot." "The Hours" stars Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman
and Julianne Moore. It was named best picture by the National Board of
Review. Our film critic John Powers has a review.

JOHN POWERS reporting:

There's a certain kind of movie that comes out at awards time and seems
designed to win them. It's based on a classy literary novel, it's bursting
with tony names and is so self-serious that it's almost self-congratulatory.
"The Hours" is one of these movies. But by the standards of such things, it's
not bad--brisk, elliptical and charged with a clumsy power. The movie
interweaves what happens during a single day in the lives of three very
different women. The first story takes place in 1923 England and centers on
Virginia Woolf, who's played by Nicole Kidman wearing a prosthetic schnozz.
Along with her husband Leonard, well captured by Stephen Dillane, she's moved
to the countryside to recover from a mental breakdown and to work on her
novel, "Mrs. Dalloway."

Madness also lurks in story two, set in '50s Los Angeles and focused on a
housewife, Laura Brown, played by Julianne Moore, who seems to have
copyrighted this role. Laura feels imprisoned in her middle-class life with a
young son and clueless husband, and she spends the day reading "Mrs. Dalloway"
and pondering how to escape.

Finally, story three is set in 2001 Manhattan and focuses on Meryl Streep's
character, Clarissa Vaughan. Clarissa's social style has gotten her nicknamed
Mrs. Dalloway by her soul mate, Richard, a gay poet played by the emaciated
Ed Harris. Richard is dying of AIDS, and Clarissa spends her hours arranging
a party in his honor at the apartment she shares with her lover. That's
Allison Janney.

If both Woolf and Laura Brown are women largely imprisoned within their own
unhappy consciousnesses, Clarissa is unfadingly attuned to others. Here she's
trying to convince Richard to keep going and come to his party.

(Soundbite of "The Hours")

Mr. ED HARRIS ("Richard"): Would you be angry...

Ms. MERYL STREEP ("Clarissa Vaughan"): Would I be angry if you didn't show up
at the party?

Mr. HARRIS: Would you be angry if I died?

Ms. STREEP If you died?

Mr. HARRIS: Who is this party for?

Ms. STREEP: What do you mean who's if for? What are you asking? What are
you trying to say?

Mr. HARRIS: I'm not trying to say anything. I'm saying I think I'm only
staying alive to satisfy you.

Ms. STREEP: Well, so that is what we do. That is what people do, they stay
alive for each other.

POWERS: When I first heard they were adapting Michael Cunningham's novel, I
wondered why. That book's strength was a delicacy of perception that bordered
on the precious. Predictably, that fineness has been lost by the film, which
tends toward the overemphatic, especially in Philip Glass' ghastly, hectoring
score. But David Hare's script definitely leapfrogs between the three women's
days and reveals how they echo and reflect each other--how, for instance,
Woolf's decision that she needs a death in "Mrs. Dalloway" sends its ripples
into the other stories.

In presenting this actresses showcase, director Stephen Daldry gets brilliant
work from Kidman, who gives Woolf the vulnerability and ferocity of a wounded
falcon. He's a bit less successful with both Streep and Moore, who are
perfectly good, but who are overshadowed by their own recent work. Although
Streep's Clarissa has a quivering warmth, she feels like a diluted solution of
her character in "Adaptation." And Moore's Laura Brown makes us realize how
much more deeply "Far From Heaven" explored the '50s housewife theme. Like
"Far From Heaven," "The Hours" is imbued with a newfangled feminist
consciousness. The movie takes care not to demonize its male characters, and
it makes a point of generously reinterpreting three classic female
stereotypes: the mad woman, that's Woolf; the social butterfly, Clarissa; and
the bottled-up housewife, Laura.

Movies tend to be hard on such types. Think of how Annette Bening was
ridiculed in "American Beauty." But Cunningham, Hare and Daldry view them
with a real compassion, at times even sentimentality. Although the film isn't
about female victimization, it's still shot through with the sense that every
woman's fate is one of pain, sadness and loss. It begins with Woolf's 1941
suicide. I frankly think a woman filmmaker would actually be less mopey about
women's lives.

While the film's sexual politics will probably get "The Hours" taught in
women's studies courses for the next hundred years, the film is actually at
its best when it tackles the existential themes that preoccupied Woolf in the
first place: how much of our existence is spent in terrible aloneness, how
even a perfectly ordinary life explodes with an excess and feeling of
significance, and how our time on Earth is not one extravagant story line, but
a string of moments, a few of them grand and redemptive. These are hard ideas
to convey in a Hollywood movie, and Daldry is guilty of ratcheting things up
so that every moments seems to be a very big deal. Yet "The Hours" does have
a cumulative force, and by the end the people around me were sobbing. I'm not
sure they knew exactly what they were moved by, except the inescapable sadness
of passing hours, but as always, that is enough.

BOGAEV: John Powers is media columnist and film critic for LA Weekly.

(Credits)

BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.