Matt Damon & Paul Greengrass Interview

I’m waiting in an opulently adorned room in Claridge’s for one of the UK’s finest film makers and for Hollywood’s most bankable star, to give a press conference about their latest collaboration, the breath-taking Iraqtion thriller, Green Zone (see london-student.net for the review). I am of course referring to Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon.

After impressive work in the two Bourne sequels, Greengrass and Damon’s latest film takes place in the chaotic first few weeks of the Iraq war in 2003. Damon plays Miller, a soldier searching for WMD, who, after coming up empty handed, starts question the authority of his superiors. Other people looking for answers are the masses of journalists who’ve gathered for the conference and once the pair arrive, the interrogation begins…

Q: Why was this project the right one for your third collaboration?

PG: The honest truth is that after Bourne Supremacy I wanted to do a film about 9/11 and I wanted to do a film about Iraq because they were the two things that seemed to me, and to everybody, to be driving our world. In particular, those events were driving fear, paranoia, mistrust, all that lethal cocktail of stuff that was coursing round the US and the UK and coursing round the world, in the wake of those events. So [United] 93 became the 9/11 film, then we did Bourne Ultimatum and then we started to turn our attention to what became Green Zone, which began as a film about the hunt for WMD. We began by wanting to make a film that would be of broad appeal and that creates a sense of challenge. I have no problem about that because it seemed to me that the audience that loved the Bourne films, there were two important things about them: firstly it was that audience that was being asked to fight that war and it was from that audience that people opposed that war. So you had both ends of the spectrum, and they were attracted to the Bourne films because they were obviously high-octane-adrenaline thrillers, but also because there was a sort of attitude about those films that was ‘they’re not telling us the truth’ , ‘I need to find the truth’ and it seemed to me that we had the opportunity to ask that audience to take one step through he curtain back to the real world, back to the intrigue filled, dangerous, conspiracy laden weeks before and after the invasion because that, in the end, somewhere in that tangled thicket of events and conflicting agendas, all of that stuff started and that’s really what begat Green Zone.

Q: Anything to add to that Matt?

MD: Ditto.

Much laughter

Q: Did this have immediate appeal to you or did you have to persuaded?

MD: Oh no, not at all, I didn’t have to be persuaded. It just seemed like such fertile ground to make a film from and once we had Rajiv [Chandrasekaran]’s book [Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone, upon which Green Zone is loosely based], even though we didn’t know exactly what the movie was going to be, it just seemed like there was so much there, so much that was really interesting and again the fundamental question was could we make a film that had audience appeal and get a good chunk of that Bourne audience over into a film that was about a fictional character in the real world, rather than a fictional character in a fictional world.

Q: Can I ask you about creating the breathless look of the film, obviously referencing [cinematographer] Barry Ackroyd, who’s got an Oscar nomination this year [for his work on The Hurt Locker]…

MD: (interrupting) You can’t even talk to that guy anymore!

Q: What’s it like working with him and from an actor’s point of view, being on the receiving end of that sort of camera work?

PG: He’s a brilliant cameraman. I gave him an award last night [Best Technical Achievement, for The Hurt Locker, Evening Standard British Film Awards] and I was thrilled to do so. I’m delighted that he’s getting and will continue to get recognition for all the outstanding work that he’s done over many years. He’s worked with Ken Loach for many years, Stephen Poliakoff, I’ve been lucky enough to work with him a couple of times and now Kathryn Bigelow. His roots go back, like mine, to the endlessly fertile plains of British social realist documentary. That’s where he started and he’s moved steadily and slowly through small British movies and now he’s starting to make it in Hollywood but whatever the piece is, he has outstanding technical ability, that goes without question, he has tremendous courage, for instance in Green Zone there’s a long sustained section at the end, pitch black, full tilt action over huge areas with very little prep because we were short of time. Now it takes real bottle, if you’re a DOP [Director of Photography] when your director says, ‘I want to shoot this real night’. I kept on switching off lights and a lot of people won’t go there because it’s too risky and never once [did Ackroyd say no]. He’s up for it as a shot maker and a shot designer. And this is why he’s he a great DOP: he has a courageous moral eye. And that is a unique thing; I’ve worked with him on 93 and now on Green Zone and I’m forever in his debt.

MD: As an actor working with him it’s great because he and Paul set up an environment in which you have such freedom. There was never a mark that was laid down, there was never anybody saying, ‘you have to stand here and deliver this line this way’. On the contrary their interest was capturing something in real-time and they went as far as doing something they did on 93, a great idea we re-used for Green Zone: normally you’re restricted by your camera’s magazine, your eleven minute film load. What they did was have a backup camera and when one camera would dump after eleven minutes, they’d pick up the other camera and carry on. That allowed the actors and non-actors – of which there were many, whether they were soldiers or children – to stay in this heightened reality, to stay in that world without anybody breaking down to get a cup of tea or go to the bathroom. And these exercises would carry on for a half an hour at a time and then everybody would take a break. On 93 they would do the full hour and a half flight. They did a flight in the morning and a flight in the afternoon and that’s why the acting’s so good and so real: because it is real, it’s really unfolding and it is easy to buy into that reality when the camera is doing nothing at all – they’re asking technically nothing from you. I do it professionally so I’m used to the technical realities of making a film, but to be totally liberated from that really gives you something in your performance that you can’t get any other way.

Q: Films about Iraq haven’t done so well at the American box office. Is that a concern for you and how do you combat that?

PG: That’s right, even worldwide. It’s pointless to pretend that that’s not an issue. It goes back to what I was saying at the beginning, it always seemed to me to be part of what of what we could do. On any film you have a sense of what you’re trying to achieve, in broadest terms, something that you’re aiming at. And it always felt to me, after Bourne Ultimatum, the challenge for us was ‘could we take a broad audience to this subject [the Iraq war]’ because it’s important to my mind anyway that across the waterfront of cinema in a given year, that somewhere along the way, in small ways and large ways that cinema remains alive and engages directly with the world that we live in. You can’t have every movie like that, because people go to the movies, including myself for many different reasons, to escape to a fantasy world, to experience love and romance, to laugh, but in that waterfront of movies, you need some of your major pieces, your tent-poles, whatever you want to call them, to engage directly and feel fuelled by what’s really going on out there. Now that creates a real, real challenge, but I’ve really, honestly and truly, always believed in the possibility of good films in the main stream and not just from me! The Dark Knight for instance, was a hugely successful film and is one of the best films of the last ten years, because its themes and its darkness and its creative ambitions are absolutely huge, but of course, it’s a gigantically popular BatmanBourne and he’s not playing Jason Bourne. It’s one step through that curtain into more difficult territory because it’s the real world and it’s Iraq. But those were hugely momentous dramatic times, it’s a great place to set a thriller, I think we’ve got a great story, we’ve got the greatest movie star in the world in my view and a fantastic actor, doing what people love to see him do and I think when people come and see this, they’ll be rewarded for taking that step. But also I think it will make people talk and that’s all great. That’s part of what popular cinema can do. movie, you know? So there are ways you can do this, but you have to engage with genre, you have to be offering a broad audience an identifiable experience that they can understand and will offer them the promise of being rewarded as a cinematic experience and then you have to give them that reward and in the end with this film, it’s me and it’s Matt and people know the sort of films that we make and that’s a certain style of storytelling, it’s going to have a certain sort of drive and immersive quality, it’s going to feel like it’s unfolding in real time and it’s going to be clear characters and a central character with a really strong and noble agenda and it’s going to feel like it’s addressing what’s going on with a real point of view and attitude. And I think if we do that – and I think we have done – then people will come. It’s not

Q: Matt, any intention to take time off?

MD: Well I’m on a flight in a few hours so I’m looking forward to putting my head down. But I just finished with Clint [Eastwood] yesterday [shooting Hereafter, ETA December 2010] and that’s like time off. He shoots no more than ten hours a day and it’s a very civilised schedule.

Q: How does that compare to Paul?

Much laughter.

MD: Much more civilised than Greengrass, let me tell ya! But they’re very different types of movies, these last two I’ve done with Clint [Hereafter and Invictus]. But yeah, I want to direct someday and I can’t really pass up the chance to work with the people I’m getting chances to work with; Paul three times now, Clint twice, [Steven] Soderbergh five or six times, I’m working with the Coen Brothers next month, as long as that keeps happening I can’t see taking time off unless the work dried up.

Q: What is the current public opinion with Iraq in the US at the moment? I don’t know if you’re aware we have the public inquiry happening at the moment, with our leaders giving evidence. Is there the stomach for that in America?

MD: There’s a very different atmosphere in America right now, if you engage any American in a discussion about war, Afghanistan is probably what’s going to come up first. The issues of the economy and jobs are what people are mostly thinking about right now so Iraq isn’t on the front page as it is here with the Chilcot Inquiry. I’m interested in seeing how we do there and how we do here. But whether or not it’s at the forefront of everybody’s consciousness at home right now, certainly there will be an appetite for this type of film at some point, whether when it opens on March 12^th or sometime later than that. We can never predict what the zeitgeist will be two years down the road but we wanted to make this movie and we got to make the movie that we wanted to make so hopefully the studio will be rewarded for their faith in us and hopefully we’ll do okay.

Q: What research and preparations did you make for your role Matt? Did you speak with any of the soldiers looking for WMD?

MD: Well actually Monty Gonazlaez, our technical adviser on whom Miller [Damon’s character] is based, led a mobile exploitation team in to hunt for weapons. These teams comprised of scientists and EOD [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] explosives guys and people from the artillery division to act as security to help them get into these places and fight their way in if necessary and protect them while they did their work. Monty had all of these intell packets and unlike Miller, who grows suspicious after the fourth time they come up with nothing, Monty said that after the very first factory that they went into [and found nothing], he was sure that something horribly wrong had happened because it was listed as a dual use facility – I think it was actually a porcelain factory – in other words it was a porcelain factory but it was hiding the fact that it was really making something else and once they got in there, they took one look at it and said there was no way that this was anything but a porcelain factory and anybody that says otherwise is obviously making it up because nobody could stand inside this building and say it was used for anything other than making porcelain. I met Monty and he started telling me these stories. He’s exactly my age, we went to high school the same year, I graduated and went to college, he graduated and went into the army. He came from a military family, very proud of his service. The first question I asked him was, ‘what are you doing this [film] for? What do you want to get out of it?’ And he said, ‘we’ve lost our moral authority.’ That was the first thing that he said to me and that all went towards our reasons for going in, for invading a country. And being the actual guy who goes into the factory and finds that this is not what they said it was… I think on some level that was the question everybody was asking themselves since mid 2003 [the question of our supposed moral authority] and our central character starts with that question, which I legitimately think is a noble question.

Q: Green Zone comes out five days after the Oscars; The Hurt Locker is likely to win quite a few awards then. Will the presence of another Iraq film in the same week help or hinder Green Zone?

MD: I have no idea.

Much Laughter

PG: I have no idea either. What I do know is it’s great that Hurt Locker was made and I’m thrilled it gets the recognition it does and speaking as someone who’s made a film in that part of the world, anyone else who’s done one has total respect from me as it’s a hard road. If you ask me, instinctively I think it’s part of a general sense of a ‘where did it all go wrong?’ feeling that emerged in the wake of 2003, 2004. It’s not whether you were for or against the war, that’s not the issue, but I think, as a generalised statement, many people had a sense that something went wrong, that we collectively didn’t get things right. Whatever the issue and the particularities of it, one way or another we’re struggling out the other side of that. I think the Chilcot Inquiry in this country is part of that, obviously the election of a new president – in the end democracy renews, that’s a key part of a changing mood in America. None of these things are hard lines, nothing changes overnight, what’s interesting cinematically with the emergence of Hurt Locker and the fact that it’s received the critical recognition that it has is part of the mysterious ways popular culture absorbs and processes experiences that occur in the real world. We are all part of that and that’s necessary and right.

Q: Matt, what can you tell us about creating a twenty-first century Glen Campbell [in reference to the role Damon plays in the forthcoming True Grit remake]?

MD: The Coen Brothers have gone right back to the source for True Grit and that’s the book. It’s a wonderful book that Charles Portis wrote and most of the dialogue is culled right from it. So I’m relying less on Glen Campbell and more on Joel and Ethan Coen for that performance.

Q: No singing?

MD: No singing, no! You’ll all be spared!

Q: Paul, clearly, you would imagine misters Bush and Blair would benefit hugely from seeing your film. I’m wondering what you would hope they would take away from a screening?

PG: Well, I hope as many people as possible see Green Zone. I’m sure Mr Blair and Mr Bush would find it extremely… exciting and dramatic (much laughter). I might see if I can set up a screening for them.

http://www.london-student.net/2010/05/29/greengrass-zone-interview-with-matt-damon-and-paul-greengrass/