Welcome to the IESB!

The IESB is always on the go! For the Latest in Entertainment News and Scoops Bookmark THE IESB.NET...

Date: July 12, 2004

Source: IESB.NET

Posted by: Robert Sanchez

Release Date: July 23, 2004
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Film Genre: Espionage Thriller
Country: United States
Director(s): Paul Greengrass
Screenwriter(s): Tony Gilroy
Cast: Matt Damon, Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, Karl Urban, and Franka Potente.
Official Site: Click Here

Synopsis: The Bourne Identity Following the smash worldwide success of 2002's The Bourne Identity, Universal Pictures brings the second installment of best-selling author Robert Ludlum's series to the screen with Matt Damon returning as trained assassin Jason Bourne in The Bourne Supremacy. The Bourne Supremacy re-enters the shadowy world of expert assassin Bourne (Damon), who continues to find himself plagued by splintered nightmares from his former life. The stakes are now even higher for the agent as he coolly maneuvers through the dangerous waters of international espionage--replete with CIA plots, turncoat agents and ever-shifting covert alliances--all the while hoping to find the truth behind his haunted memories and answers to his own fragmented past. Compelling use of exotic worldwide locations and the muscular cinematic edge brought by vanguard director Paul Greengrass (writer/director of Bloody Sunday) maintain the aggressive style and fresh, non-traditional perspective established in The Bourne Identity: The Bourne Supremacy is the latest entry in a refreshingly new breed of that time-honored genre, the espionage thriller.

Interview with Matt Damon on the Bourne Supremacy

Damon : Have you guys been waiting long? Sorry about that. It was the Hollywood Foreign Press downstairs . . . No, I was looking for sympathy, actually (laughter)

Tell us about how you’ve approached your success and what you’re looking forward to in your career?

Damon: I guess in terms of picking jobs, whatever philosophy I have hasn’t really changed. At first, around the time of doing one line in Chasing Amy, it was take any job I can get, but since Goodwill Hunting and since I’ve been offered movies rather than having to go and hustle and audition for them, it’s basically been just three things that I look for. It’s always just a script that I like, a good director and a good role. And usually I settle for any two of those. The combination of all three are really hard to come by. I had all three with a movie like Ripley: it was a great script and a great director and a really great role in a kind of different thing from what I normally get the chance to do. So my philosophy really hasn’t changed, and whatever success or failures I’ve had have always been with those kinds of things in mind. I mean movies that didn’t do well at all — like All The Pretty Horses — there’s a version of that movie that exists that’s Billy Bob’s cut of it that I really do love, and I’m really happy that I did that movie, and I’m still really proud of that movie in that form that nobody ever saw. But still the process of doing it and all that stuff — I got a lot out of it. I dunno — it’s weird to talk about my career in terms of success. Really recently, right before The Bourne Identity came out, I hadn’t been offered a movie in a year, because The Legend Of Bagger Vance had come out and bombed and All The Pretty Horses had come out and bombed, and the word on The Bourne Identity was that it was going to tank also because we had pushed back the release date a couple of times. For people who know that’s always a sign that things aren’t going well — when in fact we were — Universal had given us more money to go back and reshoot and pick up a couple of things that we needed, and we were making the movie a lot better, so we were holding the movie for the right reasons. But the outward signals within the industry were — oh god, this thing’s going to suck. So nobody really called and gave me some job offers for quite some time, so I went and did a play in London and we closed on a Saturday night, and Bourne had opened that Friday, and by the time I got back to New York Sunday night, Monday morning there were something like 30 script offers. So in terms of any success I’ve had, it’s always been tenuous. I don’t think anyone really feels secure.

Are you willing to work with Kevin Smith again?

Damon: Well, I was in Jersey Girl. I had one scene in Jersey Girl. I’m always ready to do whatever Kevin wants. He’s normally very good about getting me something to do in his movies, and sometimes, like in the case of Dogman, he gives me a big role. So I’m sure one of these days — Kevin kind of writes what’s going on in his life. Obviously Jersey Girl was a huge thing when he became a father and he started ruminating on what would happen if he lost Jen, and this kind of whole thing — and suddenly Jersey Girl came out of that, so as Kevin kind of keeps living his life, maybe a role that will come out that he offers to me. And the second he does I’ll take it.

What is going on with the project that you and Ben have been working on . . . any progress?

Damon: Well, I think the one Ben’s talking about right now is the Dennis Lehane novel he had, Gone Baby Gone. He’s got the rights for that one, but I don’t really know what’s going on with that right now. A lot depends on whether he wants to be in it or wants to direct it or where his head’s at. But I’ve been so busy doing all these other movies that we haven’t had a chance to sit down and do any writing for some time. But when I saw him last night . . . it’s something we talk about every time we see each other. We want to do it, but it’s just a matter of kind of handling the logistics, and finding a way to get us in the same place at the same time. One of the things is that having struggled for work for so long, it’s about seven years that we’ve both been working consistently, having struggled for so long through our teens and early twenties, it’s kind of an an athema to us to turn down work. So that’s what I think we’ll have to do to try to write something. We’ll just have to block out the time . . . For both of us probably the most creatively fulfilling experience was Goodwill Hunting, just because we took an idea from its very beginning, and shepherded it all the way through until it was a film. And that’s just incredibly fulfilling to do. Even if —

(someone’s tape recorder stops, and he switches the tape . . . laughter and applause as he succeeds)

— Thank you. That’s how we used to write actually. We’d improvise all the scenes so I’m used to those little guys. But even right now, we’re having a lot of creative input with the directors we work with. And it is a collaborative feeling, taking a movie like Bourne, I was really involved in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day, it’s the director’s vision and it’s got to be because it’s the director’s meaning, and there’s no getting around that you’re kind of hired labor. So in terms of writing and taking something all the way from the beginning to kind of finished form is a feeling I think we both want to have again.

What is the aspect of the anti-image factor you had in the initial Bourne movie? The success of the original film and the potential success of this film is a paradox in American society right now because your country seems to be looking for heroes, and here’s a really stark anti-hero who now has all this appeal. So can you talk about those aspects for you personally?

Damon: It was a big concern when I took the job the first time and it was something that Doug Liman, the director of the first movie, and I talked a lot about. Because he thought it was really daring to cast me as this guy because of the way I look. I look so young and this guy clearly has to have a history and he’s got a very dark past, and people don’t look at me and necessarily think that. So there was a lot of stuff physically in terms of getting ready. We just looked at every different aspect of how to kind of make this guy as believable as possible. Because the worst thing that could happen would be if you had a good movie but the central character is just not quite believable and he’s constantly taking your audience out of the movie, that’s a complete disaster. The movie would just fall apart, so Doug came up with certain things. Like he watched boxing on television and he liked the way boxers walked. There was something, there was a directness and efficiency and a kind of security in their bodies, and this kind of forward momentum that he really liked —

Is that why you run that way in the movie?

Damon: No I think that’s just the way I run. (laughter). I’d never really seen myself run before. So I boxed for about six months before the movie, and that really helped. I found that just the way you move around other people, and it’s a very subtle thing, but I think the some total of a lot of those little subtleties add up to making something believable or not. A lot of the weapons training — just little tips from the guy I was training with — I’d put in so many hours — well, for one thing, there was that moment in the first one where he picks up a gun for the first time and he throws it down. What it said in the screen (script?) direction was that it feels so comfortable in his hand that he throws it down, and from that moment on, any time he’s holding a gun, it’s got to look like an extension of his arm. So the only way to get around that was just to go to the firing range and just put in hundreds of hours, so I didn’t have to think about the gun. It was just there and it would never be pointed at anything I wasn’t prepared to destroy. For instance if you see a cop off duty at a bar and you’re having a conversation, you know they’re a cop because they’ll angle their body — they’ll angle their right hip away if they’re right-handed even if they’re not wearing a gun. This is uhow they talk to someone: this is incredibly deadly and harmful and you keep that away and keep a distance, and it’s always available to you and not to them. It’s little things like that that add up nthroughout the course of a movie that, if you just see somebody’s body moving in a certain way, suddenly they’re more believable. The other theory, which we applied to this one also, was that as many of the kind of things — whether a fight sequence or something like that — it’s really important to have me doing it. Because audiences are smart enough to know when you cut to the wide shot . . . of the stunt man doing it. It’s a giveaway, and even if they can’t put their finger on it, it’s just something that takes them out of the movie a little bit, so it was working on all that stuff to make sure that I could do it and the other actor could do it in a way that looked real and credible and kind of kept the illusion afloat.

Why the anti-hero?

Damon: Because basically what I liked about it was putting out in a mainstream movie a feeling that (when) something terribly wrong happens to you, your first instinct is to go to get revenge, but if you just sit back and think about it and you start to look at yourself in your own life and take responsibility for your own actions, the most important thing you do to rejoin the human race is to start atoning for the things that you’ve done. And the last shot of the movie is him walking and rejoining a sea of humanity in New York City of all places. That was the first time we’d ever seen him in this country, so that was one of the things that I thought was a good thing to put out there right now, and I hope people accept that. Who knows what the reaction to the movie is going to be? But that was the reason to me to do the movie in this day and age — I thought a good thing to put out there, to take someone whom we’ve established as the ultimate American machine, whatever, that that’s the realization he comes to, and at the end he does a very powerful thing — he does the only thing that he can, which is to attempt to atone and start to redeem himself.

Have you seen Matt and Ben the play?

Damon: I haven’t seen it. I don’t know. Some people have said it’s funny. Some people have said it’s kind of a knock or whatever. I don’t know. I just figure it’s like an extension of Project Greenlight, a chance to give people a job.

Do you think that your comments in the Biskind book changed your relationship with Miramax.

Damon: I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s changed it. No no, I don’t think I said anything too incendiary there actually. What I said about Harvey I really feel. Basically, I was just saying that he’s an incredible businessman and that you have to be aware of that when dealing with him.

Can you tell us how Oceans 12 is turning out?

Damon: We’re 75 per cent of the way through. We just came back from Europe and we’re finishing it up at Warner Brothers and it’s been going great so far. Everyone’s back for this one plus Catherine Zeta Jones has a great role in this one, and there are a few celebrity surprises.

What are the biggest challenges in the Bourne films?

Damon:One of the biggest challenges starting out as an acting thing was that I don’t talk a lot in the movie. That was another thing I really liked about it, and . . . reading the script I only had about bfour scenes in the movie where I speak, but I’m on screen for a lot of the movie, so that was a huge challenge, and it’s a pretty dark journey the guy goes on, so to get into that mindset every day, that was a huge challenge. The good news is that I got my requisite amount of laughter every day when I’d go home at night and unwind a little bit, get on the phone or talk to people — you know, rejoin humanity for the evenings but go to work. It’s a pretty kind of heavy role this time around. Normally you look for the contradictions and have some scenes of levity, but in this case it was pretty intense most of the way through, so that was kind of a challenge. Berlin in the winter gets light at about 9 in the morning and gets dark in terms of shootable light about 3 to 3.30, and it’s overcast. So the kind of mood we were all in for those months of shooting — we didn’t see the sun for quite some time, so I think that probably was a sub-conscious aid.


Search the IESB	The IESB is always on the go! For the Latest in Entertainment News and Scoops Bookmark THE IESB.NET... Date: July 12, 2004 Source: IESB.NET Posted by: Robert Sanchez Release Date: July 23, 2004 Distributor: Universal Pictures Film Genre: Espionage Thriller Country: United States Director(s): Paul Greengrass Screenwriter(s): Tony Gilroy Cast: Matt Damon, Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Julia Stiles, Karl Urban, and Franka Potente. Official Site: Click Here Synopsis: The Bourne Identity Following the smash worldwide success of 2002's The Bourne Identity, Universal Pictures brings the second installment of best-selling author Robert Ludlum's series to the screen with Matt Damon returning as trained assassin Jason Bourne in The Bourne Supremacy. The Bourne Supremacy re-enters the shadowy world of expert assassin Bourne (Damon), who continues to find himself plagued by splintered nightmares from his former life. The stakes are now even higher for the agent as he coolly maneuvers through the dangerous waters of international espionage--replete with CIA plots, turncoat agents and ever-shifting covert alliances--all the while hoping to find the truth behind his haunted memories and answers to his own fragmented past. Compelling use of exotic worldwide locations and the muscular cinematic edge brought by vanguard director Paul Greengrass (writer/director of Bloody Sunday) maintain the aggressive style and fresh, non-traditional perspective established in The Bourne Identity: The Bourne Supremacy is the latest entry in a refreshingly new breed of that time-honored genre, the espionage thriller. *Interview with Matt Damon on the Bourne Supremacy* Damon : Have you guys been waiting long? Sorry about that. It was the Hollywood Foreign Press downstairs . . . No, I was looking for sympathy, actually (laughter) *Tell us about how you’ve approached your success and what you’re looking forward to in your career?* Damon: I guess in terms of picking jobs, whatever philosophy I have hasn’t really changed. At first, around the time of doing one line in Chasing Amy, it was take any job I can get, but since Goodwill Hunting and since I’ve been offered movies rather than having to go and hustle and audition for them, it’s basically been just three things that I look for. It’s always just a script that I like, a good director and a good role. And usually I settle for any two of those. The combination of all three are really hard to come by. I had all three with a movie like Ripley: it was a great script and a great director and a really great role in a kind of different thing from what I normally get the chance to do. So my philosophy really hasn’t changed, and whatever success or failures I’ve had have always been with those kinds of things in mind. I mean movies that didn’t do well at all — like All The Pretty Horses — there’s a version of that movie that exists that’s Billy Bob’s cut of it that I really do love, and I’m really happy that I did that movie, and I’m still really proud of that movie in that form that nobody ever saw. But still the process of doing it and all that stuff — I got a lot out of it. I dunno — it’s weird to talk about my career in terms of success. Really recently, right before The Bourne Identity came out, I hadn’t been offered a movie in a year, because The Legend Of Bagger Vance had come out and bombed and All The Pretty Horses had come out and bombed, and the word on The Bourne Identity was that it was going to tank also because we had pushed back the release date a couple of times. For people who know that’s always a sign that things aren’t going well — when in fact we were — Universal had given us more money to go back and reshoot and pick up a couple of things that we needed, and we were making the movie a lot better, so we were holding the movie for the right reasons. But the outward signals within the industry were — oh god, this thing’s going to suck. So nobody really called and gave me some job offers for quite some time, so I went and did a play in London and we closed on a Saturday night, and Bourne had opened that Friday, and by the time I got back to New York Sunday night, Monday morning there were something like 30 script offers. So in terms of any success I’ve had, it’s always been tenuous. I don’t think anyone really feels secure. *Are you willing to work with Kevin Smith again?* Damon: Well, I was in Jersey Girl. I had one scene in Jersey Girl. I’m always ready to do whatever Kevin wants. He’s normally very good about getting me something to do in his movies, and sometimes, like in the case of Dogman, he gives me a big role. So I’m sure one of these days — Kevin kind of writes what’s going on in his life. Obviously Jersey Girl was a huge thing when he became a father and he started ruminating on what would happen if he lost Jen, and this kind of whole thing — and suddenly Jersey Girl came out of that, so as Kevin kind of keeps living his life, maybe a role that will come out that he offers to me. And the second he does I’ll take it. *What is going on with the project that you and Ben have been working on . . . any progress?* Damon: Well, I think the one Ben’s talking about right now is the Dennis Lehane novel he had, Gone Baby Gone. He’s got the rights for that one, but I don’t really know what’s going on with that right now. A lot depends on whether he wants to be in it or wants to direct it or where his head’s at. But I’ve been so busy doing all these other movies that we haven’t had a chance to sit down and do any writing for some time. But when I saw him last night . . . it’s something we talk about every time we see each other. We want to do it, but it’s just a matter of kind of handling the logistics, and finding a way to get us in the same place at the same time. One of the things is that having struggled for work for so long, it’s about seven years that we’ve both been working consistently, having struggled for so long through our teens and early twenties, it’s kind of an an athema to us to turn down work. So that’s what I think we’ll have to do to try to write something. We’ll just have to block out the time . . . For both of us probably the most creatively fulfilling experience was Goodwill Hunting, just because we took an idea from its very beginning, and shepherded it all the way through until it was a film. And that’s just incredibly fulfilling to do. Even if — (someone’s tape recorder stops, and he switches the tape . . . laughter and applause as he succeeds) — Thank you. That’s how we used to write actually. We’d improvise all the scenes so I’m used to those little guys. But even right now, we’re having a lot of creative input with the directors we work with. And it is a collaborative feeling, taking a movie like Bourne, I was really involved in a lot of ways, but at the end of the day, it’s the director’s vision and it’s got to be because it’s the director’s meaning, and there’s no getting around that you’re kind of hired labor. So in terms of writing and taking something all the way from the beginning to kind of finished form is a feeling I think we both want to have again. *What is the aspect of the anti-image factor you had in the initial Bourne movie?* The success of the original film and the potential success of this film is a paradox in American society right now because your country seems to be looking for heroes, and here’s a really stark anti-hero who now has all this appeal. So can you talk about those aspects for you personally? Damon: It was a big concern when I took the job the first time and it was something that Doug Liman, the director of the first movie, and I talked a lot about. Because he thought it was really daring to cast me as this guy because of the way I look. I look so young and this guy clearly has to have a history and he’s got a very dark past, and people don’t look at me and necessarily think that. So there was a lot of stuff physically in terms of getting ready. We just looked at every different aspect of how to kind of make this guy as believable as possible. Because the worst thing that could happen would be if you had a good movie but the central character is just not quite believable and he’s constantly taking your audience out of the movie, that’s a complete disaster. The movie would just fall apart, so Doug came up with certain things. Like he watched boxing on television and he liked the way boxers walked. There was something, there was a directness and efficiency and a kind of security in their bodies, and this kind of forward momentum that he really liked — *Is that why you run that way in the movie?* Damon: No I think that’s just the way I run. (laughter). I’d never really seen myself run before. So I boxed for about six months before the movie, and that really helped. I found that just the way you move around other people, and it’s a very subtle thing, but I think the some total of a lot of those little subtleties add up to making something believable or not. A lot of the weapons training — just little tips from the guy I was training with — I’d put in so many hours — well, for one thing, there was that moment in the first one where he picks up a gun for the first time and he throws it down. What it said in the screen (script?) direction was that it feels so comfortable in his hand that he throws it down, and from that moment on, any time he’s holding a gun, it’s got to look like an extension of his arm. So the only way to get around that was just to go to the firing range and just put in hundreds of hours, so I didn’t have to think about the gun. It was just there and it would never be pointed at anything I wasn’t prepared to destroy. For instance if you see a cop off duty at a bar and you’re having a conversation, you know they’re a cop because they’ll angle their body — they’ll angle their right hip away if they’re right-handed even if they’re not wearing a gun. This is uhow they talk to someone: this is incredibly deadly and harmful and you keep that away and keep a distance, and it’s always available to you and not to them. It’s little things like that that add up nthroughout the course of a movie that, if you just see somebody’s body moving in a certain way, suddenly they’re more believable. The other theory, which we applied to this one also, was that as many of the kind of things — whether a fight sequence or something like that — it’s really important to have me doing it. Because audiences are smart enough to know when you cut to the wide shot . . . of the stunt man doing it. It’s a giveaway, and even if they can’t put their finger on it, it’s just something that takes them out of the movie a little bit, so it was working on all that stuff to make sure that I could do it and the other actor could do it in a way that looked real and credible and kind of kept the illusion afloat. *Why the anti-hero?* Damon: Because basically what I liked about it was putting out in a mainstream movie a feeling that (when) something terribly wrong happens to you, your first instinct is to go to get revenge, but if you just sit back and think about it and you start to look at yourself in your own life and take responsibility for your own actions, the most important thing you do to rejoin the human race is to start atoning for the things that you’ve done. And the last shot of the movie is him walking and rejoining a sea of humanity in New York City of all places. That was the first time we’d ever seen him in this country, so that was one of the things that I thought was a good thing to put out there right now, and I hope people accept that. Who knows what the reaction to the movie is going to be? But that was the reason to me to do the movie in this day and age — I thought a good thing to put out there, to take someone whom we’ve established as the ultimate American machine, whatever, that that’s the realization he comes to, and at the end he does a very powerful thing — he does the only thing that he can, which is to attempt to atone and start to redeem himself. *Have you seen Matt and Ben the play?* Damon: I haven’t seen it. I don’t know. Some people have said it’s funny. Some people have said it’s kind of a knock or whatever. I don’t know. I just figure it’s like an extension of Project Greenlight, a chance to give people a job. *Do you think that your comments in the Biskind book changed your relationship with Miramax.* Damon: I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s changed it. No no, I don’t think I said anything too incendiary there actually. What I said about Harvey I really feel. Basically, I was just saying that he’s an incredible businessman and that you have to be aware of that when dealing with him. *Can you tell us how Oceans 12 is turning out?* Damon: We’re 75 per cent of the way through. We just came back from Europe and we’re finishing it up at Warner Brothers and it’s been going great so far. Everyone’s back for this one plus Catherine Zeta Jones has a great role in this one, and there are a few celebrity surprises. *What are the biggest challenges in the Bourne films?* Damon:One of the biggest challenges starting out as an acting thing was that I don’t talk a lot in the movie. That was another thing I really liked about it, and . . . reading the script I only had about bfour scenes in the movie where I speak, but I’m on screen for a lot of the movie, so that was a huge challenge, and it’s a pretty dark journey the guy goes on, so to get into that mindset every day, that was a huge challenge. The good news is that I got my requisite amount of laughter every day when I’d go home at night and unwind a little bit, get on the phone or talk to people — you know, rejoin humanity for the evenings but go to work. It’s a pretty kind of heavy role this time around. Normally you look for the contradictions and have some scenes of levity, but in this case it was pretty intense most of the way through, so that was kind of a challenge. Berlin in the winter gets light at about 9 in the morning and gets dark in terms of shootable light about 3 to 3.30, and it’s overcast. So the kind of mood we were all in for those months of shooting — we didn’t see the sun for quite some time, so I think that probably was a sub-conscious aid.
	IESB.NET Homepage Please report any website problems to info@iesb.net. For press credential information click here. This site is © 2002 -2004 by The Inland Empire Strikes Back and IESB.NET Copyrights and trademarks regarding the entertainment media images and articles published at iesb.net are held by the respective and sited owners. All other text and articles are original and © IESB.NET and The Inland Empire Strikes Back.
	The IESB is Powered by iPowerWeb