Why I Love F@#cking Matt Damon

Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville at 8:00 AM on January 29, 2009.

Once upon a time, I fell madly in love with Matt Damon because he called James Bond an "imperialist and a misogynist." Then he did a bunch of other shit that made me jizz in my pants. And now, he's taking me back to that place where we first fell in love: 

"They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films," Damon says scornfully. "Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He's repulsive."

-- and he's bringing me flowers:

[T]he small talk -- if that's the right phrase -- ranged from which New York Times columnist is the worst (conservative William Kristol, according to Damon: "He's an idiot -- he wrote that we should be grateful to George Bush because he won the Iraq war. We! Won! The! War!") to the proper place of torture in American foreign policy.

-- and he's serenading me:

"What we liked about Matt is that he's Harvard educated, so he's a very smart guy," says Hal Weiner, who with his wife, Marilyn, produces Journey to the Planet Earth, the PBS series Damon has narrated for the past eight years and was working on last week. "But he's also a little political."

The Weiners discovered just how political when Damon started arguing with them about some lines he was supposed to read in one episode, which said rising Chinese soybean consumption was leading to slash-and-burn farming in the Brazilian Amazon.

"He really objected," Hal Weiner recalls. "He wanted to make sure we were not just bashing China. We had to bring in some scientists to talk to him before he'd do it."

A lot of producers would have simply snapped that Damon was being paid to read lines, not write them, but the Weiners -- not exactly apolitical themselves -- were delighted. "I really loved it that he wasn't willing to just say something without it being confirmed," says a laughing Marilyn Weiner.

-- so I'm f@#king Matt Damon.

I know what you're thinking: What about Iain? Don't worry about him. He's f@#king Matt Damon, too.

[H/T to everyone in the multiverse.]

Tagged as: china, pbs, bond, matt damon

Melissa McEwan writes and edits the blog Shakespeare's Sister.