Matt Damon

“So Purple Noon, the same source material as The Talented Mr. Ripley, so I never saw Purple Noon because, as famous as it is, I stayed away from it to do Ripley. I didn’t want to see it, and Anthony Minghella didn’t want me to see it, and I never watched it after. But it is a classic, and so I’m going to pick this one up.”

“The movie that he did have me see for that, for Ripley, was actually Knife in the Water. It was to get a sense of the aesthetic and the boat work we were going to do. But I remember it being wonderful.”

“I wanted to grab one of Soderbergh’s movies. They have Traffic here. I like Traffic for a very special reason. So I’ve done, I think, ten movies with Steven Soderbergh. I absolutely adore him. I love working with him, for so many reasons. I mean, he cuts in camera. He is the editor, he’s the director, he’s the cinematographer, and he’s the camera operator. And he cuts the work you do the day you shoot it and he sends it to you, so you can watch the movie develop as it’s going. When he won the Oscar for directing this movie, he kind of scoffed at the idea that he would do anything like it ever again. It’s a remarkable movie, incredible performances. Benicio. Everybody in this movie is great. Benicio is absolutely out of this world, he’s phenomenal. But I’m taking it as a reminder to, when things go really well in your life creatively, never protect your beachhead. And that’s a conversation that I’ve had with Soderbergh many, many times. You want to keep pushing. You do not want to just do the same thing over and over and over.”

“This movie is impossible to find. So if you can get a Criterion edition of You Can Count on Me, you should definitely do that. This was my introduction to Kenny Lonergan. Casey Affleck and I went and did a play in London, one of Kenny’s plays. I ended up producing Manchester by the Sea that Casey was in. And that all happened because I saw this about 27 years ago and was like… It’s just a beautiful, beautiful little movie. I’ve been looking for it to show it to my kids for years, and I’ve even called Kenny and he’s like, “I don’t know, I don’t know what… I can’t find it either.” So, Criterion Collection.”

“Gus’s movie Drugstore Cowboy. I’ve got a couple of Gus’s to point out. Drugstore Cowboy, first Gus Van Sant movie I ever saw. I saw it in the Harvard Square Theatre, which no longer exists. Matt Dillon quite famously said to Gus that he would never talk to him again after he saw the rough cut. And that was why Gus was nervous to show us the rough cut of Good Will Hunting. It’s a phenomenal movie and Matt Dillon’s amazing, and they obviously made up once the movie came out and was a wild success.”

“All right, One False Move. Ben and I loved this movie when it came out, and this is what turned us on to Carl Franklin, the director. We’ve been a fan of his since. And it was the first time we saw Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob Thornton, obviously, went on to play a larger role in our lives. We both worked with him. Love him. And Billy Bob wrote this, I’m pretty sure. That was why he kind of… He was in the movie and he wrote it, and it was while we were trying to do Good Will Hunting, and so another one of those signals that we might be on the right track.”

“This one might not be surprising to anybody: No Country for Old Men. But I… when I worked with the Coen brothers when I did True Grit, the accent that I was doing, I was basing it on Tommy Lee, and the monologue that ends this movie, I probably… I don’t know how many times I’ve watched it, because I was watching it for work, but I enjoyed watching it. The final monologue that Tommy Lee has in this movie is so devastating. He is one of the great actors who has ever lived. And this movie is pretty damn near close to perfect.”

“Oh, yeah, Double Indemnity. One of my favorite little exchanges, I think, ever in a movie: Barbara Stanwyck is being a little coy and… and Fred MacMurray says something to her that’s, like, a little racy, and she says, “I wonder if I know what you’re talking about.” And he responds, “I wonder if you wonder.” Wonderful film. And of course, Edward G. Robinson’s in it.”

“Sex, Lies, and Videotape. That would be a good way to go through here is find first films for directors, because there are some really good ones.”

“That’s another great first film: 12 Angry Men, Sidney Lumet. That’s a hell of a way to introduce yourself to the world. This one was groundbreaking. And this one is just so… It’s so beautifully directed and taut, and acted, written, paced, everything. Brilliant.”

“So I’m going to close my eyes and see what the Closet feeds me. Hopefully a movie I have not seen. Maîtresse, I’ve never seen it. “A young provincial in search of adventure stumbles into the subterranean world of sadomasochism when he is implicated in the burglary of a Paris apartment. Barbet Schroeder’s Maîtresse examines the line between fantasy and reality, decadence and deprivation, and the distance one will go for love.” All right, Barbet. 1976. So I guess I was five when this came out, and it’s about S&M, so it’s not a mystery why I didn’t know about it. But I’ll check it out.”