Matt Damon [Rerelease from 8/2/21]

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hello, Monica.

Hi.

We have incredibly exciting news. Starting on Monday, August 14th, you'll be able to find all new episodes of Armchair Expert free on Spotify and everywhere you get your podcasts. But in the meantime, we decided we wanted to revisit a few of our favorite episodes over the last couple of years.

Yes, it's very exciting for us, because we get to come back to every one, which is really, really fun. And these are some of our faves.

Yes, in case you missed them, these are the ones that we thought were worth re-airing before we go wide on August 14th. Please enjoy some of our best of.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dax Shepard.

Who are you joined by?

And I'm joined by Miniature Moose.

Miniature Moose. Why are you doing the intro today? I wonder. Is it Monica Day?

I think it might be.

Yeah, it's Monica Day, all day, every day. Matt Damon is here. Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I hope everyone has a change of slacks. No one should play on this unless they got a backup pair of unmentionables and slacks.

I hope everyone's smiling from ear to ear throughout the whole thing, because I sure did.

I think we both did. Yeah. It is really funny to be sitting next to someone in an interview and feeling like you, like him 100x, because that seems impossible, because I adore Matt Damon. I mean, he is one of my all-time favorite actors, but I was so overshadowed by your love that I felt I don't even deserve to be here.

Of course, you deserve to be here.

Okay, well, that's good.

On a scale of one to 10, how cool do you think I played it?

A 10.

Oh, thank you.

It was kind of similar to when we talked to Ben Schwartz about you having been in love with him, where he was like, yeah, this is how it was. And there was this element of like, it's not that way now, just so you know. It was very chill and very cool and very rad. Thank you. Yeah, radical and chill, which is kind of fucked up.

Yeah, I was way more energized.

On the inside.

Yes, it was extreme. It was full body tingles the whole time.

For real? Yeah. Oh, my God, I'm so jealous.

I think at one point I really did almost pass out. Really? At what part? Well, at one point I was like, oh, I feel like dizzy. But I think, maybe because I like stopped breathing or something, because I was listening too hard.

Oh man, what an experience. I don't need to tell you any of this, but Matt Damon is an Oscar award winning and Golden Globe award winning actor, producer, and screenwriter. His credits include Good Will Hunting, Jason Bourne, The Martian, The Departed, Ford vs. Ferrari, The Informant, The Oceans movies. And he has an incredible movie out that I watched prior to the interview called Stillwater.

♪ He's an armchair expert ♪.

♪ He's an armchair expert ♪.

♪ He's an armchair expert ♪.

This is beyond exciting.

I love what you're doing with the place, by the way. I hear that's three and a half years in the making.

Yeah, what do you think so far? Do you want the name of our contractor?

It's coming along. I couldn't believe. when he told me that was three and a half years. I was like, oh, my fucking God. Oh yeah.

The only thing that has made it all tolerable is that I own a house like a thousand feet that way that I've lived in for 16 years.

Oh, cool, okay.

Which now my sister owns. So we weren't uncomfortable. We would just like come over here and we'd have like a picnic. And yeah, it's gruelingly slow. And, as you can see, we're far from the finish line.

Fantastic.

Yeah, so congratulations. You got to see it first swim.

That's great.

I have to ask before we get started, have you been prepped in any sense? Has anyone ever told you anything about the show?

No.

Okay, great. I gotta get right into it. Get right into it. Okay, Monica.

I co-host the show. That's something to say.

This is a two person operation. Monica Padman from Georgia and myself. Monica has seen Good Will Hunting. It would be incomplete to even guess. Over a thousand times.

Oh, wow.

Way more than that, yeah.

And to the level where in school, she would close her eyes. This is my favorite part of it. She'd close her eyes and watch it frame per frame. And she could just sit there and watch the whole movie in her mind.

I had it on VHS. I would watch it and then I would rewind and watch it again. And then, once they came out on DVD and then you guys had a commentary, then I would watch the commentary over and over and over again.

It's an obsession. I know a lot of people that are into a lot of things. I've never met anyone that was as into one thing as Monica is into Good Will Hunting.

That's awesome to hear, though, thanks.

Not to make you so uncomfortable.

No, it doesn't make me uncomfortable. That's really cool. I hope I can remember enough about it to answer questions, if you have any.

Well, that's what I was thinking. I doubt. What am I gonna ask?

Can. I guess that she knows way more than you about the movie than you do? I'm positive of it.

I can't even get my kid to watch it.

Oh God.

Yeah, it's like a thing.

Oh, my God, I gotta show you one more thing.

I re-watched it last night in prep. Yeah, it's a big deal. And every time someone comes in here who's from Boston, the question is, do you know Matt and Ben as an entity? Have you met Matt and Ben? Do you know Matt and Ben?

So here's what, when people are on the show, they get one of these, right? So, for Monica's birthday, I did you, but the initials for the name are W-H, Will Hunting.

That's right.

So that hangs in her dining room and we often record in there, and then we post pictures and people are like, who's? W-H? Yeah, what's that? It looks like Matt Damon, but you guys haven't had Matt Damon on. Anyway, so this is what you sat down into.

All right, good.

And I thought maybe you would wanna know. And more will be unraveled as we go. She has a tattoo on her back.

No, no, no, not yet, not yet.

Has Ben done the show yet?

No. No, okay, all right.

We have had Casey on, though.

We have had, okay, cool.

And we talked about Good Will Hunting, and I wanted, because we're there already, let me just say that I too loved it. My first movie with a girl I dated for nine years was that movie and we sat on the carpet of the movie theater because every seat was taken and it was sold out and I was like, let's just go, we'll buy a ticket to whatever. Transformers, God knows what. And then we'll just go in. and when we did, we sat on the floor.

All right.

Well, let me first ask you, how would you explain its success? What about that movie? do you think captivated people?

I don't know. Ben and I, when we wrote it, we always talked about just wanting to love, the way, it's funny you talk about it, VHS. We used to talk about it in those terms too. We said, if it's just a tape on our mantle, we wanna love it. We kind of stumbled into a very wise strategy, which is just, you know.

Make the movie you wanna be in.

Exactly, yeah.

That's a hard lesson to learn.

It is, and we had a lot of chances to make different versions of it. Right. And we didn't do that.

It kinda has the lore of Rocky. Like, do you remember growing up and learning that Rocky, like that, Stallone had written Rocky, and then they tried to buy it off of him.

Believe me, that's why we were able to do Good Will Hunting.

Just knowing that story about Stallone.

Yes, his journey made ours possible. Oh, wow.

So not only did you know you were using it as a North Star.

It was 100% a North Star and we used to refer to it because the story we heard was that he was offered, I heard it was like $35,000, which in 1975 or whenever, and he had a pregnant wife and he was broke. And we knew where he lived. in the same kind of neighborhood in West Hollywood, we were told. We were pointed out the house that we lived in, where Ben was like sleeping on our couch because he had had this engagement that had broken off. And so we were writing, kind of in a living room that had all of his shit in it and where he would sleep.

And had experienced all the same things.

Yeah, yeah.

But basically studios loved it and they wanted to buy it, and he said, I have to star in it. And they said no, and they offered him some outrageous sum of money to just let go of the script and not be in it. And then he took nothing.

And he was broke when he turned down the money, because I think Ryan O'Neill was a big movie star and they wanted Ryan O'Neill to do it.

Yeah, it's a fun thing to imagine.

Can you imagine if it had happened that way?

Yeah, because Ryan O'Neill was excellent. It would be such a different movie, though. And Rocky was, God bless him too, not a vain project.

No, no, no.

He's playing, kind of a dummy who has similarly kind of a heart of gold, and he's washed up. You feel so, have you seen Rocky? No.

Oh, my God, really?

Maybe that'll be my new Good Will Hunting.

You're gonna retire. Good Will Hunting.

Well, in your defense, if you're only aware of Rocky's three through six, you don't understand. the first movie was like a legitimate, it was nominated for best movie, or maybe even won.

It was nominated, it might've won, I can't remember. But just the end, when he's ain't gonna be a rematch, don't want one, like, oh God, it's just like.

And how playful he is with Adrian and their little love affair is so beautiful. Oh, and she's playing and he's dumb. I mean, no, for real, but it's beautiful, yeah.

So good.

Okay, do you wanna hear my theory on why the movie was so successful? Sure. I think we all feel special and unseen. as humans. We feel like, God, I know I have something special about me, no one's noticing.

Secret genius.

And he's got this secret power that no one's observing, and now people are gonna observe. That, to me, is what was so catchy about it.

I've never thought of it in those terms, but that could very much be true. Something connected.

Well, I was on the outside at that time looking in. So I lived in LA, I'm auditioning, I'm not getting any work. Brutal, lonely feeling. And I see this movie and I'm like, now. I don't think I'm a genius, but I also think, like, I wanna get recognized.

Well, that's interesting, because actually that would be the context in which we wrote it. We would have been doing exactly what you were doing, which is auditioning and not getting anything and feeling like we had something to offer.

And you did. Like, it wasn't arrogance. That movie was brilliant. And you did, you had something. And yeah, I just think that's the most special, encouraging thing about that movie is like, oh yeah, I think that's cool.

Yeah, I like thinking of it in those terms, actually. That's a nice way to think of it. But it would have been born out of the exact same feeling that you know very well. I was terrified in my early 20s that I was gonna die because I felt like I was gonna die without, like I had something to give. Yeah, I had something to give.

We're just talking about this. Literally, we interviewed someone this morning and I was saying that this person had airplane anxiety. And I said, you know, I don't have it because I have no illusion of control. Like, I am along for the fucking ride. If it goes down, what am I gonna do?

Well, you do think you're gonna get involved.

Well, I do think that, but that's a side note. But for years, for 10 years in LA, when the plane was about to crash, I would think, oh, you fucking loser, man. You didn't do a thing. Like, you're gonna leave and you didn't accomplish one of your goals. And it was so weighty and painful.

Yeah, now that you bring it up, I had a terrible fear of flying in my early 20s. And now it's not at all. Not that I want to go or I want the plane to crash at all, but like, I don't want to die.

But when I'm up there, when I think, okay, this is it, we're going down, I do think, man, I had a good fucking life and I'm grateful. And this is a totally happy success story. And I'm lucky.

That's exactly how I feel. The first thought would be about my kids. Like, I don't want to not be here for them.

Of course.

But for my own stuff, I don't have any complaints.

I know, I know. I get kind of, sometimes I get distracted by the notion that we evaluate life by its longevity as opposed to like what happened in the period of time. I don't know, when Paul Walker died, I was like, naturally, I was sad that that dude died. He apparently was a nice person on all accounts. But at the same time, I also was like, like, I had an incredible life.

It can, but there's certainly aspects. I mean, I just remember reading about his daughter and I just was so sad.

You keep bringing the children up, and that's a little thing to remind ourselves of.

No, there's your subjective. I look at all the travel I've been able to do and all the things I've seen. And by the fact that this job and the era in which I was born, and it is a number of lifetimes, the way we get to kind of move around the world. And so, in some regards, yes. And then in other regards, there are those primary relationships that you want to nurture forever.

And you can have a quote, successful life and be on the plane and not feel happy, or that you lived the way you wanted to live. Like the success doesn't equal.

Right, it's like, what are you calling success? Exactly. Yeah, it's going back to that thing about the tape on the mantelpiece. Yes.

Well, let's put it this way. It is not an equal scale. So the pleasure of success does not equal the pain of failure for me. Like the pain of failing for many, many years was ever present. And I thought about it all the time.

It's hard to be generous when things aren't going your way.

When you're desperate, yes.

Yeah, and I remember that. I certainly remember feeling like, oh, the ugliest parts of myself are kind of laid bare when there's a scene in this movie where Adam Driver's character shows me this kind of estate that he's been given by our overlord that I really wanted. And Ben and I laughed so hard when we, I'm like, so he just, he, gave this to me.

Can you remember what age that switched for you? Because now I can, now I know my shittiness. I used to spread so many rumors about Vince Vaughn. I was just so intimidated by his talent and I wanted to be him. They're like, if I heard any smidgen, I would tell anyone I heard, and I'm like, now I think about it, I'm like, what a shithead I was.

Yeah, yeah, I became more generous when things started going really well for me, probably.

I think that all the time. It's easier to be a good person when you're showered and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Well, it was Martin Luther King who said, your character is tested by who you are in times of adversity.

Right, right.

I always think about that.

There's just really no excuse, when you're in these positions, to be an asshole. Like, you really can't.

Yeah, when people tell me that, oh, you're so nice, I'm like, how could I, I mean, how else would I be? Like, can you imagine how much energy it would take to be an asshole?

Well, you just said exactly what I've been experiencing for the last few years, which is people will say like, oh, you're really kind or you're generous, and I think, I'm not. I'm actually like a greedy little shit pig, but I've been given so much stuff, I can actually be generous now. Like, it's not an accomplishment. I didn't work on myself to become this way.

I have done no work on myself.

But do you remember, like, was there an accomplishment or was there a movie, or was there anything where you were finally like, oh, yeah, I'm done with that. I'm rooting for everyone now, and I'm not scared anymore.

I remember when I did Courage Under Fire, which is a supporting role, but I remember I worked so hard on it, and I had to-.

Permanently damage yourself, yeah, perhaps?

Yeah, I mean, I definitely was on, I had to take medication for like a year and a half, and I fucked up my like adrenal system. It was like, I did a number on my body, but it just took a lot of discipline, and I was really proud of how hard I worked, like, that. I did it. And I looked at the performance and I was like, that's good, that's my idea of what is good. And when the movie came out, I didn't understand about like press kits.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I remember I was like 25 years old, and I remember thinking, well, I can't do it better than that, so I should probably quit. Maybe the business is telling me like, no, man.

If I can't get noticed-.

Yeah, and then there were, I still remember, a friend from San Francisco sent me the San Francisco Chronicle, and the reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle, I don't know if it was still Mick LaSalle, he was doing it back then, but singled me out and spent the review kind of talking about me. And I remember thinking, well, someone gets it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Someone sees me, right? Like to your point about being seen, like I have something and nobody sees it, but it's there, I believe it's there. And then when somebody tells you, it's there-.

Yeah, it's wind in your sails, right?

Absolutely, yeah.

I have to admit something to you, this is so embarrassing, but it's the truth. So my second movie of my life was this movie, Idiocracy, and I gained 40 pounds for it in like three weeks. So I gained all this weight, and mind you, I know I'm in a comedy, I know I'm in a Mike Judge comedy, but I had the most arrogant thought where I was in my trailer, again, my second movie, I'm 29 or something, and I've gained all this weight, and I think, you know, you could get nominated. I mean, they don't nominate people in comedies. But I start having this whole fantasy where I could potentially get nominated for an Academy Award on my second movie because I've gained 40 pounds.

Yeah, well, it's funny you say that. Like Ben and I always tell this story, there's a movie that came out in the 80s, late 80s, early 90s, called Fat Man and Little Boy.

Oh, about the bombs.

About the bombs, and the story that we heard was that the crew, they had a pool of how many Oscar nominations?

the movie was gonna get. Oh, my God.

Can you imagine how fucking mortifying that would be?

Oh, my God.

You know, like the prop guy's, like, you know, guys, I'm gonna say six. I think, only, stop it, Gary. No, no, just six. We might not get every, we might not get them all.

No, it's gonna be 15.. Oh, my God. Well, we're sweeping all the tech stuff, right?

Clearly, we're gonna, yeah, exactly, right? The conversations behind the scenes, and we're like, that's our nightmare, right? Yeah. Of ever being. So, by the way, good for you for admitting that you had that conversation with the mirror in your trailer.

Well, listen, I can say that because it literally flips on a dime, which is it's either that, or it's what a fraud I am. How'd they let me in on this thing? I suck, I'm the worst person in the world. So, another example of that is every time Chris and I attend the Academy Awards, or a night before a party, the week leading up to the thing, I am telling myself, everyone there is gonna look at me and go, why did they let this guy in? He was on Punk'd, why is he here?

Still.

On the ride home from every one of these events, I'm literally in my head thinking, I might be the most popular guy in Hollywood. I think I knew everyone there. I think everyone was excited to see me. I think I was the life of that party. I literally, there's no zone where I'm okay.

But that's your operating zone. You're at a zero or a 10.. That's right. That's an addict brain, that's what happens.

When you started going to all those parties, what kind of racket was in your head?

Well, the first year, so we went from watching the Oscars on TV to being in the front row.

Receiving one.

Yeah, it was really like. there was absolutely no.

Yeah, you're like an athlete recruited out of high school. You're like a high schooler and a year later, you're famous, smooth, yeah.

And those parties in that weekend, right before those, the two nights before the Oscars or whatever, at the time, Patrick, our agent, who we've been with the whole time, he now owns WME. He's one of the. White Soul. Yeah, Patrick, White Soul.

Also, suspiciously good looking agent. Can we just.

Yeah, Robert Duvall told me 30 years ago that I had to fire him because I couldn't have an agent who was better looking than I was.

He's better looking than every actor he represents.

Oh, you gotta get rid of that guy. I'm like, Bobby, what do you mean? He's great. He's my friend. He's like, can't have an agent better looking than you are.

You're like, steak, Matt.

Argentina, best steak in the world. Oh, so you've met him.

I did a movie with him a few years back and I just was like, every time I was around him, I just put record in the tape recorder in my head. I'm like, I wanna remember every word he says.

I worked with him in 93.. We did a movie called Geronimo and I had lunch with him every day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just loved him. He was a hero of mine too as an actor, so.

I'll just tell you this. So before the table read, we meet him. Again, I'm having like imposter syndrome. I don't belong in this movie. Well, I meet him and he's all over the place, man.

Yeah, it's like one of the best actors in the world, who's now 90, you know what I mean? There's just nothing he can say that will ever appear false to you.

You know, it feels so fucking true. And then, when he sat down and he started doing that thing, I was like, oh, he can still do that thing at 100%. Like he can do that.

So talk about not belonging. The year of Good Will Hunting, I was nominated as an actor and the other nominees in the category, and I remember this because we still have the picture, it was Jack Nicholson, Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman and Peter Fonda.

Oh my God. That's probably the best.

That's probably the biggest nominee group ever.

So we took a picture at the luncheon and they printed it in the Boston Herald and my father called me, he was howling, laughing. He goes, it looks like one of those things at Disneyland that you put your head in. Because I look like a deer in the headlights. I'm like, what the fuck am I doing in this picture with these guys? And it made it into the local newspaper.

But also what's, I think, crazy, maybe hard for you to process is now, if that picture happened, that would be normal. It'd be totally normal to have you in a picture with all those people.

Yeah, it's like Matt Damon and it's Daniel Day-Lewis.

Well, that's nice. I still feel like the kid with his head in the thing.

That's good. Yeah, it must have looked like the valet ran up to give one of those guys their keys, or something. Like. how did this kid get in this photo?

Yeah, no, it's really, it's really. And there's the Boston thing too, of like, you're not all that, bro. Oh, my God. We love taking you down a peg.

I know, the specificity of the Boston thing is like, oh yeah, good for you. Every sentence is basically like, don't think you're hot shit.

Right, exactly.

Wait, the agent, there was a story.

Oh, right, so you were going to party.

Right, that year of Good Will Hunting, they didn't do like. CAA invites you to, it was like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon invite you to the CAA party. Now, meanwhile, so Ben and I are like, we started calling it our party. Right, right, right. As far as we were concerned, it was our party.

We're like, what the fuck, they're all at our party. Your party.

But yeah, so that was a big one.

It must be so much more fun to be sharing the fish out of water experience with somebody. Like you basically got to do it with a wife.

I don't know how people do it by themselves. It's so surreal. Just the getting famous thing is really surreal.

It really is. Can I ask what your specific like thing that you were like, oh, I wasn't anticipating this.

The relentlessness of it. What it took me, I think, years to realize was that nothing in the world changes, right? The big things are still the big things. Israel and Palestine, everything's the same. And intellectually, you understand that.

And rightly so, there's really like no empathy on the table there. Like, of course, why would I feel bad? Or even want to explore how that could be bizarre? because you're Matt Damon and boo.

Yeah, right. Of course. You certainly don't want to be seen to be complaining about it, because it's also something that's, for some fucking weird reason, coveted in our society. So yeah, right. And because the world is still the world, the real intractable problems in the world still take absolute precedence over anything, concluding your little subjective experience.

Yeah.

So you don't.

Well, okay. So I don't know exactly where you're from. I mean, I know you're from Cambridge, but I do know Boston. I've worked there. I know the vibe there.

You guys are going to the glory hole in the bathroom. Literally.

No, I wish. No, in my town, you were going outside.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, it's going one of two ways. Yes.

But dudes, regularly, dads left restaurants and fought. in the parking lot where I grew up. It was very, you could not stare at someone in the face. And then if they stared back and you held it, that was a fuck. you, you'll look away.

Wow, yeah. Again, it's your subjective experience becomes very different. Like the world changes in the way the world treats you is different. And so all of the normal cues that you're used to reading and understanding don't apply to your life anymore. So you have to kind of relearn everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're like kind of predicting interactions that now have this way different spin to them than all the other versions you've had.

But again, look, obviously you can't complain about it, nor would you want to.

We're not complaining. I think we're observing what it's like. I feel good about that.

Your experience is still your experience.

Right, no, we're, I guess, explaining the experience. Yeah. And we're all prisoners of our fucking subjective experience. Exactly, no matter who you are. We know what we know, and we're blind to what we're blind to.

I could see it, making someone really paranoid and making their world very, very, very small.

That's a real thing. That's very, very true in my experience. And in fact, the people who get famous younger, I've noticed they get pushed into a smaller experience. I remember the first time I met George Clooney, a long time ago, he said, how you doing? And I was like, I'm okay, man.

Oh, wow.

And when we subsequently worked together on Ocean's Eleven, I said, that really was profound and wonderful what you said to me. And he goes, well, I should footnote it. He said, Paul Newman said it to me when he met me. Oh, wow.

That's a good tip.

It's a great tip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come with me, don't let it.

Yeah, keep living. Right, right.

Because I have another friend who recently said something I thought was great, which was just say yes. He goes, you know what's going to happen when you say no, you're going to stay in your house. So say yes to life. When someone says, hey, do you want to go? do this?

Yeah. Can I tell you, one of the most unforeseen aspects of getting sober that I would have never accounted for was I went on my first vacation sober, and within an hour I was like, oh my goodness, what does one do on vacation? Because all I would do is like, I'd order a drink, which would turn into 15, which would turn to me meeting people, which would turn to me going somewhere. Like, I never had a plan on a vacation. I would just order a Jack and Die, and then the fucking vacation took off.

I'll probably regret this, but I'll say yes.

Oh, my God, Kristin was doing press in Cancun, Mexico for a movie, and I went with her. And during the day, she had a driver, and I'm like, I heard there's a great restaurant downtown in the heart of Cancun. So I go with the driver, we're chatting the whole way, very friendly guy, and he's like, oh yes, I've heard of this place, it's the greatest, everyone loves it. And I said, have you ever eaten here? And he said, no, no, no.

Anyways, it's just all kind of like,

I just kind of come to, right, and there's this young woman in a skirt sitting on my lap, and I'm in this little house in Cancun. I was like, well, you could write any story based on this photo. It's very incriminating. And I got back, and I had to tell Chris, I'm like, so look, through this many turns of events, I ended up in a very tiny house with a young woman on my lap, in a photo, and who knows if that gets out?

Another thing to make you paranoid, there might be pictures of you, who knows?

In this house, holding a woman I never met. Anyway.

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One.

And you're younger. Yeah. How much younger?

Three years.

Okay. Parents got divorced at two. Mm-hmm. I was three. I have a five-year-old older brother.

Yeah. And my dad was very much there, but we would go every Tuesday night, every other weekend. It was one of those.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And the neighborhood you lived in, was it hard scrabble, would we say?

Yeah, it was a blue collar neighborhood.

Yeah, and so, I don't know, in my blue collar neighborhood, manliness was everything. And I didn't have a dad around going like, you're on track, son. So I was very drawn to whatever boys were doing. I was just insatiable for that male approval. And I wondered if you experienced any of that.

No, my dad was such a part of our lives that I wasn't seeking that out elsewhere.

Okay.

We played a lot of sports. I was an artsy kid. I loved doing theater. And we lived in kind of a, what we called a co-op house, kind of like a commune.

It was like six families inside? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so it was a triple-decker, but it was like a double-wide triple-decker.

Right, right, right, right, right.

So there were six families instead of three.

It was like the Hot Wheels container you put the cars in.

Exactly, exactly. Turned upside down. It's a massive rectangular box of joy. Kind of a hippie, kind of lefty, but in a real neighborhood. All kinds of people.

It was.

Yeah, really. It was really wonderful.

And did you think your brother was the coolest guy on the planet?

He was definitely the coolest. He was actually the coolest guy on the planet.

He actually was. This is the one guy who was.

And the difference for me, I think, then, from you, is the three-year difference. What that allowed was when I got to high school, he was a senior. Right. So I was like protected. Yeah, were you?

The first time I see you in my life is School Ties, which I loved. Right. And it's a Brandon Fraser vehicle.

Sure. That was his movie. Yeah, absolutely.

And then there's this guy. This guy is so good looking, and he's in such good shape. I remember, as a boy, who you were five years old, I'm like, look at this fucking body.

Really?

Yeah, so I assumed you just looked like a gymnast your whole life.

A gymnast?

In that movie, you look like a gymnast.

I guess so, yeah. Yeah.

You got the deltoids, and your fucking jack, and lats, the whole nine.

I haven't seen it in 30 years, man.

I would love to sit with you and watch it. I would pause it with a laser pointer, and you are looking as good as a human body can look in that.

Well, I was fucking 20 years old, man. I mean, you know. Oh, but you were doing... I turned 21 on that movie.

And did you work out a lot?

For the movie, yeah. For the movie? For the movie. So that movie, School Ties, I don't know how many times we auditioned, but we must've auditioned 25 times. And it was like one of those things, you get pulled in with groups, and Chris O'Donnell's in the movie, Cole Hauser's, in the movie.

Oh, wow.

It was a big deal. And then they found Brendan. That was another one, because Chris got sent of a woman before School Ties came out. And so the press packet on School Ties was all about Brendan and Chris. Yeah, of course.

I remember going like, I'm into this dude. I really like this dude. And he's the bad guy, but I'm kind of drawn to him.

Oh, that's good.

When did you, did it start with Goodwill for you?

Yeah, I was in eighth grade.

Eighth grade, aha. That was my intro.

That was my intro. But then I went back. Then I did all of them.

You did do School Ties. Yes, I did. Because he's great in it, and the body's off the charts.

You should know, since you don't listen to the show, just so you don't feel uncomfortable, Dax loves male bodies. It's not just yours.

Yeah, I have a calendar here with all my favorite male bodies.

Yeah, there's lots of male bodies in there for him.

Again, the whole guy thing and not a dad. I thought Schwarzenegger looked great. Like, oh, that's a great way to look. We were kind of jaded. I mean, we were in the first era of people that saw action stars.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Prior to that, you're like, Bronson was killing people, and Clint Eastwood. These are the guys that rained hell on folks, but they weren't jacked.

No, no, no, no, no. And then the freakish workout thing of the 80s, just.

Yeah, and anabolic steroids, they really became.

Right, that marriage.

Yeah, it's a good combo. When done in tandem, it really yields results.

We have to ask, what percentage do you believe in the simulation?

Yes, great question.

Oh, quite a bit. Okay, yeah.

Okay, there we go, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because how could you and Ben both have been in that movie, school time?

Like, how could it all work out so well? Well, Ben didn't make it, Ben didn't make it.

No, he's in it. Oh, he is? Yeah, he's got a small part. He's one of the six guys.

Okay.

Yeah, exactly. I have my stuff.

There's a weird parallel, though, because I'm now remembering that Ben was also the dickhead in Days in Confusion.

Days in Confusion.

So you guys kind of both got in.

Yeah, got in playing dickheads.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you're both so nice. You're nicer than him, I think.

I'm so much nicer than him. You are, right?

Yeah, yeah. Well, Monica's in love with both of you, like, head over heels. Had posters, read every interview. But it's tied.

Well, my wife, in fact, she was a Ben fan. Oh. Yeah, before we met.

Oh.

And her best friend was on my team. Your team. And so we still joke about that. I'm like, I've always got Eileen.

Yeah, as a backup plan.

If Lucy fucks me over.

Oh, that's great. It's really fun how us on the outside, like, here's what happened to me. I saw Good Will Hunting. I fucking loved it. The fact that you guys wrote it.

Because I played the smart guy in the movie. There must be. I think that happened. That was actually a thing. In fact, it was actually kind of painful.

Right, right. You know what I mean?

Right. Sure. Anyway, anyway.

You're right, that has to be why I thought that. Just because the character was a genius.

And because I was the lead of the movie. So people were like, oh, well, you must have done everything.

You went to Harvard. Did he go to Harvard?

No.

So that was another element. I'm like, oh, this guy went to Harvard. He's a genius. Right. And he was a genius in the movie.

Right.

And the tall guy's getting some of the credit. Oh, God. That's what I'm just.

But you were also probably feeling.

Intimidated by Ben.

Yes. Intimidated, because, at least by me, you could say, well, I'm taller than him.

I'm sure I said that at some point when I was jealous of you, yeah.

Fucking shrimp. The guy's a good actor.

He's a good actor. Short guy. Short, let's show a little guy. Little guy. Little Matty Damon?

Yeah, I know him.

Good actor, that kid. Pretty good.

Little fella. Was that an issue for him?

Was he like, I want to be the, I mean, maybe that's a question for him, but like, maybe I want to be the lead. You know what I mean? Like, how did you guys decide this when you're writing it?

Literally, only because I had started it in a playwriting class. And so I'd written what ended up being one scene survived. from the 40 pages that I brought to Ben. Like, about six pages survived. Wow.

The two guys, yeah.

But we needed to get it made. So we needed to have a part that attracted a movie star. And that was how we ended up with the therapist.

Yeah. Are you at a point that you can evaluate the gift? And you probably have always been this way. You seem like a generous person, but the Gus Van Sant of it all.

Oh my God, yeah. I mean, yeah.

Like it's just a perfect storm, right? I mean, you guys are so fresh and it's such a point of view, and it's so earnest and honest to your guys' experience. And then you add in this artist. Yeah. I have a bad example.

But not only part of that, I mean, it's a director's medium. I mean, it is Gus's movie. I mean, we wrote it and we're in it, but like we had a whole kind of ceremonial thing where we literally handed him the, you know, cause a screenplay is just a blueprint. It's the drawings for this beautiful house you're building out here. Still building.

Three years later. This is like Cheops and Pisa.

Right, exactly, exactly. So it can only be a director's movie. It's the buck has to stop with someone, and so it's Gus's movie.

Yeah, there's a heart that just throughout every single scene that is hard to capture on film that has been done there perfectly.

Yeah, we spent a lot of time with him and working on the script, taking all of his notes, and there was a lot of work in pre-production. He really knew the movie he was making when he.

Well, I was going to ask you if this is lore, and I promise we're going to stop asking you questions about the first movie you ever did, but it's so impactful for both of us. I had heard through the grapevine that there was a version of the script where you actually would go to work at NSA, and it became kind of an espionage-y thing, right? That's true?

Yeah, it was a lot more like kind of Midnight Run, which was another movie that we loved. Yes. It had, like Beverly Hills Cop, like there were guys tailing Will around, and yeah, that was the script we sold. It was a high concept thing, and we went to Castle Rock, which was great that we did that because Rob Reiner eventually came into one of these meetings and said, what's with this whole NSA thing?

Oh, my God.

And we were like, you know, because that's the movie you guys want to make. Midnight Run, Beverly Hills Cop. And he was like, this. other stuff is really, I think, the movie, and so we resisted it at first, because we went home, we took out all of that stuff and we had 60 pages. And we were like, what the fuck are we going to do?

Well, he probably, Rob, identified that the part of the movie that he liked was the part that was your story.

Right, the rest of it was totally derivative.

of other movies that we liked, right? Sure, of course.

That's another weird blessing, because I got to imagine at that age, if it's not Rob Reiner that says that, you guys might not listen.

Right.

Like what another gift. that's-.

Simulation, it's simulation-y.

Simulation.

You're living in one.

We're living in one. Code, fucking code. We're living in one. You want to hear a crazy idea? Yes.

The big AI thing? The big AI thing. Yeah, yeah.

I had this conversation with him and I asked him about simulation. And he said, well, it's interesting. It's an interesting question. I can tell you that I have built the most complex simulation on planet Earth. And he goes, something's going on.

Oh, my God. Oh wow. And he started to explain that he found.

that primitive Earth was kind of the best. About 10,000 AI were kind of the right number and they kind of formed tribes and you'd need opposable thumbs. Like suddenly you needed all of the same things. that kind of we are. And he said, look, if we build simulations to kind of solve our problems, right?

Right?

Yes. And he goes, so just imagine if we ever become advanced enough to hack our way out of this. Here's because what if the creator we're confronted with is more simple than we are?

Which, by the way, will be our future. Yeah. We will eventually create things that we don't understand. It's already probably happened. Right.

It's good stuff.

Good brain melting. Yeah, we talk about it nonstop and we actually did a specifically just simulation episode and it's, yeah, hard to lock into one when you believe in like, either you're real and everyone else around you is Sam. The current theory we left with is like, what if this is one of the 10 million models that are being run to figure out how to deal with climate change? Like, currently, wherever this thing was invented, they're dealing with climate change. So they ran 10 billion models to see if anyone could solve it.

I started really thinking about it when, in 2016,, when, in the course of a month, the Cubs won the World Series and Donald Trump was elected president. Yeah. I was like, come on. Yes. This ain't happening.

Yeah. You know what my final piece of proof I've decided where I'll believe wholeheartedly in simulation is. I keep watching 60 Minutes and they keep interviewing people at MIT that seem to have shut down aging. They're doing it in mice, right? They're erasing part of the epigenome that turns off genes.

They have it with mice. Yeah. Yes.

So my thing is like, if I find out in a few years that I'm gonna be living forever, that's the time to go. like, all right guys, what were the odds that in 150,000 years of human being here, I was born in the year where you could turn your aging off?

It's funny. I'd had that conversation with my dad before he died, because I was like, can you imagine the cruel irony if we are the last two generations? Like if you laid out, there's some statistic, like if you laid out playing cards to represent the history of the earth, right? You would stretch them for like 10 miles, right? And the decks of cards, one after the other, playing cards would go for 10 miles or a mile, whatever it is.

Yeah. There's the geological calendar. they do too. Or it's like, if you overlay 5 billion years of history into a 365 day calendar. That's right.

Exactly. So, working with that kind of timescale, what are the odds that we are the generation that understands that aging is gonna be reversed but dies before it happens to us? Yes. Like, is that epically bad luck?

Yeah, like you're on your death bed and you're like, you're drifting off and on TV, there's a line of people getting vaccinated for aging and you're like, argh!

Almost made it.

Talk about like watching the bus drive away, you didn't make it.

Right, right.

Oh, that's cruel. Okay, I'm gonna seamlessly apply that to your career by saying, despite these setbacks up until Goodwill Hunting, I don't know that I've observed a career, maybe a handful, that it seems you've chosen right. Like, I mean, impossibly so for the last 20 years, where, as soon as Goodwill Hunting happened, you certainly got offered the lead of many things and for five times the price you had just made. That's so fucking tempting. And then yet you're taking more supporting roles, you're doing all these things that I wanna know how you had that kind of foresight.

So we'll say in some ways I got lucky, like before, Goodwill Hunting came out, Ben and I each got offered movies. He got offered Armageddon, I got offered Saving Private Ryan. We would have done either one.

Right, right.

I mean, I would have happily done Armageddon, he would have happily done Private Ryan, but there was something about because I had done The Rainmaker with Coppola. Yeah. In one calendar year, I had a Coppola movie, a Spielberg movie and Goodwill Hunting come out, Gus's movie. So it was just like fucking lucky. Yeah, just incredibly lucky.

But you could have definitely mismanaged that, many people have.

And I did, I made movies that didn't work, but as long as one out of every three of them kind of worked.

If you got two in the bank, yeah.

Right, then you can kind of keep, they, let you keep going. And then I had a lull right before Bourne came out in like 2002, where the phone stopped ringing and it was like, oof.

Can I ask really quick in those moments, what kind of story do you tell about your life? Are you like, yep, knew that was gonna happen?

No, no, actually by that point, I was like, well, I wrote my way out of obscurity. I can do it again. Yeah, I can do it again. And I'm in a much better spot than I was five years ago. So I'm okay.

That is so nice. Yeah, it's kind of like you had a safety net for 14 years.

I mean, certainly up until 07, 2002 to 2007 were the three movies. And then we did another one five years ago. And then, I mean, I had the Departed in there in that time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, where it's.

It's pretty bonkers. Who directed the first Bourne?

Doug Liman.

Yeah, Liman. Yeah. He didn't direct all three.

No, he directed the first one. And then Paul Greengrass directed the next one.

I was thinking, to be in a franchise, you're in a weird way, you're kind of like on a TV show. Because when you're on a TV show, which I was on once for six years, you're in this weird dynamic where every week you have a new guest director coming in. Sometimes they've seen the show, sometimes they haven't, and they're just lying. And you're in this bizarre position where you, as the actor, probably know the show better than the director does. And so there's like, the trust is a little harder.

No. You didn't? Not at all, not at all. Oh, really? No, we struggled with the first one.

That's kind of a Doug move, though.

Yeah, yeah.

He kind of works beautifully, in chaos, it seems.

He does. I love him and I would work with him again in a New York minute. I love Doug. Yeah. And he's a great director.

Yeah, yeah, I love that.

In chaos, and he gets great stuff because of that. But when it came time to do the second one, the studio was like, they didn't want to go through that again with them. And so they started asking about other directors and I saw Bloody Sunday. And Paul, for a director of that caliber, Doug or Paul or any of those guys, they have to, it's not an assignment where they come in and go like, hey, I'll direct this one. It's like, this is a year of my life.

Okay, as you're building, without your full awareness, this huge body of work, was the driving force like, I want to try playing that, I want to try playing this, or was it, I want to work with that director?

Yeah, it's the latter. Yeah, the latter.

That's such a smart way to go. My ego was like, I want to be a tough guy in a movie.

I don't care who directs it. No, I could have done better roles. I would have been probably perceived to be a better actor, but I wouldn't be a better actor. I'm a better actor because I went for the director. Yeah.

It's also kind of egoless. Like, I, applaud it.

No, it ends up being very rewarding because then he's in Scorsese movies, he's in Schroeder movies. It's like with Kristen, being so generous, the money just keeps coming because she keeps giving it out. It's a weird reversal.

For every dollar she makes, she gives two away and then two comes back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't understand it.

It's wonderful. No, I did the episode of House of Lies.