{"id":831235,"date":"2026-07-28T11:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T11:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/831235\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T11:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T11:02:10","slug":"matt-damon-on-lessons-learned-from-gus-van-sant-steven-soderbergh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/831235\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Damon on Lessons Learned From Gus Van Sant, Steven Soderbergh"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMatt Damon<\/a> has been on quite a journey as of late.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe blockbuster star criss-crossed the globe in recent weeks for high-profile stops to promote his starring turn as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan<\/a>\u2018s The Odyssey<\/a>, which is dominating the box office<\/a> and earning Oscar buzz. But he just ducked into a much more intimate place \u2014 the Criterion Closet \u2014 for a walk down memory lane to revisit some classic films.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHey, this is Matt Damon. I\u2019m in the Criterion Closet. There\u2019s just an incredible collection here, and I\u2019m just going to randomly grab some stuff and say what comes to mind,\u201d he said in kicking off what has become a beloved stop for movie stars and auteurs on their promo rounds. He first picked up Purple Noon, a 1960s crime thriller film directed by Ren\u00e9 Cl\u00e9ment and based on Patricia Highsmith\u2019s classic novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. <\/p>\n

\n\tDamon toplined Anthony Minghella\u2019s 1999 version, and said that he never watched Purple Noon because he didn\u2019t want to, nor did Minghella want him to, so as not to color their own adaptation. \u201cThe movie that [Anthony] did have me see for Ripley was actually Knife in the Water. It was just to get a sense of the aesthetic and the boat work we were going to do. But I remember it being wonderful,\u201d Damon noted.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe then picked up Steven Soderbergh\u2019s Traffic, which won four Academy Awards. \u201cI like Traffic for a very special reason. So I\u2019ve done, I think, 10 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\u2019s the director, he\u2019s the cinematographer, and he\u2019s 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\u2019s 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon, who added that it\u2019s a \u201cremarkable movie\u201d featuring an \u201cabsolutely out of this world\u201d performance from Oscar winner Benicio del Toro, said, \u201cI\u2019m taking it as a reminder to when things go really well in your life creatively, never protect your beachhead, and that\u2019s a conversation that I\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon then picked up an \u201cimpossible to find\u201d movie with You Can Count on Me, directed by his good friend and onetime collaborator Kenneth Lonergan. \u201cThis was my introduction to Kenny Lonergan. Casey Affleck and I went and did a play in London, one of Kenny\u2019s plays. I ended up producing Manchester by the Sea that Casey was in, and that all happened because I saw this [movie] about 27 years ago,\u201d Damon explained. \u201cIt\u2019s just a beautiful, beautiful little movie. I\u2019ve been looking forward to showing it to my kids for years. I\u2019ve even called Kenny and he\u2019s like, \u2018I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know [where to find it]. I can\u2019t find it either.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon turned his attention to Gus Van Sant by picking up Drugstore Cowboy, which he said was the first movie by the filmmaker that he\u2019d ever seen. \u201cI saw it in the Harvard Square Theater, 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 Goodwill Hunting. It\u2019s a phenomenal movie and Matt Dillon\u2019s amazing,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they obviously made up once the movie came out and was a wild success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe obviously went on to work with Van Sant, who directed Good Will Hunting. The 1997 film, penned by Damon and best friend Ben Affleck, won them Oscars for best screenplay. Damon then spent some more time on Van Sant\u2019s filmography by picking up My Own Private Idaho starring River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRiver Phoenix has this amazing monologue at a campfire. When I got to know Gus, it was the first thing I asked him. I asked him about that scene and how it came to be,\u201d Damon revealed. \u201cGus told me this incredible story about River coming to work and they had a different scene scripted. And River said, \u2018No, I have an idea.\u2019 And Gus just let him do whatever. He just trusted his actor. There\u2019s a great lesson in collaboration and in trusting the people that you work with and being confident in what you can do, but believing in what they can do too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon also dished on Carl Franklin\u2019s One False Move (a film both he and Affleck love), No Country for Old Men (and how he modeled his True Grit accent after Tommy Lee Jones\u2019 work in the film), Double Indemnity and more. See Damon\u2019s full Criterion Closet stop below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Damon has been on quite a journey as of late. The blockbuster star criss-crossed the globe in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,101938,75,26831,29185],"class_list":["post-831235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-entertainment","tag-matt-damon","tag-the-odyssey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}