Can Matt Damon Bring Clean Water To Africa?
The inside story of Matt Damon’s bold yet sane plan to use his celebrity and smarts to help attack one of the globe’s great crises.
Once upon a time, Matt Damon went for a long walk in rural Zambia. The devoted family man and method philanthropist was accompanying a 14-year-old Zambian girl who had no idea that her hiking companion was an Academy Award-winning international heartthrob.
The walk came toward the end of a 10-day African journey, a systematic primer on the complexities of the continent’s extreme poverty that had been organized for Damon by staffers from his friend Bono’s ONE campaign. Damon was on a quest to understand what it meant to be really, really poor. “It was like a mini course in college,” he says. Every day brought a different subject: urban AIDS, microfinance, education, and, finally, water. While walking with the young teen on her hour-long trudge to collect water for her family, something clicked. “We talked the whole time [through a translator]. When I asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up — ‘Do you want to stay here?’ ” he says, pointing to the memory of the dusty village — “she got shy all of a sudden.” As they returned, both toting 5-gallon jugs of water filled at the well, she finally confessed her dream: to go to the big city, Lusaka, and become a nurse. Damon recalled his dreams at the same age, when he and best friend Ben Affleck were plotting their way from Boston to casting agents in New York. That connection opened the door for Damon. “I remembered so well the feeling of being young, when that whole world of possibility was open to you.”
But while Damon’s dream was made possible by Amtrak, the girl’s was possible only because somebody drilled a borewell near her home — and, yes, an hour’s walk for water is good news in lots of places in the world. Nearly 1 billion souls lack access to clean water; three times that number lack access to proper sanitation. “This is not something that most 14-year-olds have to go through,” says Damon, 40. Without access to the water, his companion would have been unable to go to school and would likely have been forced into a precarious fight for life, spending her days scavenging for often-filthy water in unhealthy and unsafe environments. “Now she can hope to be a nurse and contribute to the economic engine of Zambia,” he says. “Of all the different things that keep people in this kind of death spiral of extreme poverty, water just seemed so huge.” He pauses. “And it doesn’t have to be.”Damon tells me this story on a rainy spring day in Manhattan, after a full schedule of board meetings for Water.org, the charity he cofounded in 2009, three years after his Zambia trip, with longtime water expert, and now dear friend, Gary White. It has been a long day but a good one, and Damon has more news to share. He checks his watch. “I have to pick up my daughter from school. Come along and we’ll keep talking,” he tells me. As we make our way from a conference room at McKinsey in Midtown (a board member works there) to a car waiting on the street, I watch passersby light up in recognition and try to catch his eye. In spite of his attempt to blend in — Damon is wearing glasses, a splash of whiskers, and a Panavision baseball cap — he is unmistakable. And he never fails to return a smile. “Clearly my strong suit is and will be trying to get people to care about this issue,” he says of his primary role. “Our vision is clean water and sanitation for everyone, in our lifetime …” he trails off. “So we better get to work.”
For all his star power, though, Damon is more than just the pretty face of Water.org. He has turned himself into a development expert. This would seem like an obvious and necessary first step for someone embracing the global water crisis as a personal mission. But, in fact, it’s highly unusual for a celebrity to dive this deep into a problem this daunting. Whether talking microfinance strategy with rural bankers, giving detailed reports from the field at the annual Clinton Global Initiative, or personally thanking donors like PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Damon has quietly developed the cred of a program geek. “If you want to understand how this works,” he says, sounding more like an anthropologist than a celebrity spokesperson, “there is no substitute for going there and talking to people in their homes.” It’s an approach he comes by honestly. His mother, a professor of early childhood education, spent part of her summers living with local families in Guatemala and Mexico, attending language school in preparation for her field research. She brought her impressionable teenage son along. “She specialized in nonviolent conflict resolution,” Damon explains. In war-torn areas like El Salvador, she interviewed children, studied their artwork, and documented their trauma. “So I’d seen extreme poverty at an early age,” he says. “I knew what it was, and I always cared about it.” He has replicated her research process, immersing himself in the business of social enterprise until he found the cause that he felt passion for — water.
You can read the rest of the article on Fast Company website.
EW.com Movie Sequel Do’s and Don’ts
Do: Kill off a main character
The Bourne Supremacy begins with a gutsy twist: The surprise assassination of Franka Potente’s Marie, who gave the first film much of its emotional resonance. The gamble paid off: Supremacy and Ultimatum are both supercharged by the title character’s quest for vengeance.
See Also: Scream II, The Dark Knight, and The Godfather Part 2. Harrison Ford always felt that Han Solo should’ve died in Return of the Jedi, which in all fairness would have been totally awesome.
From: EW.com
The Bourne movies are one of the few trilogies that gets better as it goes on.
Matt Damon’s dad battling cancer
Matt Damon seems like a pretty great guy, but he may be an even more awesome son.
“My family is so grateful for the care you’ve given us,” the Adjustment Bureau star said at a fundraiser last night for Massachusetts General Hospital’s Cancer Care Center, where his father, Kent, has been undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood.
“It’s deeply humbling to see how many people here are committing their lives to helping others,” Matt said. “We’ve lost some close personal friends to cancer in recent years, but I never thought it would happen to my dad, the marathon runner…It sucked.”
Happily, Kent Damon is currently in remission—and, apparently, a great mood.
“We try not to take this celebrity deal too seriously,” he joked, referring to his A-lister son. He told the crowd a story about opening up the paper to read about Matt’s Academy Award nominations for Good Will Hunting in 1997, and “there was a picture of Robert Duvall, Peter Fonda, and Dustin Hoffman—then there was a picture of my 27-year-old son. He didn’t belong there with all these seasoned actors!”
Getting serious, however, Kent also said that his Boston-bred boy was “all you could ever for ask for in a son. It’s been a wonderful ride being his dad.”
Cue tears.
Matt actually succeeded his pops onstage, wondering “How do you follow that? My dad’s biggest fear is public speaking, and I’m like, ‘You’ve got cancer man!’
“When people ask me, “What’s so great about Boston?’ I say, ‘Oh, the people, the sports teams—actually, I’d start with the sports teams—[and] the hospitals,” the actor continued, according to the Boston Herald.
“But if you had ever heard of Mass General, you were raised to believe it was the best hospital in the world. You were raised to believe that the Red Sox would break your heart and that MGH was the best hospital in the world.”
I wish him all the best and good luck on fighting this horrible disease.
True Grit is out on DVD and BluRay
True Grit is out on DVD and BluRay now, you can order it online from Amazon
DVDs: How Good Is Matt Damon? Damn Good
TRUE GRIT ($39.99 BluRay or $29.99 regular DVD; Paramount) — The Coen Brothers movie is solid fun that’s better than the original and more true to the terrific novel by Charles Portis. Hailee Steinfeld gives a funny but very particular performance that could be the sign of a singular talent or a one-off stunt. Josh Brolin is hissable as the villain. Jeff Bridges shamelessly chews the scenery in the hammy role made famous by John Wayne. But I want to talk about Matt Damon.
He gives the best performance of the film as the over-confident Texas Ranger LaBoeuf. The character is nominally comic relief, but Damon makes him the heart of the movie. The little girl is preternaturally calm and mature. Bounty hunter Cogburn is a caricature of the hard-drinking frontierman. Only LaBoeuf is a recognizable human being, a man who is a tad vain but at heart a decent person. Damon gets all the humor out of this easily offended young man but he also makes you care about LaBoeuf and consequently about the film as a whole. If anyone might die in this enterprise you fear it would be LaBoeuf, so all the suspense and drama centers on whether he’ll make it home alive or at least redeem himself as a brave and valued companion. With his accustomed ease, Damon steals the show by playing a supporting role that other movie stars might not deign to accept.
It’s just the latest achievement by one of the best actors working today. Damon’s looks always promise the square-jawed decency of a 1950s leading man. But his talent often lies in subverting our expectations. He broke through as the math whiz in Good Will Hunting of course. Then came Saving Private Ryan, with Damon as every mother’s son caught in the dangers of war. His career seemed set as a traditional hero. But Damon followed that immediately with one of his best and most underrated turns. He became almost invisible in The Talented Mr. Ripley, a mousy killer who subsumes the identity of the people he destroys. Look at the way Damon maintains the anonymous demeanor of a servant in the opening scenes and you’ll see a movie star choosing to become an actor.
He showed he had charisma to burn in the Ocean’s Eleven movies. But it’s the Bourne trilogy that has truly vaulted Damon to the top. If comedies get little respect, even they receive more critical attention than the performances in action films. Damon’s work in the Bourne movies constitutes one of the best action performances on film, equal to Harrison Ford’s work in the early Indiana Jones movies and easily one of the most complex achievements in the genre. Damon delivers the confusion and apprehension of a man who finds a terrified release in the violence he is so clearly capable of achieving, a violence that both thrills and disturbs him. With a minimum of dialogue and often through his face and body movements alone, Damon creates a man audiences live vicariously through but also pity in his desperate desire to know exactly who he is. Best of all, Damon showed the rare restraint of walking away from the franchise before it became repetitive and dumb.
The smart choices continued: the CIA agent in The Good Shepherd, the gangster turned cop in The Departed (proving again how good Damon is at internal conflict) and the hilariously inept stool pigeon in The Informant!. That’s a very funny movie but Damon’s gifts as a comic haven’t been fully exploited yet (despite his amusing work on 30 Rock), any more than his ability to be a romantic lead. Presumably that just doesn’t interest him since he’s barely assayed such a common, almost inevitable role. Politics interests him more, from the complex Syriana to The Green Zone to his work as the narrator of the best documentary of 2010, Inside Job.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Damon’s talent is that he’s only seemed to scratch the surface of what he’s capable of doing. The older he gets, the more interesting and varied the roles he should be able to tackle. Damon’s never been trapped by leading man status but growing more mature will only play into his natural instinct for the interesting and off-beat. Unquestionably, the best is yet to come.
Matt Damon’s second round of cards
Matt Damon is apparently in talks to make a sequel to his poker movie Rounders.
The keen card player was spotted meeting Harvey Weinstein and Ocean’s 13 screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien at New York restaurant Cipriani Downtown to begin work on the script to Rounders 2, the New York Post reports.
Edward Norton, who appeared in the first movie, will reportedly reprise his role in the sequel.
In Rounders Matt played a law student who was lured back into gambling by his old friend, an ex-convict, played by Ed.
The 1998 film flopped at the box office but became a cult hit on DVD
John Krasinski Starring In Matt Damon’s Directorial Debut?
Damon to start work on what is believed to be Father Daughter Time early next year.
Matt Damon is moving ahead with his directorial debut, and has offered the name of one of his stars.
Speaking to Vulture, he said: “I’ve got a few things that I really want to direct, and one I’m actually going to start at the first quarter of next year.”
It’s thought to be Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses, a script from Matthew Aldrich picked up by Warner Bros. as a starring vehicle for Damon. The plotline has a “man who goes on the lam with his daughter, his accomplice on a three-state crime spree.” Aldrich described it as “a smallish, very personal, dark but playful road movie about a father and daughter.”
It’s been rumoured that Damon will direct, as he had been planning to get behind the camera for The Trade, a true wife-swapping baseball movie that was set to star him and best mate Ben Affleck. That project is now on hold my legal reasons.
Damon wouldn’t confirm if Father Daughter Time is in fact the film he will direct, but did mention that John Krasinski would be in it.
The star of the US version of The Office is married to Damon’s Adjustment Bureau co-star Emily Blunt, and has popped up on the big screen in Something Borrowed, It’s Complicated, License To Wed and Away We Go. He’ll next be seen in The Muppets and Everybody Loves Whales. Krasinski himself made his directorial debut in 2009 with Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
Meanwhile, Damon is having a busy 2011 in his day job as actor, starring in Neill Blompkamp’s Elysium, Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace and Contagion, and Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo.
Matt Damon in Malone
MALONE — Academy Award-winning screenwriter and actor Matt Damon was in Malone Wednesday, apparently learning more about wind farms.
The star of “Good Will Hunting” and “The Bourne Identity” franchise could also be gathering information for a film he is rumored to be making for his directorial debut.
The lunch crowd at Jon’s Family Restaurant on Finney Boulevard was abuzz with people getting their picture taken with Damon and actor John Krasinski, who plays Jim Halpert on the NBC sitcom “The Office.”
One of the fans who got close Wednesday was Katie Nason, who works at Giggles and Wiggles child-care center in Malone.
“It was pretty exciting. I was there with my husband, and my in-laws were arriving,” she said.
There was a lot of commotion at a table behind them, with the waitresses and restaurant staff crowding around and taking pictures with a man in a hat and glasses.
“My husband said, ‘It must be somebody famous,’” Nason said.
She said she got a look at who it was causing the excitement, “and I lost my breath. It took me 10 minutes to go over there and talk to him.
“I was like, ‘I can’t not get this.’ My mother-in-law took the picture on her iPod.
“He was very polite and just as cute in person,” Nason said. “You could tell he was used to it.”
The actors were apparently in the area to learn more about wind farms for a future movie and were accompanied by Town Council member Jack Sullivan, a vocal wind-farm opponent.
Sullivan could not be immediately reached for comment.
Damon is the co-founder of H2O Africa and Water.org, which work to improve living conditions in developing countries through clean water.
The film Damon might direct and star in is tentatively called “Father and Daughter,” according to a website entry for New York Magazine.
“I’ve got a few things that I really want to direct, and one I’m actually going to start at the first quarter of next year,” he said in the article.
He would play a criminal on the run with his daughter.
Damon would not say much about the film but did tell the magazine, “John Krasinski is in it.”
GQ.com Smooth Criminals: The 25 Most Stylish Law-Breakers in Movie History
16. Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), The Talented Mr. Ripley
Identity theft—ain’t it a bitch? Ripley not only tries to steal the life of Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law), but he also kills his best friend. Strolling the Amalfi coast with bold-framed glasses, throwback suspenders, and loosened oxfords, he rubs it all in by looking better than his victim, too. —A.R.
Source: GQ.com
Martin Scorsese Trying to Edit Kenneth Lonergan’s ‘Margaret’ Out of Limbo
This year, movies like Battle: Los Angeles, I Am Number Four, Hoodwinked 2 (did anyone even see the first one?), another Tyler Perry movie, Red Riding Hood, and the Justin Bieber documentary all easily made their way into theaters. Know what hasn’t come out this year (or the past couple) while films like Something Borrowed get their big studio pushes?
Margaret.
Kenneth Lonergan‘s follow-up to his brilliant debut, You Can Count on Me, has had a notoriously rough time making it to theaters, both due to legal issues and a dispute over final cut.
The film was shot almost six years ago. The editing process has been called a nightmare. Lonergan has a three-hour cut that Fox Searchlight isn’t too keen on releasing. Why? Because they won’t release a version over two hours long. Lonergan has final cut, which hasn’t made the situation any easier. Great talents such as Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese, Scott Rudin, and Sydney Pollack did passes on the film to get it down to a shorter length.
And right now, Scorsese is doing another edit of the film with Lonergan.
I was lucky enough to speak with the movie’s co-star Mark Ruffalo yesterday for his directorial debut, Sympathy for Delicious, and of course, I had to ask about Margaret. Ruffalo described the three-hour cut he saw as a “masterpiece” and explained that “it’s a love letter to a post-9/11 America and New York City.”
You’d think a film of that possible caliber and with a cast including Matt Damon, Anna Paquin, Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Kieran Culkin, Olivia Thirlby, and Ruffalo would be a sure thing for awards season, but sadly, that’s been proven incorrect over the past few years. The reality that a bold talent like Lonergan has to fight this hard to get this film released is a truly sad commentary on commerce kicking art’s ass.
Here’s part of my exchange with Ruffalo on the status of Lonergan’s long-awaited film:
When will we actually be able to see Margaret?
Ruffalo: [Sighs] Oh, it’s so… I don’t know. Marty Scorsese has come on now to do a pass on it with Kenneth. It was a movie that started at 186 pages. It was just a very, very finely interwoven piece of material and it’s so beautiful. When he tried to cut it down, he had a very hard time. The studio was saying they wanted no more than two hours, and the rough cut I saw was a little bit over three hours long. It was absolutely incredible. It was beautiful, moving, and such a fine piece of work on so many levels. It was beautifully shot, beautifully acted, and the writing is incredible. It’s a love story to a post-9/11 America and New York City.
He couldn’t get it cut down. He had a really hard time. The studio, basically, said they weren’t going to release it. That’s where it’s been. It got tied up in lawsuits with Gary Gilbert, who tried to take the movie away and have someone else edit it behind Kenny’s back. It was a surreal, big, ugly thing. Now Kenny has got it and Marty is kinda arbitrating his cut. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing it soon.
Made in NY Awards
May 10, 2011 – Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment Commissioner Katherine L. Oliver will host the sixth annual “Made in NY” Awards on June 6th at 7:30 PM at Gracie Mansion. The awards are given to individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the City’s entertainment and new media industries. At this year’s event, Mayor Bloomberg will present the first-ever “Made in NY” Mayor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement posthumously to director Sidney Lumet, which will be accepted on his behalf by his daughter, Jenny Lumet. The other 2011 “Made in NY” honorees will be Academy Award winner Matt Damon, location-based mobile platform foursquare, actor John Leguizamo who is currently starring on Broadway in Ghetto Klown, founder of the Urbanworld Film Festival & CEO of MoviePass Stacy Spikes, commercial production company Smuggler and Lauren Zalaznick, chairman, NBC Universal Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media.
“New York City is the entertainment capital of the world and is poised to be the digital media capital of the world. The annual ‘Made in NY’ Awards offer us a chance to honor some of those who have advanced these industries in our City,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Sidney Lumet was one of the great chroniclers of our City and a consummate New Yorker. When I spoke with Sidney in March before his passing, he graciously agreed to be the first recipient of the ‘Made in NY’ Mayor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement. I will be proud to present it to his daughter on his behalf.”
“The ‘Made in NY’ Awards are a special time for us each year, and even more so this year,” said Commissioner Oliver. “This year’s awards include a few firsts for us as we bestow the first Lifetime Achievement Award to Sidney Lumet and honor a digital media company for the first time. We’re thrilled to have such esteemed honorees to accept the awards this year. It is a true celebration for the industry.”
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment consists of the Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, NYC Digital and NYC Media, the official TV, radio and online network of the City of New York. The agency’s mission is to streamline government communications by making information accessible, leveraging technology to aid in the transparency of government and by supporting relevant media and entertainment industries in New York City.
Water.org Water Bottle
With each purchase of a limited edition Water.org CamelBak Groove bottle, you give a life-changing gift. While it keeps great-tasting filtered water always in your reach, it also brings safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries.
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