The Tonight Show interview, circa Feb. 2000
Jay - My first guest, talented actor who won an Academy Award for his film
Good Will Hunting, his current movie is The Talented Mr. Ripley, another
terrific movie in a theater near me, please welcome Matt Damon!
(Matt comes out in black pants and a black shirt. He shakes Jay's hand, and
sort of hugs him, in a small way)
J- hey congratulations on all your success
M- I bribed everybody (referring to the audience cheer)
J- I saw you at the Golden Globes, you looked like you were having fun
M Yeah, I was having fun, I had a feeling we wouldn't be getting up so we got
into the table wine a little bit
J- A lot of people were drunk at the Golden Globes, that's a lot of fun, it's
more fun than the stuff, the other awards
M- Yeah, it's more like a fly on the wall show, you can just watch these
people, you know
J- Oh yeah....see people get loaded, stars throwing up in the bathroom, hey
wait till you see that!
(Matt laughs)
J- now what is this, did i read somewhere you rented a winnebaego?
M- oh yeah, what happened was we were gonna rent a winnebaego to go to
sundance to see Casey Affleck, Ben's little brothers' new film "Committed" so
we had this plan and then all these people were like "I wanna go, I wanna go"
so before we knew it, we had like 15 guys wanting to go, so we rented this
huge tour bus, like a band would use, you know, so we got on this tour bus,
and the night before we were gonna go everyone started dropping out, and the
last person to drop out was Ben, he sprained his ankle playin basketball, and
uh, hurt his ankle, and was up all night in the ER and 7 in the morning, he
wasn't gonna get on the bus, so it ended up being 6 of us, on this gugantic
bus, going out to Sundance and we thought we had visioned, being this big
party bus anbd it just turned out to be 6 guys, sleeping and watching movies,
it was the most boring bus ride...
J- where did you stop? did you do the whole truck driver thing?
M- well, we only stopped in one place, Las Vegas, and we said we'll take 15
minutes, and they put a timer on, we have to leave in 15 minutes, so Casey
took us aside, and said "this is gonna be a big moment, this could be the 15
minutes that count in your life" and gave everybody a pep talk. 15 minutes
later I saw him at the cash machine going "just 2 more minutes, just 2 more"
(laughter)
M- and they lost all the cash they had on 'em
J- But you guys, you and Ben have been friends since jr. high, grade school?
M- grade school, yeah
J- oh well, that's kinda cool, did you collaborate on things as kids, did
you, you know, jr. high, write plays or what did you do?
M- well we thought we were really kind of.....um, I don't know, i think we
really thought we were professional actors from the time we were really young
so we would have business lunches together...
(laughter)
J- business lunches, really!?
M- during business lunches, we'd have, uh, get together and (speaking in
high-pitched voice) "meet you for business lunch? yeah, see ya"....
(laughter)
M- (high voice) First period, or second..second lunch? ok, I'll see ya then.
(normal voice) so we'd go and meet in the smaller cafeteria, it was called
the media cafe..
J- the intimate cafe
M- yeah, exactly, and we'd sit there and look around, make sure no one was
listening and (high voice) "Any business?" "no, you?" "no" (normal voice)
and that was it, you know, but we did a lot of stuff together, we were in a
commercial together
J- now what commercial did you do? why don't I have that to embarrass you
with? what commercial?
M- you have it to embarrass me because we got cut out
J- you got cut out!? Were you bad, what did you do?
M- we stunk, i mean, what do you do to get cut out of a commercial they call
you and say "you've got the job" you go, and you do it
J- now what did you do? what was the product?
M- it was a clothing store in Boston
J- now did you have to do this (waving arms) or what?
M- yeah, back to school, T. J. Maxx was the clothing store...yeah one of
those things and they had this one kid doing gymnastics, doing backflips and
me and Ben were in the back you know...
J- Were you doing like a dance or..? (gets up and dances)
M- yeah, they put the real colorful, you know, isn't it exciting, we're all
going back to school, and we waited and waited for the commercial to be uh,
but they paid us.
J- were you like "oooohhh"
M- yeah we were like "here's our commercial well, there's the guy doing
backfglips, but where are we?"
J- I will pay anything to get that commercial
M- oh no no no
J- I will pay what ever you want
M- please bury it immediately
J- Now I know you're from my hometown, and you grew up in Cambridge..
M- yeah
J- and you're a big Red Sox fan right?
M- oh yeah big
J- now you went down to fenway park what happened?
M- oh yeah, that was the highlight of everything, just going down for the
all-star game
J- did you get out into the field?
M- Yeah they (laughs) I have a feeling where this is going... uh, not the
televised event
J- Oh you were televised
M- yeah there was a celebrity hitting challenge and i just uh, wanted to get
onto the field and i had never been on the field in front of 35,000 people so
i didn't handle myself too well
J- I assume, but you probably hit, what, in left field, center field?
M- laughs, it didn't pan out for me
J- ooh
(laughter)
J- we had that tape, but it was so pathetic i didn't want to show it
M- thank you, thank you
J- it was so bad...now what other sports, you got other sports you do?
M- uh yeah, for this last movie i just finished working on i learned how to
play golf..
J- Golf!
M- yeah, which i never played golf better before, so i had this crash course
J- now are you a good golfer?
M- i think i would've been pretty good, but i got injured
J- injured!? what did the other players beat you up, or what?
(laughter)
J- you swing, sit in your cart, and drink beer!
M- no, i separated my rib, I was swinging too hard
J- separated your rib!?
M- i actually, yeah, playing golf, and so
(jay breaks into giggles and the audience laughs and cheers)
J- show me what you did..
M- it's about the nerdiest thing
J- show me, how was the swing?
M- it was just a regular golf swing..
(Matt stands up)
M- i got, i got up and i was just
(audience screams as he stands up)
M- yeah...wait till you see the swing...I was just...(swings like a
golfer)
J- (during swing) yeah and aah!! aaah!!!
M- yeah and all of the sudden I collapsed and I couldn't (laughs) I mean,
it's the nerdiest thing you can say "I got hurt playing golf"
J- now I know guys in Boston got that weiner attitude
M- oh I know, they're not gonna, they're' "oh you got hurt playing golf?
good for you." Um, hey I do wanna say, not to take over your show or anything,
but uh, thank you very much when Good Will Hunting came out, you were the
first person...
J- oh I loved the movie
M- I know, but before anybody knew about it, I really really appreciate it
J- hey, sure sure
(audience cheers)
J- lemme ask you, did you get injured at all in GWH?
M- i actually made it through that one ok...
J- well, while we're talking about embarrassing things, I saw Ripley twice,
once by myself and then I brought my wife with me, it's a terrific film, but
i went actually to see you in that little lime green swimsuit
(audience cheers)
J- did you pick that, show the, show the picture
(cheers)
M- yeah, that's not my finest hour
J- now you look so pale in that
M- yeah well they painted me, alabastar they kind of coated me to have a
contrast between what i looked like and what jude and gwen look like, so they
were, you know, we'd sit in the trailer....
J- well you kinda look like Gwyneth there
M- that's the only time she's outweighed a man, is in that scene
J- now how about muscles, how did they...
M- the muscles that you have, what they try and do is, well in movies guys
look really ripped, they got make up people etching in the lines, so they did
the opposite
J- oh they did the opposite? they take out the muscles
M- they paint
(laughter)
J- i noticed they took out, they took out the bulge in the suit too
(audience and Matt break into huge laughter)
M- yeah that, they did that in poster, that was CGI
J- oh so they have the whole effect thing
M- right right
J- well tell folks the story of the movie, it's a surprising story, one of
the most fabulously shot movies made
M- i thought so too, it was beautiful scenery in Italy, and it's about a guy
who goes to Italy, is hired to bring back this sort of, American rich kid,
who's blowing through his trust fund and he doesn't have any money but he
just kinda, wants to be in this world of rich kids..
J- right
M- he becomes so annotative (???he used some big word i couldn't understand)
of this guy and of his life, and that's eventually where the plot unfolds and
he tries to overtake him
J- right, right he sets to overtake him. here let's, here's a scene from The
Talented Mr. Ripley, let's take a look
(he plays clip of Matt sitting by Jude Law, imitating Jude's father.
when it's over the crowd cheers)
M- I should say, i, i was imitating his father, if you go see the movie i
don't talk like that through the whole movie (says it kind of sarcastically)
J- and that's all white, they out all the muscles
M- yeah, they take out all that, it's all in post
J- well, it was a wonderful job, terrific terrific film, Matt thank you,
thank you very much for your kindness
M- thank you
(they shake hands)
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